Maria Gunnoe’s property has flooded over seven times in the past sixteen years. These floods irreplaceably damaged her ancestral home and contaminated her family’s main source of drinking water. This land was not prone to floods in the half-century after her grandfather purchased the property in the 1950s.

What changed?

In 2000, the land behind Maria’s home was forever altered. A coal company opened a mine on the ridge above her home, using mountaintop removal mining methods. These processes begin with clear-cutting the trees and blasting up to 800 feet off the top of a mountain to access coal seams. With no vegetation, the cleared steep slopes quickly funnel rainfall downhill.

Maria Gunnoe lives below this massive valley fill containing toxic debris. Janet Fout

That makes valley communities, such as the one Maria lives in in Boone County, West Virginia, susceptible to flash floods. Oftentimes, the floods are not purely rainwater. Coal companies dump mountaintop rubble—frequently containing toxic debris—into adjacent valleys. When rainwater runs down the slopes, it mixes with debris and creates a toxic sludge.

As tragic as Maria’s story is, she is not the only one facing devastating consequence of fossil fuel production and management. This year alone, multiple fossil fuel accidents have threatened communities neighboring fossil fuel production and transportation sites.

On June 3rd, a train carrying crude oil derailed near Mosier, Oregon, sparking a massive fire that burned for 14 hours. On July 11th, a fire set off a series of explosions in an oil field in San Juan County, New Mexico. Over fifty-five neighboring residents evacuated and the nearby highway 550 temporarily closed.

Such events are part of a long-standing trend. Fossil fuel companies have harmed local communities for a long time. Why does this continue to happen? These companies enjoy political favors. Fossil fuel companies aren’t forced to take full responsibility for the products they sell. And they often avoid the consequences of their accidents.

The environmental degradation in West Virginia, Oregon, and New Mexico are all linked to the privileged position of fossil fuel companies and under-regulation of their operations.

In 2008, the Bush Administration approved a law loosening regulation on the coal industry. This change made it easier for coal companies to dump toxic rubble into valleys adjacent to mining operations. More toxic rubble increases chances of the toxic sludge flooding that destroyed Maria’s property. An article posted in the Los Angeles Times reveals that “88 cents out of every dollar” of the coal industry’s campaign contributions went to GOP candidates or organizations in the 2000 election that placed George W. Bush into office. These political favors likely resulted in the administration’s push to loosen coal regulation.

Locals of Mosier, Oregon, anticipated the danger and opposed crude oil transport two years prior to the derailment on Friday, June 3, 2016. Columbia River Keeper

Mosier too was subject to loose regulation, likely due to the influence of the fossil fuel industry’s campaign contributions in Oregon. Despite local opposition to crude oil transport through Mosier two years prior to the derailment, these activities were permitted at the federal level. In 2014, Congressman Greg Walden took the most fossil fuel money of Oregon’s elected officials. He publically supported oil trains as a source of family wage jobs and favored improving safety standards rather than shutting them down.

In San Juan, the wells drilled in the oil field were improperly analyzed for impacts and safety concerns. Governor Martinez of New Mexico was recently implicated in a scandal after taking almost a million dollars in campaign donations from the oil and gas industry. In 2013, a story in the Albuquerque Journal revealed that Martinez’s administration allowed wells to operate without proper safety inspections.

The fire at San Juan highlights the failure to ensure proper safety conditions for nearby residents. Kendra Pinto

The coal, oil, and gas industries wield an immense amount of political clout thanks to their deep pockets. In fact, big oil, gas, and coal accounted for one-fifth of all political donations in 2014 congressional races nationally.

Fossil fuel money inhibits politicians from enacting legislation that will strengthen environmental regulations to protect our country’s most vulnerable people. It’s time to hold our representatives accountable. Your help is needed.

We can pressure our politicians to protect the rights of those affected by fossil fuel production and management. We can follow in the footsteps of a Boston activist volunteer group called 350 Mass Action. This group launched the “Clean Money for Climate Pledge,” which is the first campaign of its type to promote transparency and accountability of Massachusetts’s politicians. 350 Mass Action puts pressure on politicians to pledge to refuse money from fossil fuel companies.

We can recognize the freedom that fossil fuels permit us, such as heating our homes, fueling our cars, and providing our electricity. Yet, we must also acknowledge that fossil fuels impose a cost on some of the nation’s most disadvantaged communities. Our country is only as strong as our respect for the rights of the minority.

Thanks to this campaign, politicians can proudly say that they are not affiliated with fossil fuel companies. It is time to reveal the insidious damage that they impose upon communities and bring out stories of individuals—like Maria— who have been harmed by big oil, gas, and coal.

