How pollution, toxic facilities and climate harms end up concentrated in Black, Brown, Indigenous and low-income communities, and what action you can take this week.
Environmental justice is the principle that no community should carry more pollution and less protection because of its race or income. The movement grew out of Black and Brown neighborhoods that saw landfills, incinerators and chemical plants placed next to their homes. In a 1979 Houston lawsuit, sociologist Robert Bullard found that all five city-owned garbage dumps sat in Black neighborhoods, even though Black residents made up 25 percent of the city (Wikipedia). In 1987, a United Church of Christ study found that race predicted the location of commercial hazardous waste facilities more strongly than household income (United Church of Christ).
The pattern shows up in air, water and heat. A 2019 study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences found that Black Americans breathe 56 percent more fine-particle pollution than their own consumption produces, and Hispanic Americans breathe 63 percent more (PNAS). White Americans breathe about 17 percent less (NPR). A 2017 report by the NAACP and the Clean Air Task Force found that more than 1 million African Americans live within a half mile of natural gas facilities (Clean Air Task Force). In Louisiana, an 85-mile stretch of the Mississippi River known as Cancer Alley holds about 200 fossil fuel and petrochemical operations, and parts of it have the highest cancer risk from industrial air pollution in the country (Human Rights Watch). A 2020 study of 108 cities in the United States found that neighborhoods redlined by the federal government in the 1930s are now about 5 degrees Fahrenheit hotter on average than other neighborhoods (ScienceDaily).
Water failures follow the same lines. Flint, Michigan, a majority-Black city, switched its water source to the Flint River in April 2014, and the share of children with elevated blood lead rose afterward (Natural Resources Defense Council). In Jackson, Mississippi, a majority-Black city, a winter storm in February 2021 left residents without running water for more than two weeks (CBS News). The system collapsed again in 2022, and a federal court put an interim third-party manager in charge (Southern Poverty Law Center). That manager told the court he needed help from Congress to keep the system financially viable into 2026 (WLBT).
Federal environmental justice policy was largely taken apart in 2025. In January 2025, President Trump revoked Executive Order 12898 and the orders that created the Justice40 initiative (Congressional Research Service). The White House removed the Climate and Economic Justice Screening Tool (CEJST) on Jan. 22 (Environmental Data and Governance Initiative), and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) removed its EJScreen mapping tool on Feb. 5 (Environmental Data and Governance Initiative). In March, EPA announced it would close its Office of Environmental Justice and External Civil Rights and the environmental justice divisions in all 10 regional offices (Government Executive). In December 2025, the Justice Department repealed its rules allowing civil rights claims based on disparate impact under Title VI (Federal Register). Volunteer groups have restored public copies of EJScreen and CEJST (Public Environmental Data Partners). Several states, including Illinois, New York, Pennsylvania and Minnesota, added or proposed their own environmental justice rules in 2026 (Beveridge & Diamond).
11 actions — for yourself, your community and the country. Start with one.
Open the archived EJScreen hosted by Public Environmental Data Partners, a volunteer coalition, and search your address. You will see your block group's percentiles for air toxics, diesel pollution, lead paint risk and proximity to hazardous sites. It is an unofficial copy of EPA's last public version, so the data will not update.
Search your ZIP code in EPA's Enforcement and Compliance History Online (ECHO) database to see nearby facilities with air, water or hazardous waste permits and their recent violations. Sign up for ECHO Notify to get a weekly email when a facility near you has a new violation or enforcement action.
Check your state environmental agency's public notice page for permits open for comment, then submit a comment before the deadline. Sample wording: "I live in [neighborhood] and I oppose permit [number] for [facility]. This area already has [number] permitted facilities within [distance]. I ask the agency to study the combined health effects of all nearby sources, hold a public hearing and extend the comment period." The Louisiana Bucket Brigade's free Advocates' Guide includes checklists and sample comments.
Search Regulations.gov for open EPA dockets that affect air, water or civil rights enforcement, and submit a comment. Name your community, cite specific facilities or health data and say what you want the agency to do.
Call your water utility and ask two things: whether your service line is made of lead, and whether it offers free lead testing. If it does not, EPA says certified labs charge about $20-$100, and your state drinking water office keeps a list of them.
Look up your local water system in the Environmental Working Group's Tap Water Database to see which contaminants have been detected and which home filters remove them. Share the results with your tenant association or block club.
Check the HeatRisk forecast on Heat.gov each morning during hot weather. Make a list of neighbors who are older, live alone or lack air conditioning, and agree on who calls or knocks on each door when HeatRisk shows high risk for your area.
RISE St. James is a faith-based group founded by Sharon Lavigne that is fighting the Formosa Plastics complex and other petrochemical projects in St. James Parish, Louisiana. Set up a monthly donation through its website.
