Environmental Justice Community Representative speaking at First White House Environmental Justice Forum

Please find below a fascinating request from the U.S. ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY (EPA) OFFICE OF AIR AND RADIATION (OAR) for public comment on a CONCEPT PAPER FOR AN ENVIRONMENTAL JUSTICE COMMUNITY LEARNING CENTER. The OAR is taking the lead in developing a learning center or institute for environmental justice community members to increase community awareness and understanding of environmental risks stemming from pollution and related environmental justice concerns. This effort will build communities’ capacity to participate in the protection of their air, water, and land resources. This represents Expanding the Conversation on Environmentalism and Working for Environmental Justice that EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson has made one of EPA’s key priorities under her leadership.

Regarding the challenge being addressed... from Administrator Jackson, in releasing this concept paper for public input:

Many minority, low-income, and indigenous people have been historically underrepresented in environmental decision making, while at times experiencing higher levels of environmental pollution and other social and economic burdens that result in poorer health outcomes. Many members of these communities have not been able to participate effectively in environmental decision making in part because they lack the background and information they need for meaningful participation. As a result, EPA does not always benefit from important community input.

It is my strong belief Administrator Jackson's statement perfectly describes Northeast Ohio - these are the words that should have been said by Cleveland's Mayor Jackson, as citizen and community leader... for decades! These are the words citizens of Northeast Ohio must hear from our leaders for the future.

Administrator Lisa P. Jackson, Opening Statement Before the House Energy and Commerce Committee’s Subcommittee on Energy and Power

As prepared for delivery – Mr. Chairman and members of the Committee, thank you for inviting me to testify about Chairman Upton’s draft bill to eliminate portions of the Clean Air Act, the landmark law that all American children and adults rely on to protect them from harmful air pollution.

The bill appears to be part of a broader effort in this Congress to delay, weaken, or eliminate Clean Air Act protections of the American public. I respectfully ask the members of this Committee to keep in mind that EPA’s implementation of the Clean Air Act saves millions of American children and adults from the debilitating and expensive illnesses that occur when smokestacks and tailpipes release unrestricted amounts of harmful pollution into the air we breathe.

Last year alone, EPA’s implementation of the Clean Air Act saved more than 160,000 American lives; avoided more than 100,000 hospital visits; prevented millions of cases of respiratory illness, including bronchitis and asthma; enhanced American productivity by preventing millions of lost workdays; and kept American kids healthy and in school.

EPA’s implementation of the Act also has contributed to dynamic growth in the U.S. environmental technologies industry and its workforce.  In 2008, that industry generated nearly 300 billion dollars in revenues and 44 billion dollars in exports.

As we learn that Cleveland City Council, Lutheran Metropolitan Ministries and the Cleveland Police Department have dedicated their extensive resources to the persecution of Father Henry and shutting down St. Hermans home for the most disadvantaged Americans on Earth... we should assess their past performance addressing crime in the most impoverished, lead poisoned, broken-down, polluted city in America... besides ignoring nearly a dozen rapes and murderers by a friend of Mayor Jackosn's family, for years... today the Plain Dealer reports "Jurors so upset about case brought against 19-year-old that they will give the defendant their jury pay".

Highlights:

Jurors are so convinced that a Cleveland teen should not have been charged with assaulting another teen that they've gone beyond acquitting him. A few are writing angry letters to police and intend to donate their jury pay to him.

Jurors said the case against McCloud on charges of kidnapping and felonious assault quickly evaporated in the courtroom of Cuyahoga County Common Pleas Judge Michael Astrab.

Most of the jury could not be reached for comment, but three members complained of a "sheer lack of evidence."

"He seemed like a decent kid who was falsely accused," Nagin said.

Boe said she will mail letters today to Cleveland Police Chief Michael McGrath and Fourth District Commander Deon McCaulley about the lack of a thorough investigation. Other jurors said they also will write to the police.

Char Richtmyer, a Grand Lake St. Marys resident for 16 years, pulls a dead fish off the beach to toss it back in the water.
For the second year in a row, the lake has been plagued by a new and potentially toxic form of algae that is killing fish,
creating foul odors and driving away tourists at the height of the summer season. Staff photo by Jim Witmer

Ohio was in the news for incompetent environmental planning, last week, in The Daily Impact - Chronicling the Crash of the Industrial Age - "Ohio Lake “Dying”: Governor Applies Lipstick" - what does this say about our future? Thank God for outside media coverage of Ohio... the truth is sometimes told...

