Energy Justice Network — Services and Projects

Our ser­vices are as wide-rang­ing as the needs of grass­roots com­mu­ni­ty groups. Since our capac­i­ty will always be far small­er than the demands on us by a large num­ber of grass­roots indi­vid­u­als and com­mu­ni­ty groups, we focus on pro­vid­ing ser­vices that ensure that every­one gets at least the most crit­i­cal start­ing points they need. This often involves spend­ing an hour or more on the phone with new activists, pro­vid­ing infor­ma­tion on the haz­ards asso­ci­at­ed with the tech­nolo­gies they’re fight­ing, advis­ing them on effec­tive strate­gies to win, link­ing them up with oth­er activists they should con­nect with, recruit­ing them to appro­pri­ate issue-based email dis­cus­sion lists and what­ev­er else seems appro­pri­ate. The goal is to pro­vide direct sup­port, but also enable grass­roots activists to net­work effec­tive­ly with one anoth­er so that they are sup­port­ing each other.

Ser­vices we pro­vide include:

Com­mu­ni­ty orga­niz­ing sup­port and advice – We answer ques­tions of all sorts from grass­roots activists, coach peo­ple on every­thing from open records laws to mak­ing the best use of pub­lic hear­ings to debunk­ing indus­try pro­pa­gan­da to build­ing an effec­tive and strate­gic com­mu­ni­ty orga­ni­za­tion. In select com­mu­ni­ties, our sup­port will go far deep­er, such as to facil­i­tate meet­ings, devel­op strate­gies, set up web­sites and social media, con­duct research, devel­op writ­ten mate­ri­als, and any­thing else that a grass­roots group would need to do for them­selves, but can’t yet.

Net­work-build­ing – We put peo­ple in touch with oth­ers who are impor­tant for them to talk to, because they’re in the same area, are in con­nect­ed fights, or are work­ing to stop the same com­pa­ny, tech­nol­o­gy or fuel.

Email dis­cus­sion lists – We admin­is­ter email lists that con­nect grass­roots activists on spe­cif­ic issues. We have lists on nat­ur­al gas, nuclear, coal, sev­er­al types of incin­er­a­tion (sep­a­rate lists for trash, bio­mass, tire and poul­try waste incin­er­a­tion), ethanol biore­finer­ies, elec­tric pow­er trans­mis­sion lines and more. These lists form a sense of com­mu­ni­ty, where far-flung activists sup­port each oth­er’s efforts, enabling more vic­to­ries. Peo­ple share news items, tes­ti­mo­ny, action alerts, updates from their local bat­tles, tech­ni­cal and pol­i­cy ques­tions and answers and much more.

Infor­ma­tion / research – We cri­tique tech­nolo­gies that com­mu­ni­ties face. We col­lect gov­ern­ment, aca­d­e­m­ic and indus­try data, as well as doc­u­ments found through grass­roots groups’ expe­ri­ence with facil­i­ties, and devel­op it into web con­tent, fact­sheets and oth­er resources that com­pile this hard-to-find infor­ma­tion into well-doc­u­ment­ed, acces­si­ble cri­tiques of dirty ener­gy and waste tech­nolo­gies. Some samples:

• Fact­sheets: www.energyjusticenetwork.org/factsheets
• Pow­er­points: www.energyjusticenetwork.org/resources/powerpoint
• Our first law jour­nal arti­cle, on envi­ron­men­tal jus­tice law, was pub­lished in ear­ly 2013: www.ejnet.org/ej/SDLP_Ewall_Article.pdf
• Oth­er web projects, like the issue-spe­cif­ic pages we have on diox­in, sewage sludge, envi­ron­men­tal jus­tice, land­fills and more at www.ejnet.org, which are intend­ed to pro­vide one-stop shop­ping for info on cer­tain top­ics. Our envi­ron­men­tal racism page hous­es some valu­able and his­toric move­ment doc­u­ments that have nev­er been online until we made them available.
  

Speak­ing / train­ing – Pre­sen­ta­tions are usu­al­ly about the dan­gers of (and alter­na­tives to) cer­tain ener­gy and waste tech­nolo­gies. We pro­vide many cus­tom pre­sen­ta­tions on spe­cif­ic local envi­ron­men­tal threats we’ve researched for com­mu­ni­ties we work with. We also present about envi­ron­men­tal jus­tice, cli­mate and ener­gy poli­cies, or skills train­ings in any­thing from research­ing cor­po­ra­tions to stu­dent orga­niz­ing. We speak at col­lege cam­pus­es, activist con­fer­ences, and envi­ron­men­tal law con­fer­ences. We pro­vide “tox­ic tours” in Chester, PA and Bal­ti­more, MD, where our more exten­sive work has been. We also speak at kick-off “town hall” style meet­ings when con­cerned com­mu­ni­ty mem­bers bring us into town to speak about the con­se­quences of a pro­posed pol­luter. We’ve sparked the cre­ation of new grass­roots com­mu­ni­ty groups in sev­er­al com­mu­ni­ties, lead­ing to vic­to­ries in each. A list of some of the speak­ing top­ics that Mike has pre­sent­ed over the years, are avail­able at www.energyjusticenetwork.org/mikeewall#speaking.