The Deep South Center for Environmental Justice, founded by Beverly Wright in 1992, runs air monitoring and free job training for Gulf Coast communities. WE ACT for Environmental Justice in Harlem runs a federal policy office and a free green jobs training institute. Split a gift between them.
Use the Harvard Environmental and Energy Law Program's Environmental Justice Tracker to see which federal protections have changed. Then call your state legislators and ask whether your state requires cumulative impact reviews for new permits. Illinois, New York and Pennsylvania added such requirements in 2026.
Indigenous communities directly protect the majority of the world's biodiversity (World Bank). Indigenous-led land trusts return land to Native stewardship. If you live in the San Francisco Bay Area, pay the Shuumi Land Tax to Sogorea Te' Land Trust, an urban Indigenous women-led trust that returns land to Ohlone people. Elsewhere, look up whose land you live on and ask that nation how to support its land work.
Residents of Houston's Northwood Manor neighborhood sued to block a landfill in Bean v. Southwestern Waste Management. Robert Bullard's research for the case found that all five city-owned garbage dumps were in Black neighborhoods. Read more ›
About 500 people were arrested in Warren County, North Carolina, while trying to stop trucks carrying soil contaminated with polychlorinated biphenyls to a landfill in a majority-Black county. It was the first time opponents of a hazardous waste site were jailed for civil disobedience. Read more ›
The United Church of Christ Commission for Racial Justice published "Toxic Wastes and Race in the United States." It found race was the strongest predictor of where commercial hazardous waste facilities were located. Read more ›
The First National People of Color Environmental Leadership Summit opened in Washington. Over four days, delegates adopted the 17 Principles of Environmental Justice. Read more ›
President Bill Clinton signed Executive Order 12898, which directed federal agencies to identify and address disproportionate environmental harms to minority and low-income populations. Read more ›
Flint, Michigan, switched its drinking water from Detroit's system to the Flint River. A Legionnaires' disease outbreak linked to the crisis killed 12 people between 2014 and 2015. Read more ›
Pediatrician Mona Hanna-Attisha reported that the share of Flint children with elevated blood lead levels had risen from 2.1 percent to 4 percent after the water switch. Read more ›
Members of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe began protesting the Dakota Access Pipeline, which crosses under the Missouri River near the reservation and threatens its water and burial grounds. Thousands joined them before National Guard and police evicted the last protesters on Feb. 23, 2017. The pipeline began carrying oil in May 2017. Read more ›
Jackson, Mississippi's water system failed after flooding. A federal court order placed the system under an interim third-party manager. Read more ›
President Trump signed Executive Orders 14148 and 14173. They revoked the Justice40 order (14008), Executive Order 14096 on environmental justice and Executive Order 12898. Read more ›
EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin announced the closure of the Office of Environmental Justice and External Civil Rights and the environmental justice divisions in all 10 EPA regions. In April, EPA said about 280 of the office's staff would be terminated. Read more ›
The Justice Department published a final rule removing disparate-impact provisions from its Title VI civil rights regulations. Read more ›
Federal judge Richard Gergel ruled that EPA's termination of the $2.8 billion Environmental and Climate Justice Block Grant Program was unlawful, but he did not order the program restarted. Read more ›
The first major book on environmental racism, based on case studies of Black communities in the South fighting landfills and industrial plants. The third edition was published in 2000.
Taylor traces how zoning, segregation and eminent domain placed hazardous sites in poor neighborhoods and communities of color, with case studies from St. Louis to Baltimore.
Washington documents how lead, industrial pollution and poor sanitation harm the brain development of children in communities of color.
Flowers describes families in Lowndes County, Alabama, living without working sewage systems and her work to document the problem nationwide.
The Flint pediatrician recounts how she used her patients' blood test data to prove the city's children were being exposed to lead.
Journalist Anna Clark reconstructs the decisions that led to Flint's water crisis and the residents who forced officials to act.
Gilio-Whitaker traces how Native nations have fought for their land and water, from colonization through the 2016 protests against the Dakota Access Pipeline at Standing Rock.
From our Banned Books Book Club list: Environmental Justice Reads
A picture book about an Ojibwe girl who rallies her community against an oil pipeline that threatens its water. Lindstrom wrote it in response to the 2016 Standing Rock protests, and it won the 2021 Caldecott Medal.
From our Banned Books Book Club list: Children's Books for Earth Day
Shop the Banned Books Book Club. Every book above links to our Banned Books Book Club shop on Bookshop.org, which supports independent bookstores. Related lists:
A 366-page guide, written for non-lawyers, to air permits, Clean Water Act permits and National Environmental Policy Act reviews. It includes chapter checklists and sample comments and petitions.
Skills webinars for scientists and technical experts on writing public comments, testifying and supporting community groups. Membership is free for those who meet eligibility requirements.
