Image credit is given to NAACP North Carolina.
The North Carolina Environmental Justice Network will kick off our Annual Environmental Justice Summit on October 18, 2013 with a Rally To End Environmental Racism. Meet us in Raleigh on the Halifax Mall where our State legislature does its business. The rally will start at 9:00 AM on the Mall and we will march from the Mall over to North Carolina’s Department of Environment & Natural Resources (DENR) offices in the Archdale building at 512 N. Salisbury Street. We want DENR and our State to know that we are fed up with the policies and permits coming out of Raleigh, that give industries the okay to pollute our communities’ air and water, decrease property values, and destroy the peoples’ health, all in the name of “economic development.” Whose economies are being developed? The economies of communities that bear the burdens of pollution are not.
In a recent move that adds insult to injury, our state DENR recently turned down two federal grants that would have funded stream and wetland studies, and monitored water quality in areas where fracking is most likely to take place. The funding would have come at a time when major budget cuts to the Department will take place. Just this year, state lawmakers passed legislation that will result in a two million dollar cut to the Water Resources Division.
Please call the NCEJN office at (252) 826-3017 to let us know whether you plan to join us.
