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Release: September 17, 2003 New report documents environmental justice
crisis in California communities (San Diego) – Every day, California’s low-income communities and communities of color face challenges from a disproportionate burden of toxics and pollution. Unequal political and legal rights worsen these conditions, due to a lack of community resources and exclusion of affected communities from public policy-making. A report released today by five of the state’s leading Environmental Justice organizations provides a clear landscape of these conditions, and offers recommendations for finding solutions. The report, entitled Building Healthy Communities from the Ground Up: Environmental Justice in California is available for download in PDF format. The goal of environmental justice is to ensure that all people have the right to safe, secure and sustainable livelihoods free of toxic pollution, and a voice in the decision-making that affects them. Building Healthy Communities is the result of discussions between environmental justice organizations in California to explore environmental conditions in the state’s most impacted communities, and develop policy recommendations to address these issues. The five organizations – Asian Pacific Environmental Network (Oakland), Communities for a Better Environment (San Francisco Bay Area/ Los Angeles), Environmental Health Coalition (San Diego), People Organizing to Demand Environmental and Economic Rights (San Francisco), and Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition/ Health and Environmental Justice Project (San Jose) – have long histories working together in coalition and have begun to develop and explore possibilities for addressing environmental justice at the state policy level. The recommendations contained in the report range from the general to the specific, but define a strategic direction for building healthy communities and achieving environmental justice in California. The Building Healthy Communities report lays the groundwork for policy changes that can be accomplished, in part, through the adoption of the key recommendations from the California Environmental Protection Agency Advisory Committee on Environmental Justice Report, available in PDF format from the Cal/EPA Web site. Major goals of the Cal/EPA Advisory Committee report include the integration of environmental justice into all aspects of Cal/EPA, the inclusion of meaningful public participation, the improvement of research and data collection, and the improvement of cross-media coordination and accountability between Cal/EPA agencies. On September 29 and 30 in Oakland, more than 200 people from environmental justice communities across the state will present the Cal/EPA Advisory Committee with public testimony supporting the environmental justice policy recommendations. The Advisory Committee report will provide a set of comprehensive recommendations to establish and implement environmental justice guidelines for all Cal/EPA agencies. These agencies include the California Air Resources Board, the Department of Pesticide Regulation, the Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment, the Department of Toxic Substances Control, the Integrated Waste Management Board, and the State Water Resources Control Board. ### |