We must understand our role in setting expectations for our politicians. It is up to us to pressure them to refuse financial support from polluting fossil fuel companies. The climate pledge is currently taking place in Massachusetts, which is a left-leaning state that is well poised to lead this change.

How can you get involved?

Pressure your local representative to take the pledge. Write to them and tell them about Maria Gunnoe’s story and about other communities harmed by fossil fuel production. Help rebrand fossil fuels as undesirable.

Encourage the climate pledge in your own state and spread 350 Mass Action’s strategy. Contact your local representative with a list of Massachusetts’ candidates who have already signed the pledge. Show them that candidates are taking the threat of fossil fuels seriously and are taking steps to sever financial interests with unethical companies.

If you live in Massachusetts, write to candidates running as local representatives who have not yet taken the pledge. To find a list follow this link.

Help out individuals like Maria. Spread the pledge to stop the fossil fuel industries from influencing our decision makers.

Out of sight and out of mind for most city-dwellers, roof tops comprise one third of a city’s total horizontal surface area. Roof gardens like Fenway Farms are making these forgotten spaces the front line for solving some of Boston’s urban environmental problems.

Fenway Park’s green roof uses the natural capacities of plants and soil to sequester carbon, reduce air pollution, and increase local biodiversity and wildlife populations.  In addition, its 10-inch deep layer of soil can reduce stormwater runoff by up to 80% and improve water quality.

Fenway Farms grows various types of produce on top of Fenway Park. Green Roofs.

Green roofs also have positive implications for energy use. Acting as an additional layer of insulation, roof gardens keep buildings warmer in winter and cooler in summer, and can contribute to a reduction of city temperatures by weakening the urban heat island effect.  In addition, roof gardens hold a lot of potential for urban agriculture. In fact, Fenway’s basketball court-sized garden produces a whopping 4,000 pounds of vegetables for the park and local community each year. Proactively using roof spaces for food production could help provide relief for metro area residents who are food insecure.

If Boston is going to be a green, sustainable city, maximizing the positive contributions of its roof tops should be a top priority. To achieve this end, we must come together and demand that Boston enact legislation that mandates the creation of green roofs on all new construction projects.

Boston is not be the first city to consider such legislation. In 2009, Toronto passed a municipal bylaw requiring roof gardens on all new construction. France and San Francisco followed suit with their own green infrastructure requirements in 2015 and 2016, respectively.

Luckily, Boston city government is already familiar with the benefits of green roofs. In 2009, the mayor’s office undertook a comprehensive study of optimal green roof design for the Boston climate, and even built a 400-square-foot demonstration roof garden on top of City Hall. Yet, a comparison of that garden to the 35,000-square-foot green roof on Toronto City Hall clearly shows that Boston is lagging behind other sustainable cities.

Toronto City Hall’s public roof garden. Toronto Star.

The main hurdle to scaling up green roofs is their construction and maintenance costs. An extensive garden, with simple grass-like vegetation and a thin layer of soil can cost $10-50 per square foot, while an intensive garden that supports large vegetation and a deep layer of soil can cost up to $200 per square foot and tends to have greater irrigation needs. Of course, these initial upfront costs can have their payoffs: the intensive gardens tend to be most effective in stormwater mitigation and building insulation.

If Boston is going to mandate a green roof requirement — and they should — fairness dictates that they also provide incentives to make it easier for those trying to comply. Incentives will also help to ensure the success of Boston’s green roof program in the same way that similar incentives stimulated the growth of solar technology.  In fact, back in 2009 Boston City Council considered a green roof subsidy based on New York City’s existing program, which provided a $5 per square foot rebate up to $100,000 per project; however, the proposal did not pass. Now in 2016, this incentive program is long overdue.

It is clear that action needs to be taken by our city government to make green roofs an integral part of our city. We must act now.

What YOU Can Do:

1.     Contact Your Representatives

Call or send an email to Boston City Council and tell them you want to see green roofs on new construction projects and existing buildings, and that you support financial incentives for green roof projects.

2.     Get Involved

Organizations around the city are teaching people how nature-inspired solutions, like green roofs, can solve modern day problems. Reach out to groups like Green City Growers and Biomimicry New England to help out with a green infrastructure project in your community.

As Mayor Menino once said, “today, more than ever, we have to be creative and innovative when it comes to environmental issues and energy efficiency.” Requirements and financial incentives for green roofs will encourage the rapid and innovative change necessary to help transform the City of Boston into a model sustainable city. A municipal bylaw requiring green roofs on new buildings, paired with financial support, is the push that designers need to begin thinking of ecosystem benefits as an essential goal in their designs, and community engagement and political participation is can make this change happen.