Com­mu­ni­ty envi­ron­men­tal jus­tice field orga­niz­ing – Par­tic­u­lar­ly in areas between Vir­ginia and New Eng­land, we work hands-on with com­mu­ni­ty groups to get them the var­ied types of sup­port and train­ing they need.

Lim­it­ed legal and tech­ni­cal sup­port – Legal and tech­ni­cal sup­port is high­ly demand­ed by grass­roots groups, and there is nev­er enough expert sup­port to go around. We pro­vide lim­it­ed sup­port, help­ing peo­ple under­stand tech­ni­cal issues in per­mits, con­nect­ing them with experts where pos­si­ble. It’s rare that we’ll work on tech­ni­cal com­ments on per­mits, but we’ll do so in strate­gic cas­es. Rather than focus on appeal­ing per­mits, we aim to pro­vide sup­port in more strate­gic and afford­able ways. We often help activists with com­put­er issues, includ­ing estab­lish­ing and host­ing websites.

Local envi­ron­men­tal ordi­nances – We’re devel­op­ing a legal tool­box for grass­roots groups to use to stop pol­luters with strict local envi­ron­men­tal laws. Our founder, Mike Ewall, has been help­ing com­mu­ni­ties stop pol­luters with local ordi­nances since block­ing a statewide nuclear waste dump sit­ing effort in the mid-1990s, in part by get­ting coun­ties to adopt strict local ordi­nances reg­u­lat­ing the mul­ti-state nuclear dump. Since 2006, he has helped Penn­syl­va­nia com­mu­ni­ties stop pro­posed air pol­luters through the use of local ordi­nances adopt­ing the nation’s strictest local air pol­lu­tion laws. They’ve been suc­cess­ful so far in stop­ping three pro­posed cre­ma­to­ria, a haz­ardous waste incin­er­a­tor, and a trash and sludge to fuel plant in Penn­syl­va­nia. In 2019, two local clean air laws he wrote were passed tar­get­ing exist­ing facil­i­ties. One was the Bal­ti­more Clean Air Act, expect­ed to force the clo­sure of both the trash incin­er­a­tor that is Bal­ti­more’s largest air pol­luter, plus Cur­tis Bay Ener­gy, the nation’s largest med­ical waste incin­er­a­tor. The oth­er was a Clean Air Law passed by a town in Albany Coun­ty, NY, ban­ning the world’s largest cement cor­po­ra­tion from burn­ing bio­mass or waste next to a high school. He’s taught pop­u­lar Con­tin­u­ing Legal Edu­ca­tion (CLE) cours­es on this top­ic at pub­lic inter­est envi­ron­men­tal law con­fer­ences. See www.energyjusticenetwork.org/ordinances/ for more.

Ener­gy Jus­tice Com­mu­ni­ties Map – We’re build­ing an ambi­tious map­ping project akin to a “Face­book for grass­roots facil­i­ty fight­ers” (see www.ejmap.org/map/). Designed to meet infor­ma­tion­al and net­work­ing needs of grass­roots activists, this inter­ac­tive site tracks exist­ing, pro­posed, closed and defeat­ed dirty ener­gy and waste facil­i­ties, the cor­po­ra­tions behind them, and the peo­ple and groups fight­ing them. It allows grass­roots activists to share infor­ma­tion on them­selves, their group, and the pol­luters they’re fight­ing, to share doc­u­ments and to learn what pol­luters are in (or planned for) their area. Some groups are using the site to upload and share per­mit doc­u­ments on facil­i­ties they’re fight­ing. Key fea­tures / plans include:

• Advanced search fea­tures to enable peo­ple to find answers to ques­tions we often get asked, includ­ing ones as crazy as this one we were once asked: seek­ing a list of all Inter­na­tion­al Paper paper mills that burn tires and which have elec­tro­sta­t­ic pre­cip­i­ta­tors for pol­lu­tion controls.
• Con­nec­tions to relat­ed online resources, includ­ing CO₂ emis­sions data, renew­able ener­gy poten­tial maps, coal ash gen­er­a­tion, air qual­i­ty, and polit­i­cal infor­ma­tion (link­ing users from state pro­file pages to their fed­er­al leg­is­la­tors, their vot­ing records and cam­paign contributions).
• Inter­na­tion­al appli­ca­tion – while the data is U.S.-focused so far, it has coun­try-spe­cif­ic land­ing pages for inter­na­tion­al use.
• Sophis­ti­cat­ed envi­ron­men­tal jus­tice map­ping – we’re cur­rent­ly work­ing on pro­vid­ing the most detailed cen­sus demo­graph­ics lay­ers avail­able online, enabling users to eas­i­ly over­lay the lat­est race and class data down to the neigh­bor­hood lev­el to show how pol­luters tend to tar­get low-income and minor­i­ty com­mu­ni­ties. See JusticeMap.org for our pre­lim­i­nary work on this. These tools are now inte­grat­ed into our main map­ping site. Our Spa­tial Jus­tice Test allows users to instant­ly ana­lyze the race and class trends in an entire indus­try to doc­u­ment dis­par­i­ties at dis­tances from 0.1 miles to 250 miles.
• Cra­dle-to-grave indus­try map­ping – we aim to map not just ener­gy pro­duc­tion and waste facil­i­ties, but the entire chain of key ener­gy indus­tries, par­tic­u­lar­ly coal and nat­ur­al gas. For exam­ple, we’d like to map from the coal mines to the pow­er plants to the coal ash dumps, and from the frack­ing lease maps and wells to the pipelines and com­pres­sor sta­tions to the pow­er plants and LNG ter­mi­nals. On bio­mass, we’ve done the first project to show the log­ging asso­ci­at­ed with feed­ing a bio­mass incin­er­a­tor, in Burling­ton, VT – show­ing maps of the logged areas, and pho­tos of some of them. See: www.ejmap.org/map/mcneil/
• Ear­ly warn­ing sys­tem – we aim to design an email alert sys­tem that will warn sub­scribers in tar­get com­mu­ni­ties of pro­posed pol­lut­ing facil­i­ties in their area, as soon as we or oth­er users enter it into our sys­tem. This would include a high­ly-cus­tomiz­able Google News Alerts-style inter­face where peo­ple can sign up for updates when there is new infor­ma­tion on facil­i­ties in their area of con­cern, whether by geog­ra­phy, technology/fuel or com­pa­ny. Our goal is to get peo­ple up-to-speed in time to act and stop pro­posed pol­luters as ear­ly as pos­si­ble. Cur­rent­ly, we gath­er a lot of infor­ma­tion on pro­pos­als from indus­try infor­ma­tion sources and grass­roots word-of-mouth, but lack the capac­i­ty to alert every­one need­ing to know about these plans. Hav­ing an auto­mat­ed and crowd-sourced sys­tem will help make this possible.

Envi­ron­men­tal and Eco­nom­ic Jus­tice Maps – We can help you use JusticeMap.org to cre­ate your own envi­ron­men­tal jus­tice map for your com­mu­ni­ty or region. This allows you to visu­al­ize racial and class injus­tice. You can use the map online or print it. In addi­tion, you can do basic Geo­graph­i­cal Infor­ma­tion Sys­tems analy­sis — by com­par­ing who lives near a dirty facil­i­ty to who lives fur­ther away.

Pol­i­cy analysis/development – We dis­sect var­i­ous ener­gy, cli­mate and waste poli­cies for their impacts on the com­mu­ni­ties we serve. We’ve tes­ti­fied and com­ment­ed on var­i­ous poli­cies to close dam­ag­ing loop­holes. While our leg­isla­tive draft­ing and advo­ca­cy work has main­ly been focused at the local lev­el, we’ve also worked on some state and nation­al poli­cies, help­ing stop some par­tic­u­lar­ly dirty bills. Our grass­roots net­work has also devel­oped a plat­form out­lin­ing solu­tions on ener­gy and waste issues.

Stu­dent orga­niz­ing resources – We’ve long been involved in the stu­dent envi­ron­men­tal move­ment, work­ing to con­nect stu­dent activists with impact­ed com­mu­ni­ties. We’ve sup­port­ed (and fis­cal spon­sored) the nation­al Stu­dent Envi­ron­men­tal Action Coali­tion for many years since the 1990s, co-found­ed the Cam­pus Coali­tion Con­cern­ing Chester (C4) in 1996 and again in 2019, co-found­ed Ener­gy Action Coali­tion (now Pow­er Shift Net­work) in 2004, and have found­ed and man­aged state-wide stu­dent envi­ron­men­tal net­works in Penn­syl­va­nia and Ohio. We speak and table at the Stu­dents for Zero Waste con­fer­ences and pro­vide tox­ic tours of Chester to atten­dees. Our cam­pus orga­niz­ing resources include a Campus/Community Orga­niz­ing Guide on how stu­dents can work in sol­i­dar­i­ty with impact­ed com­mu­ni­ties. See: www.energyjusticenetwork.org/campus/

Envi­ron­men­tal activist cal­en­dar – We’ve devel­oped an activist event cal­en­dar where users can cen­tral­ize infor­ma­tion on upcom­ing events. It’s the only sys­tem that tracks events by type and geog­ra­phy, so that users can focus in on events most rel­e­vant to them, enabling every­thing from nation­al con­fer­ences to local town hall meet­ings to show up, with­out hav­ing to see the local meet­ings from areas that aren’t local to the user. See: www.ejmap.org/map/calendar

Action Alert sys­tem — Tired of using online peti­tions like change.org where you don’t get all of the con­tact info from those who sign? So were we, so we made our own sys­tem, which Ener­gy Jus­tice mem­ber groups can also use (join­ing is free!). You’ll get the full con­tact info from all who sign, and can tar­get state or nation­al leg­is­la­tors by dis­trict, or oth­er email tar­gets. Unlike change.org, the mes­sage will go to the tar­get, and direct from the sign­er’s email. Mes­sages and alerts can include links and images, too! Con­tact us if you’re interested.