Energy Justice Network Accomplishments

2019:

• Bal­ti­more City Coun­cil unan­i­mous­ly passed our Bal­ti­more Clean Air Act, which forces the city’s two large waste incin­er­a­tors to meet mod­ern stan­dards or close down. The affect­ed incin­er­a­tors are Whee­labra­tor Bal­ti­more, a trash incin­er­a­tor that is the city’s #1 air pol­luter, and Cur­tis Bay Ener­gy, the nation’s largest med­ical waste incinerator.
• The Town of Coey­mans, NY passed the Clean Air Law that they hired us to write, ban­ning large-scale burn­ing of bio­mass or waste in the town. This is in response to plans by the world’s largest cement cor­po­ra­tion, Lafarge­Hol­cim, to burn mil­lions of tires a year next to a high school. Pre­vi­ous­ly, they tried to start burn­ing trash from 50–70 Con­necti­cut towns, which we stopped in late 2017.

2017:

• A haz­ardous waste incin­er­a­tor pro­posed for New Mil­ford, Penn­syl­va­nia was can­celed as New Mil­ford Town­ship adopt­ed a local Clean Air Ordi­nance based on one that we pro­posed to them in mid-2016.
• The pow­er­ful “What the Health” doc­u­men­tary was released (and is now avail­able on Net­flix), dis­cussing the con­nec­tions between diet and health, and expos­ing the Amer­i­can Dia­betes Asso­ci­a­tion, Amer­i­can Heart Asso­ci­a­tion, The Amer­i­can Can­cer Soci­ety, and the Susan G. Koman Breast Can­cer Foun­da­tion for their con­flicts of inter­est that cause them to encour­age peo­ple to eat the very foods that cause the dis­eases they’re pur­port­ed­ly try­ing to pre­vent. Ener­gy Jus­tice Net­work was fea­tured in the film, and the film­mak­ers, in inter­views, have stat­ed that “one of the most shock­ing things” they learned in mak­ing the film is what they learned from inter­view­ing us about diox­in and mer­cury pol­lu­tion from incin­er­a­tion con­cen­trat­ing in meat and dairy prod­ucts. They state:
  

  “One of the most shock­ing things that we uncov­ered while mak­ing the film was the impacts on ani­mal prod­ucts on devel­op­ing chil­dren and on babies in par­tic­u­lar. There are diox­ins, which are the most tox­ic sub­stance known to sci­ence. 93 per­cent of our expo­sure to diox­ins come from meat and dairy prod­ucts. There is no way for our bod­ies to get rid of these diox­ins, these hor­ri­ble tox­ic sub­stances. For women, they can get rid of them, but that is pass­ing the on to their chil­dren through breast milk or through the uterus while preg­nant. So, the thought of these envi­ron­men­tal pol­lu­tants, our expo­sure to them pri­mar­i­ly com­ing from ani­mal prod­uct and chil­dren being affect­ed by these who have no choice in the mat­ter. They don’t have a say in what their par­ents eat. That was one of the most shock­ing things that we uncovered.”

• Bal­ti­more City Coun­cil passed a zero waste res­o­lu­tion we sup­port­ed, and lat­er passed a bold cli­mate res­o­lu­tion we helped devel­op, and lat­er in the year, with our sup­port, a resolution urging the state to set a strict nitrogen oxide emissions standard for existing trash incinerators equivalent to that for new ones, which would force an expensive cleanup or closure of Baltimore's largest air polluter, the Wheelabrator Baltimore trash incinerator.
• We launched our Divert Baltimore pilot program, providing education and incentives for recycling in the community surrounding Baltimore's trash incinerator, in an effort to document the economic benefits of recycling, and how the city can build the proper alternatives to incineration.
• We presented research we commissioned proving that incineration is worse than landfilling, for the climate and most other environmental impacts, even when having to haul waste 2-4 times as far to landfill. This was pre­sent­ed to the Dis­trict of Columbi­a’s Depart­ment of Pub­lic Works.
• We launched a peti­tion to urge Cray­ola’s to actu­al­ly recy­cle the plas­tic mark­ers they col­lect in their “Col­or­cy­cle” pro­gram, which we found actu­al­ly incin­er­ates some of the mark­ers. After a failed plas­tics-to-oil exper­i­ment in Buf­fa­lo, NY in 2013 at the out­set of their pro­gram, Cray­ola won’t admit where the mark­ers they col­lect actu­al­ly go.
• Par­tic­i­pat­ed in nation­al gath­er­ings of grass­roots activists, includ­ing the Extreme Ener­gy Extrac­tion Sum­mit, Cli­mate Jus­tice Alliance, Envi­ron­men­tal Jus­tice Lead­er­ship Forum, and the Build­ing Equi­ty and Align­ment for Impact Ini­tia­tive. We taught work­shops and on pan­els at the Glob­al Anti-Incin­er­a­tor Alliance U.S. con­fer­ence, Post-Land­fill Action Net­work (PLAN)‘s nation­al Stu­dents for Zero Waste con­fer­ence (where we pre­sent­ed a ple­nary work­shop on envi­ron­men­tal racism and gave a tox­ic tour of Chester, PA), the nation­al Peo­ple vs. Oil & Gas Con­fer­ence, the Nation­al Ani­mal Rights Con­fer­ence, the Zero Waste USA train­ing at the Waste­con indus­try con­fer­ence, and many small­er events.
• We pro­vid­ed sup­port to many com­mu­ni­ties, launched some local and state cam­paigns, and are excit­ed to report on the vic­to­ries that will stem from this in the next year!

2016:

• Led the effort that end­ed the threat of an incin­er­a­tor in Prince George’s Coun­ty, Mary­land, a major vic­to­ry for envi­ron­men­tal justice.
• Wrote the local set-back dis­tance ordi­nance that stopped a trash and sewage sludge pel­leti­za­tion plant pro­pos­al in Muncy, Penn­syl­va­nia.
• Played a sup­port­ing role in the incred­i­ble vic­to­ry of Bal­ti­more youth against a plan for the nation’s largest waste incin­er­a­tor, planned with­in a mile of their high school.
• The world’s largest tire incin­er­a­tor, ini­tial­ly planned for Erie, Penn­syl­va­nia, was defeat­ed after a three year bat­tle with a group we orga­nized. It was pro­posed again for rur­al Craw­ford Coun­ty, just south of Erie. Delays from anoth­er com­mu­ni­ty group we sup­port­ed may have con­tributed to the pro­jec­t’s demise.
• Pro­vid­ed the sup­port that make pos­si­ble the $4.25 mil­lion jury ver­dict against frack­ing com­pa­nies respon­si­ble for pol­lut­ing the drink­ing water of res­i­dents of Dimock, Penn­syl­va­nia.
• Our Shale­field orga­niz­er, Alex Lotor­to, was rec­og­nized as one of three com­mu­ni­ties orga­niz­ers in the nation to received the Com­mu­ni­ty Sen­tinel award.
• Taught envi­ron­men­tal jus­tice work­shops at sev­er­al col­lege campuses.
• Played lead­ing orga­niz­ing roles in fracked gas pipeline bat­tles, one of which is now suspended.
• Pre­sent­ed work­shops and pan­els at sev­er­al con­fer­ences, includ­ing Pow­er­Shift, the Tox­ic Pris­ons con­fer­ence, Stu­dents for Zero Waste, and the Appalachi­an Pub­lic Inter­est Envi­ron­men­tal Law Conference.
• Par­tic­i­pat­ed in nation­al gath­er­ings of grass­roots activists, such as the Extreme Ener­gy Extrac­tion Sum­mit, Cli­mate Jus­tice Alliance, Envi­ron­men­tal Jus­tice Lead­er­ship Forum, and the Build­ing Equi­ty and Align­ment for Impact Initiative.

2015:

• Logans­port, Indi­ana res­i­dents have fought the world’s largest pyrol­y­sis plant to burn trash and tires. After a three year fight we sup­port­ed, the project is dead now that res­i­dents replaced their city’s may­or and six of sev­en coun­cil mem­bers in their local election.
• Den­ver, Col­orado res­i­dents we sup­port­ed stopped a planned gasi­fi­ca­tion incin­er­a­tor at the Den­ver Zoo, to burn trash and ani­mal waste.
• Raised over $25,000 for a ground­break­ing legal case against the frack­ing com­pa­nies who have con­t­a­m­i­nat­ed peo­ple’s drink­ing water in Dimock, PA.
• Start­ed offer­ing “tox­ic tours” of Bal­ti­more, MD, as we have con­sis­tent­ly also done in Chester, PA.

2014:

• Fred­er­ick, Mary­land: After a decade-long fight, local groups we sup­port­ed, No Incin­er­a­tor Alliance and Waste Not! Car­roll stopped a planned 1,500 ton/day incin­er­a­tor to burn trash, tires and sewage sludge.
• Bloom­ing­ton-Nor­mal, Illi­nois: orga­nized local res­i­dents to quick­ly stop plans by Par­a­digm BioAvi­a­tion for an exper­i­men­tal trash and tires gasi­fi­ca­tion facil­i­ty that aimed to incin­er­ate the waste, and even­tu­al­ly try to con­vert it into jet fuel.
• Wash­ing­ton, DC: Got a large (389 liv­ing unit) coop­er­a­tive com­plex in the nation’s capi­tol, Tiber Island Com­mu­ni­ty Homes, to be the first to add a “no incin­er­a­tion” clause to their waste con­tract, paving the way for oth­er apart­ments and coops to take con­trol of where their waste goes when it’s hauled “away.” Some of their waste has been going to the large trash incin­er­a­tor in Lor­ton, VA, pro­filed in this arti­cle on DC’s Waste and Envi­ron­men­tal Racism.
• Allen­town, Penn­syl­va­nia: stopped plans for an exper­i­men­tal trash and sewage sludge incin­er­a­tor planned in the heart of the His­pan­ic com­mu­ni­ty in the state’s 3rd largest city. We formed the Allen­town Res­i­dents for Clean Air group and this was a pri­or­i­ty fight for us, which con­tin­ues in its efforts to pre­serve the rights of all Penn­syl­va­nia local gov­ern­ments to adopt their own clean air laws.
• Stafford Coun­ty / Fred­er­icks­burg, Vir­ginia: plans for a trash and tire pyrol­y­sis incin­er­a­tor were shelved after a year of local oppo­si­tion that we supported.
• Lor­ton, Vir­ginia: a construction/demolition waste land­fill expan­sion was defeat­ed by the Cit­i­zens to Stop the Dump and South Coun­ty Fed­er­a­tion. We helped a bit, going door-to-door in the com­mu­ni­ty that is also over­shad­owed by the 4th largest trash incin­er­a­tor and sur­round­ed by two oth­er land­fills. We brought in experts on zero waste to speak about alter­na­tives for recy­cling those valu­able materials.
• Newark, Delaware: a nat­ur­al gas pow­er plant (dis­guised as a data cen­ter at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Delaware) was stopped by the Newark Res­i­dents Against the Pow­er Plant group we helped train
• Jasper, Indi­ana: bio­mass incin­er­a­tor to burn Mis­cant­hus grass stopped by our bio­mass net­work mem­bers, Healthy Dubois County
• Port Townsend, Wash­ing­ton: paper mil­l’s plan for a bio­mass incin­er­a­tor stopped by our bio­mass net­work mem­bers, Port Townsend Air Watch­ers and No Bio­mass Burn
• North Las Vegas, Neva­da: gigan­tic plan for a con­struc­tion and demo­li­tion gasi­fi­ca­tion incin­er­a­tor stopped by our bio­mass net­work mem­bers, Cit­i­zens of North Las Vegas United
• Bris­tol Town­ship, Penn­syl­va­nia: Pro­posed haz­ardous waste incin­er­a­tor stopped after we’ve tes­ti­fied to expose cor­po­rate mis­in­for­ma­tion, and sup­port­ed grass­roots and polit­i­cal oppo­nents who reached out to us in late 2013.
• North Spring­field, Ver­mont: large bio­mass incin­er­a­tor stopped by North Spring­field Action Group, a grass­roots group we helped launch an oppo­si­tion campaign.
• Min­neapo­lis, Min­neso­ta: Trash incin­er­a­tor expan­sion blocked by grass­roots activists we’ve supported.
• White Deer, Penn­syl­va­nia: Pro­posed tire incin­er­a­tor stopped by grass­roots lead­ers with Orga­ni­za­tions Unit­ed for the Envi­ron­ment and the Tire Burn­er Team who we’ve sup­port­ed since 2011.
• Wash­ing­ton, DC: Wash­ing­ton, DC city gov­ern­ment passed two major waste laws we worked on, ban­ning Sty­ro­foam, insti­tut­ing curb­side com­post­ing, requir­ing the city to adopt a zero waste plan, start­ing elec­tron­ic waste recy­cling and much more to move the nation’s capi­tol toward zero waste!
• Mary­land: Work­ing with the Zero Waste Mary­land coali­tion and oth­er allies, we helped stop leg­is­la­tion, for a sec­ond year in a row, that would have put Mary­land on the path to burn­ing near­ly all of its waste that is not recy­cled. Also, com­ment­ed on sev­er­al oth­er com­pro­mised ener­gy bills, none of which passed.
• In just six days span­ning the Memo­r­i­al Day week­end, we got 131 groups signed on to a let­ter we wrote to Depart­ment of Ener­gy, oppos­ing bil­lions in renew­able ener­gy sub­si­dies from ben­e­fit­ing incin­er­a­tion, bio­mass and bio­fu­els. It includ­ed about 100 grass­roots or state/regional groups from 27 states plus DC and Puer­to Rico as well as about 30 nation­al / inter­na­tion­al groups, includ­ing some of the big greens: Clean Water Action, Earth­jus­tice, Food & Water Watch, Friends of the Earth, Green­peace USA and Sier­ra Club.
• Got hun­dreds of grass­roots activists writ­ing to EPA to oppose loop­holes in their CO2 rule for new pow­er plants.
• Re-orga­nized res­i­dents of Chester, PA, form­ing Chester Envi­ron­men­tal Jus­tice to stop plans to bring 30 years of New York City trash by train to be burned in at the nation’s largest trash incin­er­a­tor, in the City of Chester
• Filed com­ments with the state of Mary­land object­ing to their incin­er­a­tor-friend­ly draft Zero Waste Plan
• Filed com­ments on New York’s new Ener­gy Plan.
• Launched the Ener­gy Jus­tice Now newsletter.
• Launched JusticeMap.org, mak­ing race and class cen­sus data eas­i­ly nav­i­ga­ble online for the first time
• Launched Ener­gy Jus­tice Sum­mer, a house in the heart of the frack­ing fields in north­east Penn­syl­va­ni­a’s where young orga­niz­ers are sup­port­ing front-line work against fracking.