Source: Sanctuary Friends Foundation of the Florida Keys.

Do you have a plastic bag monster living in your house? For most of us, they reside in our kitchen cupboards, cabinets, or closets. They threaten to entangle us every time we reach in, feeding them our recent haul of grocery bags. But, the days of plastic bag monsters might be numbered if you live in Massachusetts.

Massachusetts could join California and Hawaii in statewide plastic bag bans starting August 1, 2018.

A ban on plastic bags is what Massachusetts needs. Plastic bags can cause costly damages and harmful environmental impacts. It’s also hard to do the right thing as a consumer when disposing of a plastic bag.

Only about 5% of plastic bags are actually recycled, according to the Environmental Protection Agency. We keep these plastic bag monsters in our homes and then bring them all the way to grocery store “recycling” bins since they are not accepted at curbside recycling. In reality though, they often are not recycled because there is a minuscule market for recycled plastic bags. The plastic is collected and compacted into large blocks of plastic, and then land filled.

But if you don’t bring your plastic bags to these “recycling” bins, they may end up polluting our oceans and environment. Typical single use plastic bags are hard to control because they are so lightweight. They easily blow off of landfills and garbage trucks.

Plastic bags are the 5^th most prevalent debris found on our Massachusetts coastline. These statistics are not so surprising given that we use 100 billion plastic bags every year in the United States.

Source: Mediterranean Association to Save the Sea Turtles

Plastic debris leads to the death of more than 100,000 marine creatures every year. Sea turtles are especially at risk around Massachusetts because five species of juvenile sea turtles come north to feed before returning to tropical southern waters. Sea turtles choke on plastic bags, mistaking them for jellyfish, their main food source.

Given the option of using reusable bags or biodegradable and recyclable paper bags, do we even need the “paper or plastic” choice?

Bill H.4168, the Plastic Bag Reduction Act, would implement a statewide ban of plastic bags and institute a ten-cent fee on recycled paper bags. This ban would only apply to large stores, like grocery stores, or chains with three or more locations, like fast food restaurants.

Right now, the bill is stuck in the House Ways & Means Committee, where it has been since April. This is the fate that befell a similar bill in 2013, which never made it out of committee. But, the outcome could be different this year.

California paved the way for statewide bag bans and has shown that businesses are supportive of one sweeping law. A major driving force behind California’s statewide ban was the confusion caused by 127 different municipal plastic bag laws. Businesses in California actually supported a ban because a ‘patchwork’ municipal approach to regulating plastic bags was more harmful to their business. Massachusetts has similarly become a ‘patchwork’ of regulations.

Jack Clarke, director of public policy at Mass Audubon, told the Boston Globe, “We’re either going to eventually have 351 municipal restrictions on bags, or we’ll have the commonwealth do one standard that all businesses and industries can match.”

Local bag laws in Massachusetts have been gaining momentum over the past three years, making this current bill’s future more promising than its predecessor. In the last three years, there has been almost an eight-fold increase in the number of municipalities passing bans or fees on plastic bags. This year, Cambridge was the largest city on the East Coast to ban plastic bags. Currently, the city of Boston currently has a committee working towards a plastic bag ban.

You can help keep up this momentum and push the Plastic Bag Reduction Act (H.4168)  forward. Similar to 2013, the powerful Plastics Industry is lobbying against the current plastic bag ban bill in Massachusetts. We need to show committee members that this bill has more people lobbying for it than against it so it can finally move past the House Ways & Means Committee.

Contact your local representative and ask them to express their support for the bill to Brian S. Dempsey, the House Ways & Means Committee Chair, Stephen Kulik, Vice Chair, and Benjamin Swan, Assistant Vice Chair. For a list of talking points, here is a fact sheet by the Massachusetts Chapter of the Sierra Club on the impact of plastic bags. Not sure who your Massachusetts House or Senate representative is? Search for them here.

With your help, the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Farm to School grant program could soon see its funding double.

The Senate and House of Representatives are both reviewing versions of a bill to reauthorize and amend the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act of 2010. Fortunately, both versions would increase funding for Farm to School grants from the current $5 million to $10 million annually. Unfortunately, the fate of these bills is not assured. If Congress does not act by January, funding will remain unchanged.

Allowing Farm to School funding to remain stagnant would be a disservice to communities around the nation. Farm to school provides schoolchildren with more locally grown, fresh produce in their cafeterias, benefitting students, schools, farmers, and the community. Fruit and vegetable consumption among students increased up to 1.3 servings per day when farm to school was implemented. Moreover, for every $1 spent on farm to school, $2.16 is generated in local economic activity, because local farmers are more likely to spend the money they receive locally.

