Affiliates

With warmth and deep appreciation, we thank Richard Moore for his twelve years as National Co-Coordinator of the Environmental Justice Health Alliance for Chemical Policy Reform (EJHA). Richard will be stepping down from this role today, while continuing to serve as Co-Coordinator of Los Jardines Institute in Albuquerque, New Mexico, an affiliate member of EJHA. During his time as National Co-Coordinator, Richard helped secure historic commitments from the White House and federal agencies to advance environmental justice, the result of decades of dedicated bottom-up organizing rooted in solidarity and respect.

President Biden on Friday announced the creation of a White House Office of Environmental Justice, one of several actions to address the unequal burden that people of color carry from environmental hazards.“Every federal agency must take into account environmental and health impacts on communities and work to prevent those negative impacts,” Mr. Biden told a crowd of applauding activists gathered at a Rose Garden ceremony. “Environmental justice will be the mission of the entire government.” Richard Moore, a co-coordinator of the Los Jardines Institute in Albuquerque, N.M., and a co-chairman of the White House Environmental Justice Advisory Council, said the executive order was “answering a decades-long call to put environmental justice at the heart of federal policy.”

Wracked by some of the highest poverty rates in Albuquerque, New Mexico, the predominantly Chicano community of Mountain View, seven miles south of downtown, may seem an unlikely setting for a national wildlife refuge. The 11-square-mile area some 6,000 people call home also contains the state’s largest sewage treatment facility, several chemical manufacturing, asphalt, and concrete plants, sprawling auto salvage lots, bulk-fuel terminals, two Superfund sites and more than 40 other industrial sites regulated by the EPA. Not surprisingly, there are high levels of air pollution and groundwater contamination here.But thanks to decades of grassroots efforts, it is now also home to the first-ever national wildlife refuge being built, literally, from the ground up and in collaboration with the community it serves.

Environmental justice advocates generally embraced the tool’s release, though they expressed the broad expectation that the administration needs to refine the mapping effort in future iterations.“There is more work to do, but this is a positive step in the administration’s work to advance environmental justice for all,” said Richard Moore, co-coordinator of the Los Jardines Institute in Albuquerque, N.M., and a co-chair of the White House Environmental Justice Advisory Council. The CEQ screening tool—which draws from other environmental equity mapping efforts long in use by the EPA and states such as California, Michigan, Maryland, and New Mexico—are key to President Joe Biden’s Justice40 effort to steer 40% of the benefits of climate, clean energy, affordable housing, and other investments to disadvantaged communities.

At the panel discussion marking the 30th anniversary of the First National People of Color Environmental Justice Leadership Summit, Moore recalled being moved at the time because he was surrounded by people of color and all of them were working to address environmental issues in their communities just like he was in Albuquerque’s South Valley.

[Charlotte Observer]