The government of the great state of Ohio demonstrated last week, with laser-like precision, exactly why we do not have a chance of avoiding the multiple catastrophes bearing down on our supplies of food, energy and water. In unveiling what was universally described as a “plan” to deal with one of the state’s biggest pollution problems, the governor and his fellow politicians also demonstrated the new first principle of government: it is far, far better to appear to be doing something than to actually do something.

A press release I received today from the Environmental Protection Agency reports: "Former city of Detroit Health Department lead inspector Donald Patterson was sentenced today to three years and 10 months in prison and 24 months of supervised release on wire fraud charges stemming from an U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) investigation. In July 2010, Patterson pleaded guilty and admitted he accepted cash to provide a clean bill of health to homes in which he had either done no inspection or provided fraudulent lead removal training". Which makes me wonder how much time Cleveland "Environmental Leaders", CDC directors, building inspectors, the Mayor, and Councilpeople should spend in jail for the lead poisoning of 1,000s of children in Cleveland, with contempt.

Perhaps Ohio does still need the death penalty?!?!

WASHINGTON — Former city of Detroit Health Department lead inspector Donald Patterson was sentenced today to three years and 10 months in prison and 24 months of supervised release on wire fraud charges stemming from an U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) investigation. In July 2010, Patterson pleaded guilty and admitted he accepted cash to provide a clean bill of health to homes in which he had either done no inspection or provided fraudulent lead removal training. Lead is a serious public health issue causing a range of health effects from behavioral problems and learning disabilities, to seizures and death. Children six years old and under are most at risk.

On October 27, 2010, I published on realNEO Understanding The Cannabis Divide, where I wrote "I've been exploring the growing cannabis divide in America, which increasingly offers affluent whites the right to legally prosper and use marijuana while poor blacks go to jail for minor marijuana charges. I've been traveling out west, meeting with associates and exploring economic development opportunities in specific regions that offer synergistic benefits to stakeholders in NEO, interested to participate in the cannabis economy now, legally. To offer Ohio businesses legal access into the cannabis economy, I am working with folks in the Denver/Boulder area to put in place what we call Grohio - a cooperative facilities-based cannabis think tank, advocacy organization, political action committee, venture capital fund, research and development institute and enterprise incubator, designed to help drive innovation at the bleeding edge of cannabis commerce world-wide, and allow Ohio entrepreneurs to fully participate in the cannabis economy locally in Colorado."

The first market outcome of Grohio Colorado is development of a first-on-Earth line of Cleveland-soul sauces infused with cannabis concentrate, for medical marijuana patients in Colorado (and eventually worldwide), based on original and world-renowned sauce recipes of Cleveland's Williams family, of the historic Hot Sauce Williams Bar-B-Q restaurants... loved in real NEO and worldwide for around 50-years... soon to be available as Pot Sauce Williams sauces infused with MMJ, where legal.

The Pot Sauce Williams sauces are the result of a collaboration between the Grohio team in Cleveland and Denver, working with cannabis concentrates experts at OrganaLabs, of Colorado, and Hot Sauce Williams Special Projects Manager Greg Williams, of Ohio... and taste tests by qualified medical marijuana consumers are all raves!

The EPA Environmental Justice grants announced below would fit nicely with lead poisoning eradication needs and objectives in Northeast Ohio, as funded by HUD. The Federal Government wants to attack environmental injustice at the core, through collaboration among Federal agencies, like HUD and EPA, with environmental justice organizations in local communities, like in the overly-lead-burdened Cleveland, so proposals to build EPA environmental justice programming to leverage impact of HUD Lead Eradication funding would make sense and likely appeal to grant review committees. Unfortunately, a community must recognize it is victim of ENVIRONMENTAL INJUSTICE to apply for this grant money, and Cleveland has not yet made that recognition. We're the Green City by the Blue Lake.

Let's see if any local Environmental Justice organizations (are there any?) apply for and receive funding from this Federal EPA program for environmental justice, developing programs addressing lead poisoning here, in leverage of the $4.5 million just provided by HUD for lead poisoning eradication, as Obama has determined is a priority here. Let's see if anyone admits we have any environmental injustice here and applies at all.

From the EPA:

Environmental Justice Mailing List

EPA Seeks Applicants for $1.2 Million in Environmental Justice Grants to Address Local Health and Environmental Issues

WASHINGTON – The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is accepting grant applications for $1.2 million in funding to support projects designed to research, educate, empower and enable communities to understand and address local health and environmental issues. Eligible applicants from non-profit, faith-based and tribal organizations working in the community of the proposed project are encouraged to apply.

