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Environmental justice advocates find hope, healing and community in Pittsburgh

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Friday, May 17, 2024

PITTSBURGH — Environmental justice advocates gathered last week to celebrate progress and chart a path to the future while focusing on healing, self care and mental health. May is Mental Health Awareness Month, and the Environmental Justice Summit highlighted the need for self-care and connection among researchers and advocates working to advance justice. Exposure to pollution and anxiety about climate change can negatively impact mental health and people who work to right injustices face the risk of compassion fatigue and burnout. “Advancing justice is emotionally difficult work,” Dani Wilson, executive director of the Cancer and Environment Network of Southwestern Pennsylvania, which coordinated the event alongside the University of Pittsburgh, told EHN. “Taking care of ourselves and each other is critical to fostering moments of joy and connection that help us stay in the movement.” Over three days, attendees strategized about how to advance environmental justice in the greater Pittsburgh region and how to foster resilience with tools like meditation, storytelling, community-building, yoga, crafting and cooking. The event also highlighted the importance of humor, connection and optimism. “This is a social movement,” said Jamil Bey, founder of the nonprofit think tank UrbanKind Institute and newly-appointed director of the Department of City Planning for Pittsburgh. “That means that as part of this work, we’ve gotta have fun with our friends. We’ve gotta stay connected and be able to laugh.” On Friday, Dr. Sacoby Wilson, an environmental health scientist, professor and director of the Center for Community Engagement, Environmental Justice and Health at the University of Maryland, set the tone for the day by declaring himself a “hardcore Steelers fan” and waving a Terrible Towel above his head while shouting “Go Steelers!” Wilson peppered an otherwise serious talk about the ravages of environmental racism and his work developing tools to combat it with football jokes, referencing recent quarterback drama (“two quarterbacks are better than one!”), emphasizing the importance of both offense and defense for communities burdened by pollution and quipping that if we want to score a touchdown, the community needs to work as a team. “Where you live can kill you,” Wilson said, noting that poor, Black and Brown neighborhoods in most places, including southwestern Pennsylvania, face higher levels of exposure to pollution that result in worse health outcomes and lowered life expectancy. These places are also more likely to experience the impacts of climate change and other disproportionate harms.“We need a holistic framework for environmental justice that also acknowledges the need for housing justice, economic justice, social justice, educational justice, reproductive justice and racial justice,” he said, “because these things are all connected. And you can’t get equity without justice… And on a separate note, we’re going to the Super Bowl this year, right?” Environmental justice victoriesOther speakers shared recent victories and progress. Professor Tiffany Gary-Webb, the associate dean for Diversity, Equity and Inclusion at the University of Pittsburgh School of Public Health, shared the results of her work with the Black Environmental Collective and the Black Equity Coalition. The group formed in April 2020 to ensure an equitable response to the COVID-19 pandemic in Pittsburgh and has evolved to continue advancing racial equity in western Pennsylvania. “We used data to try and understand where there were higher rates of COVID and sent those to the county and state health departments. We talked to elected officials and put out our own dashboard with the numbers for Black populations, and through those efforts we were able to get critical resources to our communities and see that data change,” Gary-Webb said, pointing to a study that summarized the group’s effectiveness. “Now we’re continuing that work with a focus on other issues in our communities.” Ash Chan, a farmer and steward at Oasis Farm and Fishery, shared their experience working at a Black-owned garden and market in Pittsburgh’s predominantly Black, working-class Homewood neighborhood, which has a long history of disinvestment and has been without a grocery store since 1994. The organization uses vacant land to grow food and offers classes in urban farming and healthy cooking. “We see food as a driver of social and economic capital, as well as a way that connects people to their cultural roots and their natural environment,” Chan said. “We’re growing what folks want. For example, last year we noticed that elders in the community would line up for okra before we even opened our farmer’s market …so this year we’re growing six different kinds of okra based on that demand.”Bearing witness to injusticeWhile the Summit highlighted progress and promoted resilience, it also emphasized “bearing witness” — a process described by event organizers as actively listening, not looking away, and most importantly, responding — to “the slow violence of environmental degradation on our land.” Participants were invited to attend a “bearing witness ceremony” in Clairton, a small town about 30 miles south of Pittsburgh that regularly sees some of the most polluted air in the country due to emissions from a coal-based U.S. Steel plant. “The injustices are very thick and very brutal in Clairton,” said Melanie Meade, a clean air activist and resident of Clairton. Meade shared the heartbreak she has experienced learning that Clairton’s rate of childhood asthma is more than double the national rate, watching many loved ones die of cancer and witnessing the impacts of poverty and violence. “The people are tired and they are sick and they are in great need, and we need to stand in the way for them.” Later in the day, Kayien Conner, a professor at the University of Pittsburgh’s School of Social Work, told Melanie she’d been moved by her words and asked if she could connect her with an organization she’s involved with that offers mental health resources for Black communities to get additional resources to Clairton. “Yes, please, thank you!” Melanie said. “See? We’re here making connections, collaborating, getting this work done already!” Wilson shouted to applause and laughter.Political optimismSpeakers at the symposium also noted that western Pennsylvania is on the precipice of major political changes that offer many reasons for optimism for environmental advocates, pointing to the election of progressive politicians like Summer Lee and Lindsay Powell and county executive Sara Innamorato, all of whom have pledged to prioritize environmental justice. “We’re really shaking things up politically right now,” said Bey. “If we don’t do this now, then that’s on us. Now is the time. Let’s keep lifting each other up, let’s do our work and let’s get this done.”