2013:

• Grass­roots activists in our net­works against incin­er­a­tion have stopped 40 biomass/waste incin­er­a­tors since 2010, as we cat­a­log in this hand­out on grass­roots vic­to­ries (see p.2).
• Helped stop a Mary­land bill that would have steered near­ly all of the state’s waste to incin­er­a­tors over time, in the guise of phas­ing out direct land­fill­ing of trash. The bill would have set a hor­ri­ble nation­al prece­dent for a pro-burn “munic­i­pal sol­id waste port­fo­lio standard.”
• Launched the first and only elec­tron­ic map track­ing log­ging sites sourc­ing wood to a bio­mass ener­gy facil­i­ty: the McNeil Gen­er­at­ing Sta­tion in Burling­ton, VT.
• Peters Town­ship, Penn­syl­va­nia passed a local clean air law set­ting strict air pol­lu­tion lim­its on cre­ma­to­ria, mod­eled on oth­er ordi­nances we’ve draft­ed — a prod­uct of two years of con­sult­ing with local res­i­dents con­cerned about a cre­ma­to­ry pro­pos­al in a res­i­den­tial neighborhood.
• Jus­tice Map — ear­ly ver­sion that maps race and income for the Unit­ed States. To be fin­ished in 2014.

2012:

• Grass­roots oppo­si­tion we pulled togeth­er in 2011 defeat­ed a plan for a trash gasi­fi­ca­tion incin­er­a­tor in Cleveland.
• Com­mu­ni­ty groups we helped in Pichidegua, Chile and in North Car­oli­na beat back plans for poul­try waste incin­er­a­tors.
• Formed Allen­town Res­i­dents for Clean Air, work­ing to stop a plan for an exper­i­men­tal trash and sewage sludge incin­er­a­tor in this Penn­syl­va­nia city’s His­pan­ic community.
• Helped reor­ga­nize a com­mu­ni­ty group, the No Incin­er­a­tor Alliance, in Fred­er­ick Coun­ty, Mary­land to stop a pro­posed trash, sewage sludge and tire incinerator.
• Launched “Frack Uni­ver­si­ty” to train stu­dents and com­mu­ni­ty activists to stop nat­ur­al gas fracking.
• Seem­ing­ly stopped financ­ing for an incin­er­a­tor in Ghana
• Pre­sent­ed work­shops and train­ings at: Mid-Atlantic Black Law Stu­dents Asso­ci­a­tion Con­fer­ence, Rocky Moun­tain Pow­er­Shift, Pub­lic Inter­est Envi­ro Law Con­fer­ence, Good Jobs, Green Jobs Philadel­phia Region­al Con­fer­ence, Seat­tle Race Con­fer­ence: Build­ing Com­mu­ni­ty to End Envi­ron­men­tal Racism, the Glob­al Anti-Incin­er­a­tor Alliance’s Grass­roots Strate­gies for State Pol­i­cy on Zero Waste, Cli­mate Jobs, Envi­ron­men­tal Jus­tice and End­ing Incin­er­a­tion, Heart­wood For­est Coun­cil, the Grass­roots Recy­cling Net­work’s Nation­al Zero Waste Con­fer­ence, and the Penn­syl­va­nia Renew­able Ener­gy Festival.

2011:

• Grass­roots activists in our net­work defeat­ed bio­mass incin­er­a­tor pro­pos­als in Port St. Joe, FL; Val­dos­ta, GA; Spring­field, MA; Pow­nal, VT; and Shel­ton, WA — the first three of which were chal­lenged as bla­tant cas­es of envi­ron­men­tal racism. Sim­i­lar­ly, Buck­eye For­est Coun­cil defeat­ed plans to con­vert Ohio’s Berg­er coal plant to bio­mass to keep it open; now it’ll be shut­ting down instead.
• Meck­len­burg Coun­ty, North Car­oli­na pulled out of the ReVen­ture trash gasi­fi­ca­tion incin­er­a­tor pro­pos­al after sus­tained grass­roots oppo­si­tion we sup­port­ed ear­ly on.
• East­ern Penn­syl­va­ni­a’s Delaware Riv­er water­shed is still free from nat­ur­al gas frack­ing after mas­sive polit­i­cal pres­sure caused the Delaware Riv­er Basin Com­mis­sion to put off its planned vote to lift the mora­to­ri­um on frack­ing with­in the water­shed. Direct action train­ing and protests we helped orga­nize con­tributed to this victory.
• Devel­oped an ambi­tious Ener­gy Jus­tice Plat­form, after a year of intense delib­er­a­tion by our bio­mass oppo­nents net­work — spelling out a vision that moves us beyond nuclear, fos­sil fuels, bio­fu­els and incineration.
• Helped Howard Coun­ty, Mary­land res­i­dents orga­nize against a plan to burn land­fill gas for ener­gy at Alpha Ridge Land­fill. Res­i­dents won test­ing for tox­ic chem­i­cals and a com­mit­ment not to recir­cu­late leachate back into the land­fill, min­i­miz­ing some of the haz­ard to the community.
• Mapped out local ordi­nance pre­emp­tion issues in most of the coun­try, help­ing com­mu­ni­ty groups with afford­able legal tools they can use to stop pol­luters at the local level.
• Pre­sent­ed work­shops and train­ings at: Pow­er Shift 2011, Inter­na­tion­al Extrac­tive Indus­try Account­abil­i­ty Project con­fer­ence, Heart­wood For­est Coun­cil, Shale Gas Out­rage, Penn­syl­va­nia Renew­able Ener­gy Fes­ti­val, Nation­al Black Law Stu­dents Asso­ci­a­tion’s Envi­ron­men­tal Jus­tice Town Hall, Nation­al Lawyers Guild con­ven­tion, Appalachi­an Pub­lic Inter­est Envi­ron­men­tal Law Con­fer­ence and Mid­west Pow­er Shift.