I'm pleased to see the Cleveland Plain Dealer giving coverage to HUD Deputy Secretary Ron Sims presenting a $4.5 million Federal Grant to Cuyahoga County to Protect Citizens from Lead Poisoning... on Cleveland.com, at least. Here is their advance story... Cuyahoga County gets $4.5 million to curb lead in homes. Especially insightful, from this coverage: "HUD Deputy Secretary Ron Sims is traveling to Cleveland on Friday not only to present the grant to Cuyahoga County Executive Ed FitzGerald but also to formally announce the nearly $127 million HUD will spend for the communities nationwide with the highest rates of lead poisoning. Cuyahoga County and the city of Cincinnati received the largest of six grants awarded in Ohio. The city of Lorain is getting $2.1 million."

Most alarming, in coverage on Cleveland.com, is the feedback of trolls and readers registered there. As the parent of lead poisoned children, I now know what it is like to be a rape victim blamed for being raped. I have corrected some of the misinformation of truly despicable posters there - at least until Cleveland.com for some reason FROZE MY ACCOUNT.

I will say, for any poor behavior on realNEO - at the user and Admin level - it does not begin to compare with the wretchedness of life on Cleveland.com. I've posted below the comments up until I was blocked access, to protect them and save me the effort of rewriting my thoughts for you... I guess they own my voice and words on Cleveland.com now, and they don't want the world to know the truth about lead poisoning in their fair city.

And that is why there is such serious lead poisoning in their fair city...

 jmsullivan  January 27, 2011 at 11:06PM

I don't care about being an ignoramus about lead paint. I will venture to guess that over 90% of us were raised in homes built prior to 1978 which means they had lead based paint in them. My mom did not allow me to chew on the window sills, the house was meticiulously maintained and I have never known one person, not one, have any problems with lead poisoning. This is about common sense. For those that think we are ignorant, have you paid $13,000 on your personal dwelling to eliminate lead paint. If not, then why are you expecting us to spend our money on something that we thing is just plain STUPID and a WASTE

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: January 27, 2010
CONTACT: Tom Angell (202) 557-4979 or media//at//leap//dot//cc

In YouTube's "Ask Obama" Contest, Drug-Legalizing Cop Comes in First Place

Obama Previously Laughed Off Marijuana Questions, But Can He Ignore a Cop?

WASHINGTON, DC --  A video question about legalizing drugs from a former deputy sheriff has come in first place in YouTube's "Your Interview with the President" competition, where users submitted and voted on questions to be posed to President Barack Obama.

Obama is scheduled to answer the top-voted questions today, Thursday, Jan. 27, at 2:30 PM EST in an interview that will be streamed live online at http://www.youtube.com/askobama

Google Analytics of weekly realNEO visits and pageviews from December 01, 2008 to January 26, 2011

As I've reported over the past year, while sharing realNEO site statistics with members - most recently, in November, marking our 7th year - realNEO traffic demonstrates very consistent month-to-month and year-to-year growth for visitors, visits and pages viewed. Where there are dips, like each Christmas holiday season, there is year-to-year growth - we've always had strong, consistent, steady performance as illustrated above, since December 2008 (the first month we had reliable Google analytics).

The Greater Cleveland Health Homes Advisory Council (formerly the Greater Cleveland Lead Advisory Council) has announced a press conference, January 28, 2011, at 1:30 PM, at Cleveland State University Levin College Atrium, where HUD Deputy Secretary Ron Sims will present a $4.5 million federal HUD grant to Cuyahoga County to "conduct a wide range of activities intended to protect children and families from potentially dangerous lead-based paint and other home health and safety hazards". The press release states the "grant funding will clean up lead and other health hazards in hundreds of homes, train workers in lead safety methods, and increase public awareness about childhood lead poisoning.  Lead is a known toxin that can impair children’s development and have effects lasting into adulthood."

The obvious objective of this press conference is to encourage the MAINSTREAM MEDIA OF NORTHEAST OHIO to provide better information about lead poisoning prevention to the people of Northeast Ohio, to protect public health and improve our community. Encourage your favorite Media representatives (and politicians) to attend and serve the region better.

Also expected to attend will be Congresswoman Marcia Fudge,  Congressman Dennis Kucinich, and various other elected and appointed officials.

Good Morning Real NEO - something to think about over a good meal... "Steep Oil Prices and Food Shortages Will Likely Spark Deadly Riots This Year."

