Current and Ongoing Issues - Environmental Justice
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Environmental Justice
In urban areas the problem is that historically poluuting industries and waste disposal facilities were located in older parts of the city which now tend to be occupied primarily by the poor and minorities. These patterns have been exacerbated by a pattern of discrimination in the location of new facilities in those same areas. In rural areas communities are often faced with having to choose between having polluting industries such as pulp mills or no jobs at all. The answer to this dilemma is the promotion of sustainable evonomic devlopment practices that produce jobs and preserve the environment.
To learn more about environmentla issues in Appalachia check out the web sites of the Advocacy Organizations with which EAM is partnered.
The EAM Committee in the Diocese of Southern Ohio is working on a resources guide for sustainable economic development which will be posted at www.episcopalappalachianministries.org in October of 2008.
From www.ilovemountains.org:
"Mountaintop removal is a radical form of coal mining in which entire mountains are literally blown up -- and it is happening here in America on a scale that is almost unimaginable. Mountaintop removal is devastating hundreds of square miles of Appalachia; polluting the headwaters of rivers that provide drinking water to millions of Americans; and destroying a distinctly American culture that has endured for generations."