2010:

• Launched the Ener­gy Jus­tice Com­mu­ni­ties map­ping project! This project, in devel­op­ment for sev­er­al years, is an online map­ping and data­base project to track all of the exist­ing, pro­posed, closed and defeat­ed dirty ener­gy facil­i­ties in the U.S., the cor­po­ra­tions behind them, and the com­mu­ni­ty activists and groups oppos­ing them. This data­base enables com­mu­ni­ty activists to more effec­tive­ly share infor­ma­tion and con­nect with oth­ers that have expe­ri­ence with sim­i­lar indus­tri­al threats.
• Helped win a major pol­i­cy vic­to­ry against “bio­mass” incin­er­a­tors in Mass­a­chu­setts. The Stop Spew­ing Car­bon cam­paign col­lect­ed over 120,000 sig­na­tures from Mass­a­chu­setts vot­ers to get an ini­tia­tive on the state bal­lot to oppose the use of bio­mass incin­er­a­tors to meet the state’s renew­able ener­gy law (but under­min­ing the state’s glob­al warm­ing law). With four major bio­mass incin­er­a­tors pro­posed in the state, the grass­roots pres­sure against them caused the state to com­mis­sion a study that showed that bio­mass incin­er­a­tors are worse than coal or nat­ur­al gas pow­er plants in terms of glob­al warm­ing pol­lu­tion. This study and the pres­sure of the bal­lot mea­sure caused the state to adopt the nation’s strongest reg­u­la­tion of bio­mass incin­er­a­tors, effec­tive­ly stop­ping their use as renew­able ener­gy sources in the state.
• Stopped Fibrowatt from build­ing three large poul­try waste incin­er­a­tors in Page Coun­ty, Vir­ginia, Sur­ry Coun­ty, North Car­oli­na and Hart Coun­ty, Geor­gia. The Sur­ry Coun­ty vic­to­ry came after a three-year strug­gle, led by the Blue Ridge Envi­ron­men­tal Defense League and the Cit­i­zens Alliance for a Clean, Healthy Econ­o­my (CACHE) after we pre­vi­ous­ly helped stop the same pro­pos­al in neigh­bor­ing Wilkes Coun­ty. The Vir­ginia and Geor­gia vic­to­ries were some of the quick­est ever, won by quick cit­i­zen upris­ings in 4–6 weeks each. See our page on Fibrowatt for more infor­ma­tion on these and oth­er bat­tles in our inter­na­tion­al cam­paign against poul­try waste incin­er­a­tion (now on four continents!).
• Stopped a pro­pos­al for the world’s largest tire incin­er­a­tor, after a three-year strug­gle led by the com­mu­ni­ty group, Keep Erie’s Envi­ron­ment Pro­tect­ed (KEEP), that we formed and worked close­ly with.
• Helped res­i­dents of Craw­ford Coun­ty, Penn­syl­va­nia form a new group, Craw­ford Area Res­i­dents for the Envi­ron­ment (CARE) to stop the above-men­tioned tire incin­er­a­tor when it was re-pro­posed after being stopped in Erie.
• As of Sep­tem­ber 2010, eight pro­posed coal pow­er plants were can­celed, aban­doned or defeat­ed, includ­ing two waste coal burn­ing pow­er plants pro­posed in Penn­syl­va­nia that we had worked to stop since 2004.
• After months of pres­sur­ing the EPA Region III Office in Philadel­phia to reject moun­tain­top removal (MTR) coal min­ing per­mits in West Vir­ginia, activists held a suc­cess­ful protest at the Region­al Head­quar­ters. EPA admin­is­tra­tors met our demands to have a sit-down meet­ing with admin­is­tra­tors, dig up request­ed infor­ma­tion on cri­te­ria for per­mit­ting MTR sites, and, with­in a few weeks (and con­tin­ued con­ver­sa­tions), released new rules on val­ley fills (the prac­tice of dump­ing of rock and coal waste in val­leys, bury­ing rivers) and halt­ed an already per­mit­ted min­ing project from mov­ing for­ward! This was the cul­mi­na­tion of a series of protests out­side the Philadel­phia EPA Office.
• Helped res­i­dents of Eddy­s­tone, Penn­syl­va­nia form the Eddy­s­tone Res­i­dents for Pos­i­tive Change to block a pro­posed Cam­den Iron and Met­al scrapyard.
• Our rapid­ly grow­ing grass­roots anti-bio­mass net­work saw vic­to­ries against pro­posed bio­mass incin­er­a­tors in Gret­na, Flori­da, New­port, Delaware, Craw­ford and Scott Coun­ties in Indi­ana, four pro­pos­als around Tra­verse City, Michi­gan and more.
• Our anti-bio­mass net­work held its first nation­al lob­by day in Congress.
• Pre­sent­ed work­shops at the Unit­ed States Social Forum, the Pub­lic Inter­est Envi­ron­men­tal Law Con­fer­ence, the Heart­wood For­est Coun­cil gath­er­ing and the Penn­syl­va­nia Renew­able Ener­gy Festival.

