See Environmental Justice projects: Current | 2004 | 2003 | 2002

The Secwepemc Struggle to Stay Free and On the Land
The Secwepemc are indigenous people whose traditional territory lies in the southeastern interior of what is today known as "British Columbia, Canada." DataCenter has provided research to support their campaign to halt any more destructive development by Sun Peaks Ski Resort, owned by Nippon Cable, on their land. Kanahus Pellkey, Secwepemc/Ktnuxa NYM Warrior tells the story of the struggle: "Overdevelopment and urbanization in our Territory has left very few places left to continue to practice our way of life, to harvest food and live. So when Nippon Cable planned to expand Sun Peaks Resort further into our mountains, we call Skwelkwek'welt, we decided to take our future into our own hand... Since we stepped off the Indian Reserve and asserted ourselves back out onto our Territory we have been the target of constant police surveillance and harassment by all forms of assumed authority."

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The impacts of our reliance on petroleum-based energy are far-reaching: from the war in Iraq to high asthma rates caused by refineries to the hazards of pipeline explosions to the exploitation of indigenous communities. U.S. companies, high rates of consumption by U.S. peoples, and the complicity of the U.S. government are at the heart of this human and environmental devastation. In opposition, groups around the world are fighting for their rights, their health, and their lives. Below are three recent examples of how the DataCenter has strengthened and informed these fights:

Protesting the Use of Iraqi Oil to Harm Our Health
Communities for a Better Environment, with Direct Action to Stop the War, participated in a protest in September at ChevronTexaco's Bay Area refinery in Richmond. Their goal is to highlight and protest the impacts of the war in Iraq on local and global environmental justice. To help them find any connections between the refinery emissions and the health of the surrounding communities, we provided results from a report showing elevated local asthma hospitalization and asthma-related school absenteeism rates, as well as news articles citing statistics and quotes from health officials and community members. To further emphasize the connections between the local and global, we found that ChevronTexaco would be shipping as much as 18 million barrels of Iraqi oil to the U.S. by December 2003. Just prior to the war, the company had shipped 11 million barrels of Iraqi oil to its U.S. refineries, representing 50% of the company's crude oil purchases. The Richmond refinery is one of 6 Chevron refineries in the U.S. They used this information in their speech at the protest and in a radio interview.

Improving the Safety of Oil Pipelines
After a dangerous rupture in an oil pipeline in Bellingham, Washington, the Community Coalition for Environmental Justice has been trying to persuade the Olympic Pipeline Company, whose parent company is Shell Oil, to conduct a hydroelectric safety test on its pipelines. CCEJ convinced the mayor to agree to shutdown the pipeline if they refused the basic safety test, which unfortunately led to a court decision stating that the city did not have the authority to do so. To help them decide next steps, we provided a national picture of pipeline explosions. We provided a summary and link to a table listing all leaks from the Olympic Pipeline system (48 incidents in 35 years), created by the Regional Office of Pipeline Safety. We also included excerpts from a 2000 U.S. General Accounting Office study of pipeline safety that was spurred by the Bellingham incident. The study gives insights into overall trends in the agency's approach to pipeline safety and inspection. It should be noted that the report was written in 2000 and does not cover likely shifts since the Bush administration entered office. We also provided news clippings of the incident and data found at the Federal Office of Pipeline Safety.

Alaska Native Communities Organizing for Control of Their Land
We helped the RedOil Network, a grassroots network of Alaska Natives resisting the destruction of their traditional territories by oil and gas development, and the Alaska arm of the Indigenous Environmental Network, prepare for its October meeting, timed with the annual meeting of the Alaska Federation of Natives - with representation including Native-owned corporations active in oil and gas mining and other environmentally destructive operations. The RedOil Network focuses on raising awareness of the real impacts of oil and gas on Native communities, and persuading the Alaska Natives to instead fight for a sustainable, sovereign future (see Spring 2003 projects). We previously created in-depth fact sheets on the 13 tribal corporations in Alaska that do oil drilling and mining. We augmented them with additional sections on the health and social impacts of oil development, and profiled additional players, such as ExxonMobil and BP. This information will also be used to articulate a vision for Alaska Natives and develop a powerful educational and organizing tool.

