Advocacy: Environmental Justice

Environmental Justice:

Environmental and climate injustices are civil rights issues, in addition to water quality impacts.

In 1982, residents of Warren County, North Carolina, a predominantly Black community, organized protests to oppose the dumping of toxic material that would leak into their water supply, kickstarting the modern environmental justice movement.

Our work as a clean water advocacy organization is directly impacted as a result of systemic inequality and our work has evolved out of the need to protect the quality of water and life in underserved communities in the White Oak River Basin.

The concentration of harmful land uses, industry, and flooding that impact water quality is a product of these systemic forces; we must acknowledge and recognize this for our approaches and strategies to be successful.

For there to be positive, Statewide, systemic change in how our waterways and communities experience the environment, we must also engage in the systemic causes contributing to water quality issues in certain communities.

Advocacy Action Needed:

• Urge decision-makers to codify DEQ’s existing authority to deny a permit if the cumulative impact, when coupled with existing environmental or health concerns, would cause a disproportionate, adverse impact on a community protected by Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
• Volunteer to provide environmental justice advocacy in the White Oak River Basin. Sign up today.