Hands-on solar installation training for adults ages 18-24 that prepares graduates for the North American Board of Certified Energy Practitioners photovoltaic exam. The center also runs environmental remediation and Occupational Safety and Health Administration safety training in New Orleans, Houston, Detroit and Pensacola, Florida.
A summer program for Northern Manhattan youth and adult members that covers organizing, clean air, climate justice and healthy homes. Participants finish by presenting their own campaign projects.
Environmental services job training for unemployed and underemployed Houston residents.
A sociologist often called the father of environmental justice. He wrote Dumping in Dixie (1990) and founded the Bullard Center for Environmental and Climate Justice at Texas Southern University.
As executive director of the United Church of Christ Commission for Racial Justice, he took part in the 1982 Warren County protests and led the 1987 Toxic Wastes and Race study. The term "environmental racism" is often attributed to him.
She founded People for Community Recovery in 1979 in Chicago's Altgeld Gardens, which she called the "Toxic Doughnut" because of the pollution sources around it. She took part in the 1991 summit that wrote the Principles of Environmental Justice.
A researcher who grew up in the Cancer Alley region and founded the Deep South Center for Environmental Justice in 1992. Her research documents racial gaps in pollution along the lower Mississippi River.
She co-founded WE ACT for Environmental Justice in Harlem in 1988 after a protest against a sewage treatment plant. She later chaired New York's Environmental Justice Advisory Board.
A retired special education teacher from St. James Parish, Louisiana, who founded RISE St. James to fight petrochemical expansion. She won the Goldman Environmental Prize in 2021.
An advocate who exposed failing sewage systems and hookworm in Lowndes County, Alabama. She received a MacArthur Fellowship in 2020 and founded the Center for Rural Enterprise and Environmental Justice.
A Flint pediatrician whose 2015 analysis of children's blood lead levels forced officials to acknowledge the water crisis. In 2024 she launched Rx Kids, a cash program for Flint mothers and infants.
Covers fenceline communities, the 1982 Warren County protests and the NAACP and Clean Air Task Force findings on oil and gas pollution near Black neighborhoods.
Explains how redlining left communities of color in urban heat islands and how energy costs and utility shutoffs raise the risk of extreme heat.
Reports on the February 2021 water outage in Jackson, Mississippi, and the decades of deferred maintenance behind it.
Shares ARD's survey of more than 1,000 readers under 18 on climate education and looks at fossil fuel misinformation and greenwashing.
WE ACT calls it New York City's first community-based environmental justice podcast. Episodes cover extreme heat, air quality, toxic chemicals in personal care products and housing.
This episode covers the Justice40 initiative, which was revoked in January 2025. The same season includes "The Case of the Killer Heat."
An eight-part 2020 documentary series on Hurricane Katrina and how government agencies, police and the news media made the disaster worse for Black New Orleanians.
A climate justice podcast that features women, especially Black, Brown and Indigenous women, leading climate work around the world.
Income plays a role, but the research consistently finds race is the stronger factor. The 1987 Toxic Wastes and Race study found race predicted the location of hazardous waste facilities better than household income did (United Church of Christ). Its 2007 follow-up found the same (United Church of Christ).
The White House took CEJST offline on Jan. 22, 2025 (Environmental Data and Governance Initiative), and EPA removed EJScreen on Feb. 5, 2025 (Environmental Data and Governance Initiative). Public Environmental Data Partners, a coalition that includes the Environmental Data and Governance Initiative, restored unofficial copies at screening-tools.com (Public Environmental Data Partners). The copies show the last federal data release and will not be updated by EPA.
Title VI of the Civil Rights Act still bans intentional discrimination by agencies that receive federal money. The Justice Department repealed its disparate-impact rules in December 2025 (Federal Register), and in August 2026 EPA sent the White House a final rule to remove its own (K&L Gates). Federal pollution laws like the Clean Air Act still apply, and you can still comment on permits under them.
Public comments become part of the official permit record. Lawyers and community groups rely on that record when they appeal a permit in court, as residents did in the long legal fight over the Formosa Plastics complex in St. James Parish (Earthjustice).
A 2020 study of 108 US cities found that formerly redlined neighborhoods are hotter than other neighborhoods in 94 percent of those cities, by about 5 degrees Fahrenheit on average. In Portland, Oregon; Denver and Minneapolis, the gap reached as much as 12.6 degrees Fahrenheit (ScienceDaily).
EPA says testing is the only way to know whether your water has harmful levels of lead (EPA). Ask your utility whether your service line is lead and whether it offers free testing, and read its annual water quality report.
Several states added their own rules in 2026. Illinois now adds an environmental justice review to air permits in designated areas, New York requires review of disproportionate burdens under its environmental review law and Minnesota proposed cumulative impact rules for air permits (Beveridge & Diamond).
Every claim in this guide is cited inline. Here are all 33 sources in one place.
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