PITTSBURGH — Environmental justice advocates gathered last week to celebrate progress and chart a path to the future while focusing on healing, self care and mental health.

May is Mental Health Awareness Month, and the Environmental Justice Summit highlighted the need for self-care and connection among researchers and advocates working to advance justice. Exposure to pollution and anxiety about climate change can negatively impact mental health and people who work to right injustices face the risk of compassion fatigue and burnout.

“Advancing justice is emotionally difficult work,” Dani Wilson, executive director of the Cancer and Environment Network of Southwestern Pennsylvania, which coordinated the event alongside the University of Pittsburgh, told EHN. “Taking care of ourselves and each other is critical to fostering moments of joy and connection that help us stay in the movement.”

Over three days, attendees strategized about how to advance environmental justice in the greater Pittsburgh region and how to foster resilience with tools like meditation, storytelling, community-building, yoga, crafting and cooking. The event also highlighted the importance of humor, connection and optimism.

“This is a social movement,” said Jamil Bey, founder of the nonprofit think tank UrbanKind Institute and newly-appointed director of the Department of City Planning for Pittsburgh. “That means that as part of this work, we’ve gotta have fun with our friends. We’ve gotta stay connected and be able to laugh.”

On Friday, Dr. Sacoby Wilson, an environmental health scientist, professor and director of the Center for Community Engagement, Environmental Justice and Health at the University of Maryland, set the tone for the day by declaring himself a “hardcore Steelers fan” and waving a Terrible Towel above his head while shouting “Go Steelers!”

Wilson peppered an otherwise serious talk about the ravages of environmental racism and his work developing tools to combat it with football jokes, referencing recent quarterback drama (“two quarterbacks are better than one!”), emphasizing the importance of both offense and defense for communities burdened by pollution and quipping that if we want to score a touchdown, the community needs to work as a team.

“Where you live can kill you,” Wilson said, noting that poor, Black and Brown neighborhoods in most places, including southwestern Pennsylvania, face higher levels of exposure to pollution that result in worse health outcomes and lowered life expectancy. These places are also more likely to experience the impacts of climate change and other disproportionate harms.

“We need a holistic framework for environmental justice that also acknowledges the need for housing justice, economic justice, social justice, educational justice, reproductive justice and racial justice,” he said, “because these things are all connected. And you can’t get equity without justice… And on a separate note, we’re going to the Super Bowl this year, right?”

Environmental justice victories

Other speakers shared recent victories and progress.