That's from TomDispatch - "A Regular Antidote To The Mainstream Media"... a project of The National Institute... "Dedicated to Free and Independent Press".

Perhaps the mainstream media has covered this... "we’ve entered the age of resource revolts and there’s no turning back"... "From now on, rising prices, powerful storms, severe droughts and floods, and other unexpected events are likely to play havoc with the fabric of global society, producing chaos and political unrest. Start with a simple fact: the prices of basic food staples are already approaching or exceeding their 2008 peaks, that year when deadly riots erupted in dozens of countries around the world."

Ready for more war... we all need to change many things about how we live just to reduce some of the horror of this, in years to come. For this year, full horror show:

Joe Romm reports extremely bad climate news on Climate Progress. Sit down, take a breath (drink... hit...), and read on.... baby, it ain't cold outside! Canada sees staggering mildness as planet’s high-pressure record is “obliterated” - Climate Progress - January 23, 2011

Surface temperature anomalies for the period 17 December 2010 to 15 January 2011 show impressive warmth across the Canadian Arctic….

The largest anomalies here exceed 21°C (37.8°F) above average, which are very large values to be sustained for an entire month.

The disinformers and many in the media love to focus on where it is cold in the winter.  It has been cool where many people live.  Brr!

Unfortunately for homo sapiens, it’s been staggeringly warm where the ice is.  I’ll do a post on Greenland shortly, but the NSF-sponsored researchers at UCAR/NCAR  have posted some staggering data on just how warm it has been in northern Canada:

Nicole Foss will be speaking on A Century of Challenges: Building Local Resilience in an Era of Economic Turmoil & Resource Depletion.  She writes at www.TheAutomaticEarth.blogspot.com under the pseudonym Stoneleigh.  The talk will be held at First Church in Oberlin,106 N.

The Climate Zombie Caucus Of The 112th Congress

by Brad Johnson, ThinkProgress Wonk Room Climate Editor

Updated 11/23 with elections of Ann Buerkle and Blake Fahrenthold.

One year ago, the right-wing media machine smeared climate scientists with the “Climategate” conspiracy theory, even as the climate itself continued to get hotter and more destructive. Although the National Academies of Science says “the U.S. should act now to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and develop a national strategy to adapt to the inevitable impacts of climate change,” the Republican Party is now dominated by fossil-funded ideologues who repeat zombie myths about global warming. An exclusive survey by the Wonk Room, with research support by Daily Kos blogger RL Miller, has identified the members of Congress from nearly every state in the union that are on record challenging the scientific consensus.

On the January 27, 2011 YouTube Ask The President moderated broadcast, Obama was asked who was his favorite person in math and science. Obama said one of the things he loves about being President is "having access to math and science" and the White House is committed to using technology well. "Serious brainpower out there."

He highlighted his PCAST team and its Director Eric Lander - says he helps make complex science understandable. From MIT - "President-elect Barack Obama on Friday named Eric Lander, the founding director of the Broad Institute, a co-chair of the President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST), a group that assists the president in making science and technology policy decisions".

BP Energy Outlook 2030 - London, January 2011

Welcome to BP’s Energy Outlook 2030.

The outlook for global energy is not just a matter for energy companies: it’s an issue for all of us. Around the world, there is a lively and important conversation taking place on the choices that face us all – as consumers, producers, investors and policy-makers. By sharing this Energy Outlook, we hope to contribute to that discussion.

Our starting point in contributing to this debate has been BP’s work on the Statistical Review of World Energy, which this year celebrates its 60th anniversary. The Statistical Review, which documents trends in the production and use of energy, started out as an internal BP document and was made public for the first time in 1956.

In a similar way, the Energy Outlook, which contains our projections of future energy trends, has been used only internally so far. However, we feel it is part of our responsibility as a company to make important information and analysis available for public debate – all the more so if the issue at hand is as vital to all of us as is energy, its relation to economic development on one side, and to climate change on the other.

In this outlook we seek to identify long term energy trends, and then add our views on the evolution of the world economy, of policy, and technology, to develop a projection for world energy markets to 2030. It is a projection, not a proposition, and this is an important distinction.

You will see, for example, that our outlook expects global CO2 emissions to continue  rising, along with import dependence in many key consuming regions. This does not mean BP downplays the importance of climate change or the role of energy security in international relations. Rather, it reflects a ‘to the best of our knowledge’ assessment of the world’s likely path from today’s vantage point. To me personally, it is a wake-up call, not something any of us would like to see happening.