2009:

• In large part due to the activ­i­ties of those in our No New Coal Plants net­work, 24 pro­posed new coal pow­er plants were can­celed, aban­doned or defeat­ed, includ­ing the 1,000 megawatt con­ven­tion­al coal plant pro­posed by AMP-Ohio for Meigs Coun­ty, Ohio — one of the nation’s worst clus­ters of exist­ing and pro­pos­al coal facil­i­ties. The pro­pos­al was with­drawn after exten­sive efforts by Meigs Cit­i­zens Action Now! (MeigsCAN) and statewide cam­paign­ing by the Ohio Stu­dent Envi­ron­men­tal Coali­tion that we found­ed and coor­di­nat­ed. Ohio stu­dents packed hear­ings, held march­es, wrote let­ters, orga­nized protests, stopped towns from sign­ing pow­er con­tracts, and got the state not to con­sol­i­date numer­ous pub­lic hear­ings on the envi­ron­men­tal per­mits (which would have cut back on pub­lic involvement).
• Caused the Ohio State Uni­ver­si­ty Pres­i­dent to resign from the board of Massey Ener­gy — a moun­tain­top removal coal min­ing cor­po­ra­tion with a ter­ri­ble track record — fol­low­ing months of pres­sure, includ­ing over 6,000 hand­writ­ten let­ters, and meet­ings with stu­dent and com­mu­ni­ty groups.
• Our Bio­mass Oppo­nents net­work mush­roomed this year into a pow­er­ful net­work of bio­mass incin­er­a­tor oppo­nents and for­est pro­tec­tion advocates.
• We helped bring togeth­er the Cli­mate­SOS cam­paign to expose the prob­lems with the filthy and inef­fec­tive cap-and-trade cli­mate leg­is­la­tion mov­ing through Con­gress that year.
• Start­ed a new Envi­ron­men­tal Jus­tice Law class at the Uni­ver­si­ty of the Dis­trict of Columbi­a’s David A. Clarke School of Law
• Helped orga­nize the Ener­gy Action Coali­tion’s 12,000-student strong Pow­er Shift 2009 con­fer­ence — the largest stu­dent envi­ron­men­tal con­fer­ence in U.S. his­to­ry — bring­ing over 1,000 stu­dents and get­ting many grass­roots activists and oth­er cut­ting edge speak­ers into the con­fer­ence agenda.
• Lat­er in the year, helped plan the agen­das for ten state/regional Pow­er Shift con­fer­ences, get­ting more grass­roots issues onto the stu­dent cli­mate activist radar. Our staff pre­sent­ed work­shops at four of the events and led the plan­ning of those in Penn­syl­va­nia and Ohio, draw­ing hun­dreds of stu­dents to focus on state-wide issues.
• Launched Penn­syl­va­ni­a’s Key­stone Envi­ron­men­tal Youth Coali­tion (KEY Coali­tion), a statewide stu­dent envi­ron­men­tal net­work, ini­tial­ly cam­paign­ing against nat­ur­al gas drilling in the Mar­cel­lus Shale for­ma­tion, through their Frack­ing: Quit It Already! Campaign.
• Began the Philadel­phia Against Coal (PAC) Coali­tion cam­paign, unit­ing Philadel­phia activists work­ing against coal — its financ­ing, min­ing, burn­ing, and irre­spon­si­ble waste disposal.
• Launched a new net­work of oppo­si­tion to nat­ur­al gas drilling and oth­er nat­ur­al gas indus­try devel­op­ments. This net­work was launched from the ener­gy and enthu­si­asm of the packed nat­ur­al gas work­shop at Pow­er­Shift 2009.

2008:

• The nation’s strongest mer­cury and diox­in air pol­lu­tion law, a local ordi­nance we wrote for Kulp­mont Bor­ough, Penn­syl­va­nia reg­u­lat­ing mer­cury and diox­in pol­lu­tion from cre­ma­to­ria and med­ical waste incin­er­a­tors, was upheld in fed­er­al court when the pol­luter’s five con­sti­tu­tion­al claims were dis­missed in sum­ma­ry judgment.
• In large part due to the activ­i­ties of those in our No New Coal Plants net­work, 24 pro­posed new coal pow­er plants were can­celed, aban­doned or defeat­ed, includ­ing some that our staff active­ly worked to oppose, includ­ing the nation’s first coal-to-oil refin­ery, planned for Schuylkill Coun­ty, Penn­syl­va­nia, which we had active­ly opposed since 1997, the largest col­lege cam­pus-based coal pow­er plant — a com­mer­cial scale IGCC “clean coal” plant planned for South­ern Illi­nois Uni­ver­si­ty at Car­bon­dale (can­celed after sus­tained stu­dent oppo­si­tion), and the West­ern Green­bri­er waste coal pow­er plant planned for Green­bri­er, West Virginia.
• A pre­cur­sor to the vic­to­ry against the pro­posed AMP-Ohio coal plant, the town coun­cil of Yel­low Springs, Ohio turned down a coal con­tract with AMP-Ohio.
• Stopped the world’s largest “waste tire-to-petro­le­um” tire incin­er­a­tor planned by Koach Ener­gy for the City of Chester, PA.
• Helped defeat a bio­mass incin­er­a­tor in Tal­la­has­see, Florida.
• Pre­sent­ed work­shops at the Penn­syl­va­nia Renew­able Ener­gy Festival.

2007:

• 2007 saw the defeat of a record num­ber of coal pow­er plant pro­pos­als (59), large­ly brought about by activists con­nect­ed with each oth­er through our No New Coal Plants net­work. Among many oth­er vic­to­ries, our net­work leader, Nan­cy LaPla­ca of Den­ver, CO, saw the defeat of the pro­posed “clean coal” pow­er plant she’d been fight­ing in her home state.
• Helped stop one of the two pro­posed Cliff­side Coal pow­er plants from being built near Char­lotte, North Car­oli­na. We worked with stu­dents from the Uni­ver­si­ty of North Car­oli­na at Char­lotte and War­ren Wil­son Col­lege, as well as envi­ron­men­tal groups Appalachi­an Voic­es and the Blue Ridge Envi­ron­men­tal Defense League to tar­get the North Car­oli­na Util­i­ties Com­mis­sion since they had the pow­er to deny the pro­pos­als in the imme­di­ate future. With­in a few days of start­ing the cam­paign, War­ren Wil­son had tabled twice in their school cafe­te­ria and over 200 young peo­ple told the North Car­oli­na Util­i­ties Com­mis­sion “No New Cliff­side Coal Plants.” By the end of the month, the North Car­oli­na Util­i­ties Com­mis­sion announced a denial of one of the two pro­posed plants and we con­tin­ue to work with the com­mu­ni­ty activists to stop Duke from build­ing the remain­ing unit.
• Kulp­mont Bor­ough passed the nation’s strongest mer­cury and diox­in law, using an ordi­nance we devel­oped that requires real-time con­tin­u­ous emis­sions test­ing and report­ing of mer­cury and diox­in emis­sions, and set­ting strict emis­sions stan­dards. The ordi­nance also requires that any air-pol­lut­ing indus­try (any­thing requir­ing a DEP air pol­lu­tion per­mit) be at least 900 feet from a res­i­den­tial property.
• Helped bring togeth­er com­mu­ni­ty mem­bers in Cur­wensville, Penn­syl­va­nia to fight an ethanol plant pro­posed to be built 500 yards from the town’s com­bined ele­men­tary, mid­dle, and high school.
• Cat­alyzed the for­ma­tion of the May­field, Penn­syl­va­nia ‘No Ethanol’ group, which is work­ing to fight an unpop­u­lar pro­pos­al to site an ethanol plant in the town. Mem­bers of the group took over their local gov­ern­ment through a slate of write-in can­di­dates, and — with our pol­i­cy guid­ance — are now poised to make some great changes in their community.
• Wrote a Cam­pus-Com­mu­ni­ty Orga­niz­ing Guide to help stu­dents fight effec­tive sol­i­dar­i­ty bat­tles in sup­port of com­mu­ni­ty strug­gles against pol­lut­ing industries.
• Ini­ti­at­ed the for­ma­tion of the Keep Erie’s Envi­ron­ment Pro­tect­ed (KEEP) group in Erie, PA – orga­nized to oppose a plan for the nation’s largest tire burn­ing incin­er­a­tor. One of our stu­dent orga­niz­ers worked with stu­dents at State Uni­ver­si­ty of New York (SUNY) Fre­do­nia to set up a sol­i­dar­i­ty cam­paign to strength­en KEEP­’s efforts. SUNY Fre­do­nia stu­dents per­formed an envi­ron­men­tal impact assess­ment of the pro­pos­al site and cre­at­ed a doc­u­men­tary on the dan­gers of tire incineration.
• Helped the Chelsea Green Space and Recre­ation Com­mit­tee stop a pro­posed diesel-fired pow­er plant from being built in their Lati­no com­mu­ni­ty near Boston. This fos­sil fueled pow­er plant was pro­posed by the same com­pa­ny behind the Cape Wind off-shore wind farm pro­posed in near­by Cape Cod.
• Suc­cess­ful­ly lob­bied the 64 cam­pus State Uni­ver­si­ty of New York sys­tem to imple­ment the cre­ation of a sus­tain­abil­i­ty work­ing group, to vote on a res­o­lu­tion to cut car­bon diox­ide emis­sions 80% by 2050 on a SUNY lev­el, and to incor­po­rate anti-oppres­sion train­ings into statewide stu­dent lev­el legislation.
• Cre­at­ed a net­work of col­lege cam­pus­es involved in sol­i­dar­i­ty efforts with com­mu­ni­ty anti-coal cam­paigns in Ohio and South­ern Illi­nois.
• Start­ed an email net­work for com­mu­ni­ty activists oppos­ing pow­er lines.
• Formed the Del­Co Alliance for Envi­ron­men­tal Jus­tice, a mul­ti-racial, mul­ti-gen­er­a­tional student/community coali­tion address­ing envi­ron­men­tal racism in the City of Chester in Delaware Coun­ty, Pennsylvania.
• Pre­sent­ed work­shops at the 3rd inter­na­tion­al Glob­al Anti-Incin­er­a­tor Alliance con­fer­ence in Spain, the Think Out­side the Bomb (stu­dent anti-nuclear) con­fer­ence, the Green Par­ty’s nation­al con­ven­tion, the Penn­syl­va­nia Renew­able Ener­gy Fes­ti­val, Ener­gy Action Coali­tion’s 5,000+ stu­dent Pow­er Shift con­fer­ence, the New York State Stu­dent Assem­bly con­fer­ence, the South­east Pre­cau­tion Con­fer­ence and numer­ous small­er events.

2006:

• Estab­lished the “No New Coal Plants” net­work, which con­nects over 160 activists fight­ing coal plants in 36 states, result­ing in some amaz­ing exam­ples of cross-coun­try com­mu­ni­ty sol­i­dar­i­ty efforts.
• Helped form Meigs Cit­i­zen Action Now!, a com­mu­ni­ty group in south­east­ern Ohio orga­niz­ing around coal issues. Their rur­al coun­ty is sur­round­ed by the nation’s worst con­cen­tra­tion of exist­ing and pro­posed coal pow­er plants and numer­ous oth­er coal indus­try devel­op­ments, with four pow­er plants with­in a ten mile radius of each oth­er and three to five more proposed.
• Wrote an ordi­nance that was passed in West Read­ing Bor­ough, PA on July 18th, which set the nation’s strictest mer­cury emis­sions stan­dard by requir­ing that any cre­ma­to­ri­um or med­ical waste incin­er­a­tor con­tin­u­ous­ly mon­i­tor for mer­cury, report emis­sions data real-time to a web­site, and ensur­ing that if a sin­gle mer­cury amal­gam fill­ing or mer­cury-con­tain­ing med­ical waste is burned, the oper­a­tor will be fined.
• We were the sole sub­mit­ters of com­ments on the expan­sion of the Sun Oil refin­ery in south­west Philadel­phia. In response, the refin­ery expan­sion will now be the first in the nation to be required to use con­tin­u­ous emis­sions mon­i­tors for par­tic­u­late matter.
• Filed the most exten­sive pub­lic com­ment on the Draft Envi­ron­men­tal Impact State­ment for fund­ing the coal-to-oil refin­ery, planned for Schuylkill Coun­ty, help­ing fur­ther delay the pro­jec­t’s fund­ing. Antic­i­pat­ed costs have bal­looned from $612 mil­lion to $800 mil­lion dur­ing the time that they’ve been seek­ing the $100 mil­lion in fed­er­al funds delayed in part by our comments.
• Par­tic­i­pat­ed in a coali­tion that suc­cess­ful­ly stopped the nation’s most urban pro­pos­al for a Liq­ue­fied Nat­ur­al Gas (LNG) ter­mi­nal, which would have been locat­ed in Philadel­phia. It was dealt a major blow by city coun­cil with the twelve to two pas­sage of strong­ly word­ed anti-LNG res­o­lu­tion on Feb 16th. The talks between the city and the oil com­pa­ny have since dete­ri­o­rat­ed, and no new oil com­pa­ny has expressed inter­est in tak­ing on the project.
• Helped res­i­dents in Luzerne and Schuylkill Coun­ties in Penn­syl­va­nia orga­nize to oppose pro­posed new ethanol biore­finer­ies. The pro­pos­al in Luzerne Coun­ty quick­ly chose to relo­cate and in 2007, we orga­nized a group to stop them at their new pro­posed location.
• We are pro­vid­ing sup­port to numer­ous oth­er com­mu­ni­ties strug­gling against var­i­ous indus­tries, includ­ing those fight­ing waste coal pow­er plants in Penn­syl­va­nia, and Vir­ginia, incin­er­a­tors and tire-burn­ing in New York (with a vic­to­ry that year), poul­try waste incin­er­a­tors in North Car­oli­na and much more.
• Par­tic­i­pat­ed in many con­fer­ences: spoke at the Heart­wood Sum­mit for the Moun­tains, the Life Beyond Cheap Oil Fes­ti­val, the Penn­syl­va­nia Renew­able Ener­gy and Sus­tain­able Liv­ing Con­fer­ence, the North Car­oli­na Cli­mate Chal­lenge Sum­mit, the Philly Beyond Oil 2006 con­fer­ence (which we helped plan), the Pennsylvania/Ohio/West Vir­ginia Envi­ron­men­tal Gath­er­ing, the nation­al Green Fes­ti­val in Wash­ing­ton, D.C., the Think Out­side the Bomb con­fer­ence in New York City, the South Jer­sey Envi­ron­men­tal Jus­tice Alliance’s Envi­ron­men­tal Health Con­fer­ence, mul­ti­ple Ener­gy Action Coali­tion meetings/trainings, and the Ursi­nus Clean Ener­gy Con­fer­ence (which we also helped plan). We also did a lot of stu­dent orga­niz­ing by vis­it­ing cam­pus­es in New Jer­sey, Penn­syl­va­nia, West Vir­ginia, Vir­ginia, and North Carolina.