Tracking Legislation on Jobs, Health & Environmental Justice
The DataCenter's Environmental Justice and Economic Justice programs created in-depth legislation matrices for the Community Institute for Policy Heuristics Education & Research (CIPHER) to better understand the regional impacts of California state policies around jobs, healthcare, and environmental justice. CIPHER is the research component of Strategic Concepts in Organizing and Policy Education (SCOPE), which also houses AGENDA, Los Angeles Metropolitan Alliance, and the Environmental and Economic Justice Project. The matrix includes a description, sponsor, time frame, key support and opposition, and outcome for each bill. We researched jobs-related legislation over the past five years, highlighting laws affecting rural workers, worker rights, contingent workers, OSHA, civil rights, and CalWorks/workforce development. We also did a 5-year matrix of environmental justice legislation and updated a matrix on health care that we did for CIPHER in 2001. This research was used to inform a statewide strategy to develop a multi-regional, multi-sector progressive public policy agenda.

North American Communities Affected by Fossil Fuels Come Together
Communities throughout North America that are fighting the destruction caused by fossil fuel industries came together at the Our Power Camp 2003. Coordinated by Project Underground, Indigenous Environmental Network, Communities for a Better Environment, and Ruckus Society, the gathering built relationships between communities engaged in similar struggles, whether they be fighting oil extraction, refineries, or power plants. It brought together native and African-American communities, as well as rural and urban community members of all ages. In addition to attending the conference, the DataCenter co-presented a training with Project Underground on campaign research. Half of the training focused on hands-on practical ways to research fossil fuel issues, and the other half focused on decolonizing our own idea of who can be a researcher – promoting how existing community knowledge can be an important information base and that one doesn’t need a degree to be a researcher.

Meeting in Mexico to Resist Unjust Development and Trade Policies
The DataCenter attended the National Meeting of Mesoamerican Resistance and Response to Neo-liberal Globalization in Oaxaca, Mexico in May. It was sponsored in part by two organizations we have been working with, Grupo de Trabajo Colectivo del Istmo de Tehuantepec (GTCI), a primarily indigenous Mexican group, and Unión de Comunidades Indígenas de la Zona Norte del Istmo (UCIZONI) of Oaxaca. Four hundred delegates from 132 Mexican organizations attended, plus representatives from Central America, Europe, and the U.S. They came together to develop a plan of action against the Plan Puebla-Panamá, World Trade Organization, and Free Trade Area of the Americas. Affected communities gave testimony and attendees participated in seven working groups, and they declared an international day of action for October 2003. We gained a greater understanding of how our news monitoring service can further support GTCI and UCIZONI. We also identified additional research needs, such as helping identify international and local companies that may be benefiting from the development projects or facilitating information flow between large U.S. policy organizations and community groups in Mexico.

Training in Spanish for Environmental Justice Activists
In January, we conducted two trainings - one for adults and one for youth - for the Grayson Neighborhood Council in westside Stanislaus County, California. Westside residents are largely low-income and Latino. The Grayson Neighborhood Council is fighting environmental injustices by making their voices heard on issues such as nitrate contamination in the water, a garbage incinerator, possible landfill expansion, the reopening of a tire dump and tire incinerator, and the spraying and storing of pesticides near homes and schools. Key community leaders attended the adult training and they found valuable information on local environmental hazards. The training was conducted in Spanish and provided them with hands-on time at computers, exposing some of them to Internet research for the first time. The youth training for high school students used interactive methods to show them how to research environmental issues and local polluters.

