Smart Growth and Sustainable Communities Initiative

The overall purpose of the EJRC’s Smart Growth and Sustainable Communities Initiative is to substantially impact the built environment impact on public health, including smart growth and regional equity, transportation and land use, equitable development, food security and urban agriculture, parks and green access, and industrial facility in underserved communities.  The initiative is part of the center’s National Equity and Smart Growth Initiative that emphasizes strategies for incorporating low-income, people of color, underserved populations in “green,” clean, equitable, and sustainable development. 

Just Green Project

As the nation goes green or at least talks about it, many low-income and people of color are still being offered risky, “dirty,” unhealthy, and nonsustainable development as “pathways out of poverty.”  The October, 2009 public accountability meetings held in Atlanta at EPA Region 4, CDC National Environmental Public Health Conference and the National Conversation on Public Health and Chemical Exposure were undertaken under the EJRC’s eight-state “Just Green Project,” (Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Tennessee). The project uses a holistic approach for addressing complex, systemic health, environmental, and socioeconomic disparities through community-centered efforts aimed at increasing low-income and people of color families and children access to safe, toxic-free, green, and sustainable living conditions. 

Links to media coverage and reports of the Just Green Project are listed below:

10/30/2009 – Sue Sturgis, ISS - Polluted Southern communities ask EPA to address environmental injustice, Facing South.

10/29/2009 – Helen Chen, Racewire, The Quest for Environmental Justice in Dixie, Common Dreams, Race Wire.

10/28/2009 – EJRC, Poisoned Communities Tell EPA to Address Legacy of Unequal Protection, briefing papers from fifteen communities from six states.

10/28/2009 – Women Of Color United, “Poisoned Communities” Light a Fire Under the EPA.

10/27/2009 – Call For GAO, IG Investigation Of Region IV Key To Broad Equity Push by The InsideEPA.com Environmental NewsStand

10/27/2009 – Dionne Walker, Group talks environmental racism with feds in Ga., Associated Press, The Miami Herald.

10/27/2009 – Dionne Walker, Activists meet with feds over environmental racism, Associated Press, The Miami Herald.

10/24/2009 – Robert D. Bullard,  Poisoned Communities Put Spotlight on EPA Region 4, OpEd News.

9/14/2009 – Robert D. Bullard, Need for EPA Inspector General Investigation of Region 4 Treatment of Black Communities, Dissident Voice.

9/16/2009 – Robert D. Bullard, New York Times Study Points to Failed EPA Regional Model, OpEd News.

9/3/2009 – Robert D. Bullard, Time for New Type of EPA Regional Administrators, OpEd News.