2005:

• Ini­ti­at­ed the for­ma­tion of Res­i­dents Against the Pow­er Plant (RAPP), a grass­roots com­mu­ni­ty group in Wash­ing­ton Coun­ty, PA that formed to stop a pro­pos­al for what would be one of the largest waste coal burn­ing pow­er plants in the U.S. Due to our research, out­reach, and advo­ca­cy on waste coal burn­ing, two of the three pro­pos­als for large new waste coal burn­ing pow­er plants in Penn­syl­va­nia had their air per­mits appealed, which dras­ti­cal­ly delayed – and may ulti­mate­ly doom – the financ­ing and devel­op­ment of those projects.
• Ini­ti­at­ed the for­ma­tion of Schuylkill Tax­pay­ers Opposed to Pol­lu­tion (STOP), a grass­roots com­mu­ni­ty group in Schuylkill Coun­ty, PA formed to stop a pro­pos­al for the nation’s first coal-to-oil refin­ery, which would pro­duce so-called “ultra clean fuels.” This is a con­tin­u­a­tion of work we’ve been doing around this pro­posed refin­ery since 1997.
• Ini­ti­at­ed the for­ma­tion of Con­cerned Cit­i­zens Fight­ing the Bog­gs Town­ship Dump, a grass­roots com­mu­ni­ty group in Clearfield Coun­ty, PA formed to stop a pro­pos­al for a large new land­fill.
• The Clean Met­al facil­i­ty in Chester closed. This shod­di­ly-run facil­i­ty recy­cled met­als out of the tox­ic ash pro­duced by Cov­an­ta’s giant trash incin­er­a­tor in Chester. We had researched and opposed this since 2003. Some of us have been work­ing to sup­port envi­ron­men­tal jus­tice for Chester since 1994.
• Sup­port­ed the Cit­i­zens for Safe and Respon­si­ble Indus­try in Corinth, NY in their fight against a sec­ond attempt to build the nation’s largest trash incin­er­a­tor in their vil­lage, as well as a neigh­bor­ing pro­posed facil­i­ty to com­post munic­i­pal sol­id waste and sewage sludge.
• Sup­port­ed com­mu­ni­ty groups oppos­ing pro­pos­als for new land­fills in Cen­tre and Schuylkill Coun­ties in Pennsylvania.
• Edu­cat­ed var­i­ous land­fill com­mu­ni­ties about the haz­ardous nature of land­fill gas, includ­ing new research on mer­cury in land­fill gas. This infor­ma­tion helped com­mu­ni­ties groups such as the South DeKalb Neigh­bor­hoods Coali­tion in Geor­gia, where the large­ly African-Amer­i­can com­mu­ni­ty is sur­round­ed by eight landfills.
• Began devel­op­ing a net­work of com­mu­ni­ty groups fight­ing ethanol biore­finer­ies, includ­ing groups from Ore­gon to .
• Began devel­op­ing a net­work of com­mu­ni­ty groups in the U.S., Mex­i­co, Cana­da and First Nations fight­ing the use of tire-derived fuel (scrap tire incin­er­a­tion). 2005 saw vic­to­ries against tire incin­er­a­tion in Pre­ston, MN and New­found­land, Cana­da.
• Con­tin­ued devel­op­ment of a net­work of com­mu­ni­ty groups oppos­ing “bio­mass” incin­er­a­tion of var­i­ous sorts. Assist­ed res­i­dents oppos­ing wood waste burn­ers in Ari­zona, Ohio, Maine and mul­ti­ple com­mu­ni­ties in Min­neso­ta and New Hamp­shire. Assist­ed groups in Aus­tralia, UK, and Scot­land in fights against poul­try waste incin­er­a­tors. 2005 saw a vic­to­ries against a wood waste incin­er­a­tor in Hins­dale, NH and against a poul­try waste incin­er­a­tor in the Nether­lands.
• Trav­eled to Mex­i­co to present infor­ma­tion on the haz­ards of burn­ing tires and haz­ardous waste in cement kilns. Start­ing to strength­en nation­al and glob­al net­works among those oppos­ing cement kiln pollution.
• Taught work­shops at the North­east­ern Cli­mate Con­fer­ence (Ver­mont), the True Cost of Coal Con­fer­ence (Pitts­burgh, PA), BioDemoc­ra­cy 2005, the Philadel­phia Beyond Oil Con­fer­ence, PA Renew­able Ener­gy Fes­ti­val (Berks Coun­ty, PA) and the Vir­ginia Envi­ron­men­tal Forum.