Fighting Hazardous Waste Incinerators
Save Our County, with other organizations, has been working for years to close the WTI hazardous waste incinerator in East Liverpool, Ohio. East Liverpool is a small town in an economically depressed area with the highest cancer rate in the state. The WTI facility is one of the world's largest capacity hazardous waste incinerators. The facility is in a valley on the Ohio River that experiences air inversions, which trap the air and inhibit the normal rise of fog and pollution, as often as two of every three days. Exposed to this trapped pollution are homes, just 320 feet from the facility, and an elementary school only 1100 feet away. In short, it is about the worst place to site a giant hazardous waste facility. WTI was wholly owned by Von Roll America, but part of it was recently bought by Heritage Environmental Services. To help Save Our County understand who Heritage is, we provided an overview of its owner, its past environmental problems, and the nature of its relationship to Von Roll.

Protecting the Rights and Land of the Western Shoshone
Despite strong opposition from the Western Shoshone, Congress is attempting to pass the "Western Shoshone Claims Distribution Act" a fifth time, after repeatedly being defeated. This bill authorizes the government to make a one-time cash payment to Western Shoshone individuals in exchange for the land, removing all rights to their ancestral lands in Nevada. The Bureau of Land Management has been harassing and levying hefty fines against Shoshone who ranch on the land, including the Dann sisters - two Western Shoshone grandmothers. The BLM accuses them of trespassing on public lands and it forcibly rounded up hundreds of Shoshone livestock. To help the Western Shoshone Defense Project keep on top of developments, we are researching various issues and assisting with the development of forward-looking strategies.

Stopping Oil Drilling in Alaska
The Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act created tribal corporations that earn profits to be distributed among the tribe's shareholders. These tribal corporations engage in extractive industries such as oil drilling, mining, and logging. The Alaska Native Oil and Gas Working Group, a network of Alaska Natives working together for a sustainable future, is trying to persuade tribes that the harms of oil drilling outweigh the meager monetary benefits. They are working with the Indigenous Mining Campaign Project, a joint project of Project Underground and the Indigenous Environmental Network. At the Alaska Forum on the Environment in February, the Working Group, together with the Indigenous Mining Campaign Project, is distributing Toolkits to educate the public about the ecological and cultural impacts of oil drilling in Alaska. To include in the Toolkits, the DataCenter provided fact sheets on the 13 native corporations, including information on revenues, jobs offered and how many jobs are held by shareholders, and environmental impacts of their extractive activities.

Peabody Coal Company Destroying Indigenous Water Supply
Black Mesa Water Coalition is a group of Navajo and Hopi college youth and community members dedicated to the protection and preservation of the Black Mesa region's land, water, and peoples. They are fighting to stop Peabody Coal Company's depletion of the N-Aquifer to slurry coal to the Mohave Generating Station in Laughlin, NV. This is depleting the tribes' sole drinking water supply, drying up springs, and changing the ecology of Black Mesa. BMWC is opposed to the industrial use of any water supply in the desert Southwest and dependence on fossil fuels. BMWC asked the DataCenter for a profile on Southern California Edison, the operator and chief owner of the Mohave Station. We provided a detailed report on its parent company Edison International, pollution statistics for power plants in the Four Corners region, and information on earthquakes in the region that are adversely affecting the N-Aquifer by creating sink holes.

Victory in Cleaning Up Toxic Industries in Latino Neighborhoods
The San Diego Union-Tribune reported on a campaign that we helped Environmental Health Coalition win. Barrio Logan is a low-income, mostly Latino community that is home to Master Plating, a chrome-plater that has been operating within several feet of homes and is a chronic violator of safety and environmental laws. It has been releasing dangerous toxins into the neighborhood, including high levels of Chromium 6, which increases the risk of cancer. After years of struggle by EHC and Barrio Logan residents, the County of San Diego ordered Master Plating to shut down and completely decontaminate the facility. The DataCenter helped find information on the owner of Master Plating that EHC used to convince the county that he should be liable for cleanup.

Environmental Justice

The DataCenter's Environmental Justice program provides strategic research, consultation and training to grassroots organizations, with a focus on resource extraction (mining, dams, timber, oil, gas) and resource processing and disposal (refining, power plants, landfills, toxics). We also serve as a networking conduit to support key environmental justice organizations nationally. We work collaboratively with the environmental justice movement to strengthen its capacity to use information as a strategic tool to effectively confront and dismantle the perpetrators of environmental racism and injustice.