Professor Tiffany Gary-Webb, the associate dean for Diversity, Equity and Inclusion at the University of Pittsburgh School of Public Health, shared the results of her work with the Black Environmental Collective and the Black Equity Coalition. The group formed in April 2020 to ensure an equitable response to the COVID-19 pandemic in Pittsburgh and has evolved to continue advancing racial equity in western Pennsylvania.

“We used data to try and understand where there were higher rates of COVID and sent those to the county and state health departments. We talked to elected officials and put out our own dashboard with the numbers for Black populations, and through those efforts we were able to get critical resources to our communities and see that data change,” Gary-Webb said, pointing to a study that summarized the group’s effectiveness. “Now we’re continuing that work with a focus on other issues in our communities.”

Ash Chan, a farmer and steward at Oasis Farm and Fishery, shared their experience working at a Black-owned garden and market in Pittsburgh’s predominantly Black, working-class Homewood neighborhood, which has a long history of disinvestment and has been without a grocery store since 1994. The organization uses vacant land to grow food and offers classes in urban farming and healthy cooking.

“We see food as a driver of social and economic capital, as well as a way that connects people to their cultural roots and their natural environment,” Chan said. “We’re growing what folks want. For example, last year we noticed that elders in the community would line up for okra before we even opened our farmer’s market …so this year we’re growing six different kinds of okra based on that demand.”

Bearing witness to injustice

While the Summit highlighted progress and promoted resilience, it also emphasized “bearing witness” — a process described by event organizers as actively listening, not looking away, and most importantly, responding — to “the slow violence of environmental degradation on our land.”

Participants were invited to attend a “bearing witness ceremony” in Clairton, a small town about 30 miles south of Pittsburgh that regularly sees some of the most polluted air in the country due to emissions from a coal-based U.S. Steel plant.

“The injustices are very thick and very brutal in Clairton,” said Melanie Meade, a clean air activist and resident of Clairton. Meade shared the heartbreak she has experienced learning that Clairton’s rate of childhood asthma is more than double the national rate, watching many loved ones die of cancer and witnessing the impacts of poverty and violence. “The people are tired and they are sick and they are in great need, and we need to stand in the way for them.”

Later in the day, Kayien Conner, a professor at the University of Pittsburgh’s School of Social Work, told Melanie she’d been moved by her words and asked if she could connect her with an organization she’s involved with that offers mental health resources for Black communities to get additional resources to Clairton.

“Yes, please, thank you!” Melanie said.

“See? We’re here making connections, collaborating, getting this work done already!” Wilson shouted to applause and laughter.

Political optimism

Speakers at the symposium also noted that western Pennsylvania is on the precipice of major political changes that offer many reasons for optimism for environmental advocates, pointing to the election of progressive politicians like Summer Lee and Lindsay Powell and county executive Sara Innamorato, all of whom have pledged to prioritize environmental justice.

“We’re really shaking things up politically right now,” said Bey. “If we don’t do this now, then that’s on us. Now is the time. Let’s keep lifting each other up, let’s do our work and let’s get this done.”

Read the full story here.

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Even if the railway promoters win, here's why the train won’t get built.