Protocol for use of EJSEAT in circumstances in which it will have
an impact on current and future allocation of resources

Nationally Consistent Environmental Justice Screening Approaches - text included below, without Appendices - download full 5 MB /PDF Report here

A Report of Advice and Recommendations of the National Environmental Justice Advisory Council - A Federal Advisory Committee to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency - MAY 2010

The day after Martin Luther King Jr. Day, 2011, AlterNet highlights the reality that the mainstream media in America is incompetent in its duty to inform the world about affairs in America, if it is not worse and directed by media and government leadership to deceive the people of the world into believing America is right and good, when we are not. As a resident of Northeast Ohio, subjected to the incompetency and/or deception of our regional mainstream media in not-covering and/or covering-up real news of Ohio and our region (e.g. covering up for local political corruption, environmental crimes, and theft of public funds and opportunity from the poor for the rich), the harm caused my family is realized in lead poisoned children and the waste of family resources and loyalty to a place and leadership that are undeserving, if not evil.

Here is how things are working out in the rest of America, for the rest of the world, in the era of the most ineffective, corrupt and despicable "free press" imaginable:

85-Year-Old-Woman Arrested for Bank Protest -- 6 Revolts the Tea Party-Obsessed Corporate Media Overlooked

Some of the most undercovered stories of 2010 were actions taken by ordinary people standing up for a more just and equitable society.

Offshore Development is the happening thing being witnessed. The trend has fast emerged and is growing at an even faster pace. But what is it that is making this shift so popular?

I strongly recommend subscribing to Greenversations - the Official Blog of the EPA - it is written by EPA staff with their personal observations and perspectives about the environmental world around them. The latest posting is about Environmental Justice and schools, which should interest all parents of school children, and school children.

I would be interested to see or help develop an environmental justice rating system for Northeast Ohio schools - that could be used to improve academic performance and the health and well being of students and staff region-wide. Does anything like that exist today, here? How is the environmental justice in Cleveland Schools?

Grace, how is the environmental justice in the schools down in Austin?

Principles of Environmental Justice

(Printable PDF version)

Delegates to the First National People of Color Environmental Leadership Summit held on October 24-27, 1991, in Washington DC, drafted and adopted 17 principles of Environmental Justice. Since then, The Principles have served as a defining document for the growing grassroots movement for environmental justice.

PREAMBLE

WE, THE PEOPLE OF COLOR, gathered together at this multinational People of Color Environmental Leadership Summit, to begin to build a national and international movement of all peoples of color to fight the destruction and taking of our lands and communities, do hereby re-establish our spiritual interdependence to the sacredness of our Mother Earth; to respect and celebrate each of our cultures, languages and beliefs about the natural world and our roles in healing ourselves; to ensure environmental justice; to promote economic alternatives which would contribute to the development of environmentally safe livelihoods; and, to secure our political, economic and cultural liberation that has been denied for over 500 years of colonization and oppression, resulting in the poisoning of our communities and land and the genocide of our peoples, do affirm and adopt these Principles of Environmental Justice:

1) Environmental Justice affirms the sacredness of Mother Earth, ecological unity and the interdependence of all species, and the right to be free from ecological destruction.

Environmental Justice leader/victim Barbara Miller speaking to panel at First White House Forum on Environmental Justice

In what I consider the most important positive environmental development in America in the 21st Century, on December 15, 2010, EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson and White House Council on Environmental Quality Chair Nancy Sutley convened the First White House Environmental Justice Forum, where leadership of the recently-reconvened Federal Interagency Working Group on Environmental Justice (EJ IWG) met with over 100 environmental justice leaders (typically long-suffering EJ victims), in the South Court Auditorium of the Eisenhower Executive Office Building, at the White House complex, to develop new federal interagency strategies and interactions with citizens to right current EJ wrongs in America, in anticipation of worse to come as results of climate change.

This Forum was the public interface, and culmination of a year of expansive activity in the White House, throughout the Obama Administration, and nationwide, to advance EPA Administrator Lisa P. Jackson’s priority to “expand the conversation on environmentalism and work for environmental justice” in America, in clear recognition of harm caused disadvantaged citizens by current Environmental Injustice (aka Environmental Racism... Environmental Genocide... from the mouths of victims), and showing clear US government concern over "Climate Gaps" (e.g. in Heat Islands), and over those worsening, causing more environmental injustices, to be exacerbated by future Climate Change and resulting Climate Injustices that will harm life on Earth, in this age of human-caused global warming.