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M3.3 Environmental Justice

Environmental Justice is much-needed to protect the health and well-being of people of color and lower income communities. The reality is that environmental racism exists, race has been identified as the leading variable in predicting the location of waste facilities by the Commission for Racial Justice in 1987. The most recent high-profile stories have been in Flint, Michigan and Standing Rock, North Dakota. In the case of Standing Rock, the resistance to the construction of an underground oil pipeline was the potential pollution of their water reservoir from pipe bursts. The protest in Standing Rock was to protect their source of life and this was a preventative movement. On the contrary, in Flint, Michigan the water had been contaminated with high levels of toxic chemicals and it was all being concealed by public and health officials.    
In the last thirty years, there has been little progress in policies and enforcement of environmental and civil right laws. Moreover, the current Trump administration is in support of big corporations and undermining environmental protection policies which requires the “fair treatment of all people, regardless of race or color, in the development and enforcement of environmental laws and regulations, and policies”. This is clear in the Affordable Clean Energy Rule which does not enforce the Clean Air Act or Clean Water Act which regulates air and water pollution. In efforts to fight this federal policy, California Attorney General Xavier Becerra has appointed attorneys to fight pollution in the new Bureau of Environmental Justice and they will focus on low-income Californians and people of color who are impacted by environmental pollution.

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