This story was originally published by Mother Jones and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. The state of Utah has come up with its share of boondoggles over the years, but one of the more enduring is the Uinta Basin Railway. The proposed 88-mile rail line would link the oil fields of the remote Uinta Basin region of eastern Utah to national rail lines so that up to 350,000 barrels of waxy crude oil could be transported to refineries on the Gulf Coast. The railway would allow oil companies to quadruple production in the basin and would be the biggest rail infrastructure project the U.S. has seen since the 1970s. But in all likelihood, the Uinta Basin Railway will never get built. The Uinta Basin is hemmed in by the soaring peaks of the Wasatch Mountains to the west and the Uinta Mountains to the north. 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Earthjustice is representing environmental groups that are parties in the case. “The fact that the court took this case means that it’s just issuing policy decisions from the bench, not deciding cases.” The idea of building a railway from the Uinta Basin to refineries in Salt Lake City or elsewhere has been kicking around for more than 25 years. As I explained in 2022, the basin is home to Utah’s largest, though still modest, oil and gas fields: Locked inside the basin’s sandstone layers are anywhere between 50 and 321 billion barrels of conventional oil, plus an estimated 14 to 15 billion barrels of tar sands, the largest such reserves in the U.S. The basin also lies atop a massive geological marvel known as the Green River Formation that stretches into Colorado and Wyoming and contains an estimated 3 trillion barrels of oil shale. In 2012, the U.S. Government Accountability Office reported to Congress that if even half of the formation’s unconventional oil was recoverable, it would “be equal to the entire world’s proven oil reserves.” Wildcat speculators, big oil companies, and state officials alike have been salivating over the Uinta Basin’s rich oil deposits for years, yet they’ve never been able to fully exploit them. The oil in the basin is a waxy crude that must be heated to 115 degrees to remain liquid, a problem that ruled out an earlier attempt to build a pipeline. The Seven County Infrastructure Coalition, a quasi-governmental organization consisting of the major oil-, gas-, and coal-producing counties in Utah, has received $28 million in public funding to plan and promote the railway as a way around this obstacle. The coalition is one of the petitioners in the Supreme Court case. “We don’t have a freeway into the Uinta Basin,” Mike McKee, the coalition’s former executive director, told me back in 2022. “It’s just that we have high mountains around us, so it’s been challenging.” Of course, there is no major highway from the basin for the same reason that the railway has never been built: The current two-lane road from Salt Lake City crests a peak that’s almost 10,000 feet above sea level, which is too high for a train to go over. So the current railway plan calls for tunneling through the mountain. But going through it may be just as treacherous as going over it. Inside the unstable mountain rock are pockets of explosive methane and other gases, not all of which have been mapped. None of this deterred the Seven County coalition from notifying the federal Surface Transportation Board, or STB, in 2019 that it intended to apply for a permit for the railway. The following year, the board started the environmental review process, including taking comments from the public. In December 2021, the STB found that the railway’s transportation merits outweighed its significant environmental effects. It approved the railway, despite noting that the hazards from tunneling “could potentially cause injury or death,” both in the railway’s construction and operation. It recommended that the coalition conduct some geoengineering studies, which it had not done. Among the many issues the board failed to consider when it approved the project was the impact of the additional 18 miles of oil train cars that the railway would add to the Union Pacific line going through Colorado, including Eagle County, home to the ski town of Vail. Along with creating significant risks of wildfires, the additional trains would run within feet of the Colorado River, where the possibility of regular oil spills could threaten the drinking water for 40 million people. The deficiencies in the STB’s environmental impact statement prompted environmentalists to ask the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals to review the STB decision, as did Eagle County. Read Next Can you tell if a ‘bomb train’ is coming to your town? It’s complicated. John McCracken In August 2023, the appeals court invalidated the STB’s approval of the railway. Among the many problems it found was the STB’s failure to assess “serious concerns about financial viability in determining the transportation merits of a project.” A 2018 feasibility study commissioned by the coalition itself had estimated that the railway would cost at least $5 billion to construct, need 3,000 workers, take at least 10 years to complete, and require government bond funding because the private sector had little incentive to