Environmental Justice efforts in the regional offices of the Environmental Protection Agency in the United States have stopped, and the employees were placed on an administrative leave, for each advertisement From the Environmental Protection Agency official Lee Zeladen last month. Former Environmental Protection Agency employees participating in environmental justice throughout the country, rural communities will suffer as a result.
Before closing it in early March, the Environmental Justice arm at the Environmental Protection Agency aims to ensure that societies are treated fairly and receive their due protection under the clean air law and clean water law. “This work had great effects on rural places where there are pollution concerns in rural areas throughout the country.
“The Environmental Protection Agency was focusing heavily on making sure that it was not only on the organizational side, but also on the investment side, we were paying resources to rural societies,” said Hoover.
According to Hoover, most of the challenges faced by the United States are not new. He said that the employees, on a leave now, who worked in regional environmental justice offices at the Environmental Protection Agency were deeply aware of issues that affect societies in their areas – issues that could last for decades. Hoover said it was concerned about the recent changes on the agency under the Trump administration, which also includes a series of Drilling procedures And proposal Budget reduction 65 percent.
Hoover said: “I am confident that the great people of the Environmental Protection Agency who are still trying to fill these gaps, but the fact is that this administration is pushing to reduce the budget of the Environmental Protection Agency, and pushes employees to leave, and this will restrict the ability of the Environmental Protection Agency to help rural societies to face the most important challenges of their pollution.”
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One of the rural societies that faced years of environmental challenges is the place where Sherry White Williamson lives in the rural Sampson County, North Carolina. In 2021, the province’s burials He ranked second In a top list Methane Paths in the United States, the boycott is also the second largest HOGS producer in the country, and in 2022, It represents nearly three percent From all of us sales of pigs.
Swine industry It is known for its pollution From drilling open waste storage from toxic chemicals to nearby neighborhoods. For years, Fears About pigs industry in North Carolina, focused on the non -proportional damage caused by their pollution to low -income societies and color societies because pig farms often determine their adjacent operations of such societies in rural provinces.
White-Williamson is also an old warrior at the Environmental Protection Agency. On the environmental justice initiatives of the Washington Agency, DC, a office has worked for more than a decade before returning to southeast of North Carolina. She is now the executive director of Environmental Justice Society NetworkOr EJCAN, which was founded in Sampson County in 2020 to enable its neighbors amid environmental challenges such as those that the pig farms and their place.
In her early work with EJCAN, White-Williamson said she noticed that talks on environmental justice often focus on urban areas. Since then, White-Williamson said it has focused on educating the audience on the form of environmental justice in rural societies.
White Williamson said: “Many of our problems are related to what cities do not want or get rid of in our societies,” said White Williamson. “Pollution, insecticides, and the rest of the food processing are all ended or remains here while all the beautiful, clean and modified product ends in a local urban grocery store somewhere.”
Another wrong idea about environmental justice, according to Bilameson White Williamson, is that it exists exclusively to serve color societies. During her time at the Environmental Protection Agency, White Williamson said it had spent time in societies with all types of racist population while working on environmental justice initiatives.
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White Williamson said: “I spent a lot of time in places like West Virginia and Kentucky, and places where the residents do not necessarily have colors, but they are places with income income or low -income people where people cannot reach power,” said White Williamson.
When pollution affects local health in societies without reaching “power tools”, regional environmental justice offices of the Environmental Protection Agency – a resource – and a form of accountability. Dr. Margot Brown, the first vice president of justice and fairness in the Environmental Defense Fund, said that without these offices, it will be difficult for rural communities to obtain the services they need to address health concerns.
“They are dismantling the ecosystem for health protection for rural Americans, and through their dismantling, they will make them more vulnerable to future risks,” Brown said about the Trump administration decisions at the Environmental Protection Agency. “It will weaken health and luxury for future generations.”
Brown worked at the Environmental Protection Agency for nearly 10 years during the era of President Obama and then during the era of President Trump during his first administration. At that time, there is the task of the deputy director of the Children’s Health Protection Office. She, with Hoover and Bilameson White, said that community members will likely need to resort to state governments or environmental quality departments in the absence of regional environmental justice offices.
But White-Williamson noticed that state governments, too, are receiving federal funding. Frozen funds via federal agencies and discounts for healthcare programs, Including medicaidIt can end up the double challenges of rural societies that try to reduce environmental health effects.
White Williamson said: “The societies that most of them need help and guidelines will find themselves again at the short end of the stick and end up until those that suffer more than anyone else,” said White Williamson.
Hoover described it as a “single punch” for rural societies. On the one hand, he said, rural places, access to healthcare facilities due to budget discounts.
“On the other hand, they are also more ill because the government no longer prevents pollutants from polluting the air and their water.”