Environmental Justice?  It’s just a phrase -  until a mega-project moves into your community. 
 
At our First Tuesday Talk on Feb. 7th, Russell Chisholm, managing director of Protect Our Water, Heritage Rights that is opposing the Mountain Valley Pipeline, will update us on a local  project that has raised questions of Environmental Justice.
 
Then, Carolyn Caywood, program director for the LWV-VA Board, will present the League’s Environmental Justice study. The presentation will describe how projects with negative environmental impacts affect Virginia communities and how state agencies review such projects.  
 
Before the talk, you can learn more about the League’s Environmental Justice Study by reading the LWV-VA report at https://lwv-va.org/lwv-va-2021-studies-program-report/.   As part of the meeting, we will discuss and reach consensus on the study’s recommendations.  These recommendations will have a final review at the June LWV-VA Convention in Williamsburg and form the basis for state League policy.

“The League has a long-standing commitment to environmental quality and a more recent commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion. These intersect in environmental justice,” states the League study. 
 
“The Environmental Justice Study group identified several examples of past actions which have unfairly contributed to negative environmental impacts on communities of color and other marginalized communities.”

We’ll learn about the study’s findings and then discuss study questions that focus on how government procedures could perpetuate unequal burdens on communities that lack the money and political clout to fight large projects.