invest in the railway. As Justin Mikulka, a research fellow who studies the finances of energy transition at the New Consensus think tank, told me in 2022, “If there were money to be made, someone would have built this railroad 20 years ago.” The appeals court was also skeptical that the railroad had a future: “Given the record evidence identified by petitioners — including the 2018 feasibility study — there is similar reason to doubt the financial viability of the railway.” Indeed, the plan approved by the STB claims the railway construction would cost a mere $2 billion, to be paid for by a private investor. So far, however, only public money has gone into the project. The private investor, which is also one of the petitioners in the Supreme Court case, is a firm called DHIP Group. When I wrote about the railway in 2022, DHIP’s website showed involvement in only two projects: the Uinta Basin Railway and the Louisiana Plaquemines oil export terminal, which had been canceled in 2021. Today, the long-dead Louisiana project is still listed on its website, but the firm has added a New York state self-storage facility to its portfolio — a concrete box that’s a far cry from a complex, multibillion-dollar infrastructure project. DHIP’s website also touts its sponsorship of the Integrated Rail and Resources Acquisition Corporation, a new company it took public in 2021 with a $230 million IPO. But in a March 2024 SEC filing, the company disclosed that the New York Stock Exchange had threatened to delist it, because in the three years since the IPO, it has done … nothing. (The company has managed to hang on.) Environmental concerns notwithstanding, DHIP seems unlikely to come up with $2 billion to build the railway. A spokesperson for DHIP did not respond to a request for comment. Even if environmentalists had never filed suit to block it, the railway probably would have died under the weight of its own unfeasibility. Instead, the Seven County coalition appealed the decision to the Supreme Court, arguing that the appeals court had erred when it required the STB to study the local effects of oil wells and refineries that it didn’t have the authority to regulate. In July, the Supreme Court agreed to take the case. Now the court stands poised to issue a decision with much broader threats to environmental regulation by considering only one question raised by the lower court: Does Supreme Court precedent limit a NEPA analysis strictly to environmental issues that an agency regulates, or does the law allow agencies to weigh the wider impacts of a project, such as air pollution or water contamination, that may be regulated by other agencies? During oral arguments in the case, liberal Justice Sonia Sotomayor expressed frustration with Clement’s suggestion that the court prevent NEPA reviews from considering impacts that were “remote in time and geography.” She suggested that such an interpretation went against the heart of the law, noting, for instance, that if a federal agency allowed a car to go to market, “it could go a thousand miles and 40 states away and blow up. That’s a reasonably foreseeable consequence that is remote in geography and time.” A federal agency, she implied, should absolutely consider such dangers. “You want absolute rules that make no sense,” Sotomayor told Clement. Sotomayor seemed to be alone, however, in her defense of NEPA, and the majority of the other seven justices seemed inclined to require at least some limits to the statute. (Justice Neil Gorsuch recused himself from the case because his former patron, Denver-based billionaire Philip Anschutz, had a potential financial interest in the outcome of the case. His oil and gas company, Anschutz Exploration Corporation, has federal drilling leases in Utah and elsewhere and also filed an amicus brief in the case.) While the justices seemed inclined to hamstring NEPA, such a ruling would be a hollow victory for the Utah railway promoters that brought the case. When the appeals court voided the STB decision approving the railway, it cited at least six other reasons it was unlawful beyond the NEPA issue. None of those will be affected by a Supreme Court decision in the Seven County coalition case. The STB permit will still be void, and the oil train will not get out of the station. There will be winners in the case, however, most likely the big fossil fuel and other companies whose operations would benefit from less environmental scrutiny, should the court issue a decision reining in NEPA. For instance, the case could lead the court to strictly limit the extent of environmental harms that must be considered in future infrastructure projects, meaning that the public would have a much harder time forcing the government to consider the health and environmental effects of oil and gas wells and pipelines before approving them. “This case is bigger than the Uinta Basin Railway,” Earthjustice’s Sankar said. “The fossil fuel industry and its allies are making radical arguments that would blind the public to obvious health consequences of government decisions.” The court will issue a decision by June next year. This story was originally published by Grist with the headline How a fantasy oil train may help the Supreme Court gut a major environmental law on Dec 22, 2024.

