The closure of EPA’s regional environmental justice offices will damage rural America
10 US Environmental Protection Agency has stopped environmental justice efforts in regional offices and employees, announcement Lee Zeldin, the EPA manager last month. Former EPA employees participating in environmental justice activities throughout the country, rural communities will result in pain, he says.
Before being closed in early March, EPA’s environmental justice branch aimed to ensure that communities were treated fairly and obtain the necessary protection within the scope of Clean Air Life and Clean Water Law. Zealan Hoover, the former Senior Consultant of the EPA manager under Biden management, told Daily Yonder that this study has great effects on rural places because there are pollution concerns in rural areas throughout the country.
“EPA focused on making sure that we pushed resources to rural communities not only on the regulatory side but also on the investment side, Ho Hoover said.
According to Hoover, most of the pollution difficulties faced by the US are not new. He said that the employees who are now on leave and participate in EPA’s regional environmental justice offices are deeply knowledgeable about issues that affect communities in their regions – issues that could last decimal. Hoover is concerned about the recent changes in the Trump administration agency, including a series. Deregulative Actions and recommended 65 percent budget deduction.
“I believe that big people in the remaining EPA will still work bravely to fill these gaps, but the truth is that this management is trying to reduce EPA’s budget, forces employees to leave, and will restrict EPA’s ability to fight the most important pollution difficulties of rural communities,” he said.
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A rural community, which faces years of environmental challenges, is the place where Sherri White-Williamson lived in the Sampson County countryside in North Carolina. The storage area of the district in 2021 in the second place On the highest list methane The waters in the USA are the second largest pork manufacturer throughout the country and in 2022 almost three percent All US pork sales.
Pork industry known for its pollution From open waste storage pits that emit toxic chemicals to nearby neighborhoods. For years, concerns About North Carolina’s pig industry focused on disproportionate damage to low -income communities and color communities, because pig farms often find their operations adjacent to such communities in rural areas.
White-Williamson is also an EPA veteran. The agency’s Washington has worked on environmental justice attempts before returning home for more than ten years. He’s now the general manager. Environmental Justice Society Action NetworkOr Ejcan founded in Sampson County in 2020 to strengthen its neighbors in the midst of environmental challenges such as pig farms and regular storage spaces.
In his first work with Ejcan, White-Williamson said he realized that speeches about environmental justice often focus on urban areas. Since then, White-Williamson said that he has focused on educating people about how environmental justice in rural communities looks.
“Most of our problems have something to do with what they want, or that throwing cities does not want,” White-Williamson said. “When pollution, pesticides, food processing remains are finished or staying here, beautiful, clean, freshly prepared products end in a local urban market.”
According to White-Williamson, another misunderstanding about environmental justice is that it exists only to serve color communities. During his time in EPA, White-Williamson said he had time in communities with all kinds of racial demography while working on environmental justice initiatives.
End of EPA’s struggle for protecting over -strengthened communities
“I spent a lot of time in places like Western Virginia and Kentucky, and the places where populations are not necessarily color, but weak-income or low-income places where people cannot reach their power arms,” White-Williamson said.
When pollution affected local health in communities without reaching such “ruling branches”, EPA’s regional environmental justice offices were a resource and a kind of accountability. Justice and Equality Senior Vice President of the Environmental Defense Fund. Without these offices, Margot Brown said rural communities would be more difficult for them to receive the services they need to resolve health concerns.
“They dismantle the ecosystem of health protection for rural Americans and make them more sensitive to future dangers,” said Brown, one of the Trump administration’s decisions in EPA. “Health and prosperity for future generations.”
During his first administration, Brown worked in EPA for about 10 years and under President Trump. When he spent there, he served as Deputy Director of Child Health Protection Office. Together with Hoover and White-Williamson, community members should return to state governments or environmental quality departments in the absence of regional environmental justice offices.
But White-Williamson said that state governments also received federal financing. Frozen funds and interruptions in health programs among federal institutions, Including MedicaidIt can eliminate compound difficulties for rural communities that try to reduce environmental health effects.
“The communities that need aid and guidance the most will find themselves again at the short end of the bar and there will be communities that suffer more than anyone.
Hoover described it as “one fist için for rural communities. On the one hand, he said that rural places have lost access to health facilities due to budget cuts.
“On the other hand, they are patients because the government no longer prevents pollutants from pollute their air and water.”