2004:

• Pre­vent­ed Vir­ginia’s leg­is­la­ture from mov­ing for­ward with a plan for what would have been one of the weak­est and dirt­i­est “renew­able” port­fo­lio stan­dard laws in the U.S.
• Orga­nized a com­mu­ni­ty group in Pittston, PA that, in short order, stopped a plan for one of the nation’s largest trash incin­er­a­tors.
• Co-found­ed the Ener­gy Action Coali­tion, a coali­tion of over 40 orga­ni­za­tions in the U.S. and Cana­da orga­niz­ing stu­dents and youth around ener­gy and cli­mate change issues.
• Con­ceived a new legal argu­ment for address­ing envi­ron­men­tal racism in the courts, after oth­er options have failed. This was attempt­ed by the Pub­lic Inter­est Law Cen­ter of Philadel­phia, on behalf of the com­mu­ni­ty lead­ers fight­ing the Har­ris­burg trash incin­er­a­tor. While the case was reject­ed on a tech­ni­cal­i­ty (pre­vent­ing the case from being ruled on its mer­its), the argu­ment remains untest­ed and may be able to be used in future cases.
• Ini­ti­at­ed orga­niz­ing against the largest pro­posed waste coal burn­ing pow­er plant in the U.S. (in Greene Coun­ty, PA), found­ing the “Truth About Gob” effort. [This project became the sec­ond largest pro­posed waste coal plant when Domin­ion planned an even larg­er one in Wise Coun­ty, VA two years later.]

2003:

• Wrote the nation’s strongest, clean­est Renew­able Port­fo­lio Stan­dard leg­is­la­tion and got it intro­duced in the Penn­syl­va­nia Sen­ate – the first of such poli­cies to be intro­duced in the state. [Unfor­tu­nate­ly, a dirt­i­er ver­sion of the bill, intro­duced short­ly after ours, end­ed up becom­ing the dirt­i­est in the nation before pass­ing the fol­low­ing year. We near­ly stopped it, but lost. How­ev­er, about half of the many loop­holes we point­ed out through­out the leg­isla­tive and sub­se­quent reg­u­la­to­ry process end­ed up being resolved in our favor.]
• We tes­ti­fied on Mary­land’s Renew­able Port­fo­lio Stan­dard law, seek­ing to elim­i­nate all forms of incin­er­a­tion, specif­i­cal­ly poul­try lit­ter incin­er­a­tion. We were half-suc­cess­ful, in that sev­er­al lim­its were placed on these tech­nolo­gies, even though we failed to get them removed completely.
• Tes­ti­fied in the “scop­ing” phase of the fed­er­al Envi­ron­men­tal Impact State­ment hear­ings on the first pro­posed coal-to-oil refin­ery planned in the U.S. Our tes­ti­mo­ny here, and lat­er in the Draft EIS hear­ings, help­ing delay $100 mil­lion in fed­er­al fund­ing for the project for over four years, dur­ing which time the pro­jec­t’s price tag increased by $182 million.
• Worked in a mul­ti-racial coali­tion with the asso­ci­a­tion of black cler­gy in the Har­ris­burg incin­er­a­tor strug­gle. We warned city coun­cil that bor­row­ing $125 mil­lion to rebuild the city’s incin­er­a­tor (which was final­ly closed this year due to fail­ure to meet new envi­ron­men­tal reg­u­la­tions) would plunge the city into bank­rupt­cy. In spite of the coali­tion effort, city coun­cil approved it and – as events unfold – our warn­ing is com­ing true.
• Par­tic­i­pat­ed in the 2nd inter­na­tion­al meet­ing of the Glob­al Anti-Incin­er­a­tor Alliance (GAIA), held in Malaysia.

2002:

• Alliance for a Clean Envi­ron­ment (ACE) – a group we’ve assist­ed for sev­er­al years – defeat­ed a pro­posed pipeline to move tox­ic and radioac­tive land­fill gas from a land­fill across town to a poly vinyl chlo­ride (PVC) plas­tics plant. This five-year bat­tle helped change the land­scape in the local indus­tries and may have been par­tial­ly respon­si­ble for the sub­se­quent clo­sure of both the land­fill and the PVC plant.
• Par­tic­i­pat­ed in the his­toric Sec­ond Nation­al Peo­ple of Col­or Envi­ron­men­tal Lead­er­ship Sum­mit.

2001:

• Devel­oped a statewide net­work in Penn­syl­va­nia to stop the inva­sion of nat­ur­al gas pow­er plants. In the fol­low­ing two years, a dozen were defeat­ed by com­mu­ni­ty oppo­si­tion groups and at least as many were can­celed due to chang­ing mar­ket conditions.

2000:

• In sol­i­dar­i­ty with our waste activist col­leagues in New York City, we got hun­dreds of com­mu­ni­ty mem­bers from Penn­syl­va­ni­a’s land­fill and incin­er­a­tor com­mu­ni­ties to con­tact the New York City Coun­cil – con­vinc­ing them to adopt var­i­ous com­mu­ni­ty pro­tec­tions for the trans­fer sta­tion com­mu­ni­ties in envi­ron­men­tal jus­tice com­mu­ni­ties in New York City as well as for the com­mu­ni­ties in Penn­syl­va­nia and Vir­ginia who are on the receiv­ing end of so much of the city’s waste.
• Formed Coali­tion Against the Incin­er­a­tor in Har­ris­burg, PA to seek the clo­sure of the nation’s largest diox­in air pol­lu­tion source – the city’s old garbage incin­er­a­tor (the old­est oper­at­ing plant in the U.S.), which was a very bla­tant case of envi­ron­men­tal racism.
• A few years after defeat­ing a wood waste incin­er­a­tor near Philadel­phia, and warn­ing our net­works about the com­pa­ny, we heard from res­i­dents in Min­neso­ta that one of the indi­vid­u­als in the com­pa­ny is now pro­mot­ing poul­try waste incin­er­a­tors in their state. This began a major research project that grew into our inter­na­tion­al net­work to stop poul­try lit­ter incin­er­a­tion, with sub­se­quent vic­to­ries in Delaware, Mis­sis­sip­pi, Mary­land and the Nether­lands.
• Wrote our first exposés on tox­ic chem­i­cals in “bio­mass” and land­fill gas, and why burn­ing these things ought not to qual­i­fy as renew­able energy.

1999:

• Wrote a con­tro­ver­sial series of inves­tiga­tive arti­cles that nation­al­ly exposed the con­sumer fraud involved in the mar­ket­ing of “green” elec­tric­i­ty prod­ucts, par­tic­u­lar­ly those by Green Moun­tain Ener­gy, and point­ing out the flaws in the Green‑e cer­ti­fi­ca­tion process.
• Exposed the nuclear indus­try’s refusal to shut down their reac­tors ear­ly in order to meet fed­er­al dead­lines for fix­ing their Y2K com­put­er prob­lems, in spite of evi­dence of com­put­er lock­ups and oth­er mal­func­tions dur­ing test­ing through­out the year. Ini­ti­at­ed the nation’s only cit­i­zen peti­tion for pub­lic dis­clo­sure of the nuclear indus­try’s Y2K documents.
• Helped mul­ti­ple com­mu­ni­ties form oppo­si­tion groups to stop pro­pos­als for large new gas-fired pow­er plants.