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Texas regulators shelve an electricity market reform proposal they say does too little to shore up grid

The Public Utility Commission found that the performance credit mechanism, a financial tool the Legislature capped at $1 billion, would only marginally improve reliability of the state power grid.

Sign up for The Brief, The Texas Tribune’s daily newsletter that keeps readers up to speed on the most essential Texas news. The Public Utility Commission on Thursday shelved the performance credit mechanism, a controversial idea that was designed to bring more power onto the state grid and increase its reliability. “I don’t believe that the PCM, as currently designed, will provide the reliability benefits needed in the ERCOT market,” PUC Chair Thomas Gleeson wrote in a Dec. 18 memo that the rest of the commission endorsed on Thursday. The performance credit mechanism represented a complex change to the way Texas’ electricity market works. The idea would have required electricity providers — the companies, co-ops and municipal utilities that sell power to people — to pay more to generators that committed to having electricity available when grid conditions get tight. Electricity providers then could have passed those extra costs onto consumers. The goal was to incentivize companies to build more of what are known as dispatchable power facilities. Dispatchable power sources, such as natural gas, nuclear and coal-fired plants, can turn on any time and fill in the gaps in supply when demand for power is high — unlike renewable sources that depend on sun and wind. Amid concerns that the tool would lead to skyrocketing electricity bills without guaranteeing greater reliability, the Legislature last year imposed a $1 billion cap on how much it could cost consumers. That cap, according to the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, which manages the state grid, was the parameter that “most significantly limits the effectiveness of the PCM.” ERCOT and an independent market monitor found this year that with the $1 billion limit, the proposal would have only minimally improved the grid’s reliability, estimating that it would lead to an extra 780 megawatts of generation — far short of the 10,000 megawatts needed to meet the state’s reliability standard. The most important Texas news,sent weekday mornings. A coalition of consumer advocates, oil and gas lobbyists and environmental activists had demanded the cost limit to protect consumers from higher electricity bills. Companies that operate gas-fueled power plants had opposed a cap, saying it would reduce or kill the effectiveness of the credits. The PUC on Thursday pointed to other mechanisms that commissioners said would do more to increase reliability. “While reconsideration of the PCM may be appropriate in the future,” Gleeson wrote in his memo, “at this point I believe our collective resources are best directed toward implementing other market design initiatives.” Those measures include tools to streamline how ERCOT procures power and a new ancillary services program that can offer power to smooth out uncertainty on the grid. In August, the PUC adopted a grid reliability standard that said a major power outage due to inadequate power supply could take place no more than once every decade on average; any outage must last less than 12 hours; and the amount of power lost during any hour of an outage could not exceed the level that could be safely rotated through rolling blackouts. Beginning in 2026, ERCOT must conduct an assessment every three years of whether the system is meeting the reliability standard — an opportunity, the PUC said, to evaluate the effects of changes implemented by the agency and the Legislature since Winter Storm Uri in 2021 and to consider any other measures that may be needed.

Activism

Montana Supreme Court upholds youth climate activists' victory

Montana’s Supreme Court on Wednesday upheld a 2023 ruling siding with young climate activists who asserted the state government violated their right to a healthy environment. In August 2023, Montana’s First Judicial District sided with the 16 plaintiffs, who cited a state constitutional provision guaranteeing “a clean and healthful environment” to argue the state violated that right with a law that barred weighing climate impacts during the approval process for energy projects. The state supreme court upheld the finding in a 6-1 ruling Wednesday, writing, “Montana’s right to a clean and healthful environment and environmental life support system includes a stable climate system, which is clearly within the object and true principles of the Framers inclusion of the right to a clean and healthful environment.” Justice Jim Rice, who was appointed by former Gov. Judy Martz (R), was the only dissent. The court rejected an argument from Montana Attorney General Austin Knudsen (R) that state-level efforts will have no effect without action from the rest of the world, comparing that argument to “the old ad populum fallacy: ‘If everyone else jumped off a bridge, would you do it too?’” The plaintiffs’ attorney, Melissa Hornbein of the Western Environmental Law Center, hailed the decision as “a monumental moment” for young people and the state. “This ruling clarifies that the Constitution sets a clear directive for Montana to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions, which are among the highest in the nation on a per capita basis, and to transition to a clean, renewable energy future,” she said. Knudsen’s office criticized the decision in a statement, with Montana Justice Department Press Secretary Chase Scheuer calling the ruling “disappointing, but not surprising.” “The majority of the state Supreme Court justices yet again ruled in favor of their ideologically aligned allies and ignored the fact that Montana has no power to impact the climate,” Scheuer said. Montana Supreme Court justices are directly elected to eight-year terms but midterm replacements are appointed by the governor. Two of Montana’s governor-appointed judges were named by Gov. Steve Bullock (D), while Rice is the only justice appointed by a Republican.

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