Category: ClimateJustice_MN Hurricanes_MN LOUISIANA_CN

Multiple new reports continue to reveal how historically excluded groups were hurt by systemic inequities exacerbated by Hurricane Ida. Entergy, the utility that supplies electricity to much of southeastern Louisiana, raked in a record $1.4 billion profit in 2020 but has for years resisted calls to prepare its infrastructure for a storm like Ida, an NPR and ProPublica investigation revealed. When that infrastructure failed, plunging all of New Orleans and much of the surrounding area into the dark — thousands are still without power — residents like Wilma Banks were left stranded and literally suffocating without power for critical medical equipment.

The moment NeedLink Nashville opened its doors just after Labor Day weekend, Melissa Besong entered the nonprofit’s office holding her overdue electric bill. Four months after losing her job as a home health aide, she didn’t want to miss out on a chance to keep her power running.

n Jackson, Miss., residents were already boiling their water for a month before their taps ran dry at the end of August. That’s when floodwaters from heavy rain overwhelmed the city’s fragile water treatment system, cutting off water pressure. On Sept. 5 water pressure was restored, but it’s still hard to find a cup of coffee in the city, with Starbucks and other businesses posting signs announcing indefinite closures due to Jackson’s continuing boil-water notice.

He’s known as the father of environmental justice, but more than half a century ago he was just Bob Bullard from Elba, a flyspeck town deep in Alabama that didn’t pave roads, install sewers or put up streetlights in areas where Black families like his lived. His grandmother had a sixth grade education. His father was an electrician and plumber who for years couldn’t get licensed because of his race.

Tim Wiedman caught COVID-19 last December. A few days later, he developed bronchitis. A double whammy, he called it. The illnesses sapped his energy so much that, for six weeks, he could barely get off the living room couch in the two-bedroom apartment he shares with his mom in Mesa.
The illnesses sapped his energy so much that, for six weeks, he could barely get off the living room couch in the two-bedroom apartment he shares with his mom in Mesa.

A water crisis in Jackson, Mississippi, left the city’s 160,000 residents without safe drinking water. The catastrophe spotlights how climate change is actively threatening water supplies and, at its core, is a case of environmental racism…

Valeria Contreras’ phone started ringing on a bustling Saturday last February, when she was driving past almond and pistachio orchards on an errand run. Some callers sounded panicked. Others were just upset. “Where’s the water?” they asked her. “How come you guys don’t notify us? I know I’m past due, but did you guys turn off my water?”

Environmental justice (EJ) advocates — defenders of communities that are most disproportionately impacted by climate change and pollution — are divided on the big climate bill that recently became law. But most can agree on one thing: It improves on what came before…

On any given day at the Prince Hall apartment complex, the breeze might carry soot and stink of burning tar. Black smoke might billow overhead as excess gas is burned at one of the refineries directly across the road. The fumes make Ariel Watson’s head ache until she can barely think. Jeremy Roy, 9, closes his windows against air that “stinks like farts.”

Up to 50 percent of the properties that were flooded in Harris County, Texas, during Hurricane Harvey might have escaped that fate in a world without climate change, scientists reported on Thursday.