Demand for Farm to School grants is already more than five times higher than available funding, so the increase in funding is desperately needed. Along with the funding increase, both versions of the bill also propose other improvements to Farm to School. These include increasing tribal schools’ access to culturally appropriate food grown locally by tribal producers and expanding the definition of those eligible for grants to include summer, preschool, and afterschool programs.

Although the changes proposed for the Farm to School program are similar, the bills currently proposed by Congress contain some important differences. The House version of the bill seeks to weaken many of the beneficial changes made by the Healthy, Hunger Free Kids Act. If you want to ensure that all of America’s children grow up healthy, show your support for the Senate version of the bill. Here’s a quick breakdown of the two bills:

Both bills propose changes to the Fresh Fruit and Vegetable Program. The Senate version creates a hardship exemption, allowing schools that are unable to acquire or store fresh fruit and vegetables to use canned, dried, and frozen alternatives temporarily. These alternatives will gradually be phased out over the course of 4 years, at which point all of the produce provided through the program will be fresh.

The House version, on the other hand, would make highly contested change to the Fresh Fruit and Vegetable Program. It proposes striking the word “Fresh” from the Fresh Fruit and Vegetable program, allowing schools to use all forms of fruits and vegetables, including canned, frozen, and dried. These changes would be permanent, unlike the temporary exemptions granted by the Senate version.

Another significant drawback of the House version of the bill is that it would drastically reduce the number of schools that are able to provide free meals to all their students. The Community Eligibility Provision, which was created under the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act, allows schools in areas where more than 40% of students qualify for federally reimbursable meals to serve meals free for all students. The House bill proposes to raise this to 60%. The Senate version does not propose any changes to this provision, which has been considered successful in reducing hunger, paperwork, and stigma.

Both bills are already more than a year behind schedule. Congress is supposed to create a Child Nutrition Act Reauthorization (CNR) every five years and the last one, the Healthy, Hunger Free Kids Act of 2010, expired on September 30, 2015.

If Congress cannot agree on one version of the bill, farm to school funding will remain stagnant. Debbie Stabenow, a Democrat from Michigan and ranking member of the Senate Agricultural Committee, warns that, “If folks do try to go backwards, there just won’t be a bill, I can assure you.”

What can you do to ensure that the bill is passed?

Email or call your Senators or Representative to let them know you support the Senate version of the bill, the Improving Child Nutrition Integrity and Access Act of 2016 (S.3136). Find contact information for your Senators here and for your Representative here.

Make your voice heard and support increased funding for farm to school today!

In the Midwestern United States, two communities within a day’s drive of each other tell an important story.

Both communities are rural, marginalized, and often forgotten despite decades of resilience. One is a historic black community where 44 percent of the residents live below the US poverty line. The other community is in an American Indian Nation where poverty rates reach 53 percent. Both have basic infrastructure: all buildings are connected by miles of pipe which carry away human waste and carry in water to residents.

Yet, in the black community, people note: “We don’t drink the water here. We buy that at the store.” Three young girls play in the yard of their mobile home, while a wet well overflows with human feces down the road. Without adequate water and sewage systems, businesses can’t develop here– the closest place to buy any food, or water, is miles away at a gas station.

In the American Indian Nation, the story is a little different. Much of their system is newly constructed and generally well maintained. They haven’t experienced notable back-ups in years. The residents, and the tourists, drink the water without any complaints. In this town, which is the largest in the Nation, there’s a gas station, a grocery store, a casino resort, and a few restaurants.

How did this American Indian Nation build such strong infrastructure? One major reason is that these Nations have a support system for doing so.

This support system consists of two primary components. First, a subset of the federal Indian Health Service provides technical assistance to Native Nations across the United States. A certified civil engineer guides and trains tribal employees on how to best operate their waste water and water systems. The IHS also financially assists communities so that they can secure the funds to build and maintain their systems. Second, the US EPA works government-to-government with tribes and provides technical and managerial assistance. For example, when it comes to water, this means that EPA provides lab training to tribal employees so that they can effectively test water to make sure that the water is safe for consumption.

This support system for Native Nations is largely rooted in the federal trust responsibility between the US government and Native Nations, which holds the US federal government legally responsible for protecting tribal treaty rights, lands, assets, and resources . For centuries, Native Nations have been fighting for these protections, and while there is still a lot of work to be done, these laws and treaties have established systems of support for Nations to rebuild themselves. “The generally accepted premise of government responsibility to Native Americans is based upon the destruction of Native American civilization and the poverty and disease which followed in its wake,” says Holly T. Kuschell, professor of law at University of Michigan.

But these systems of support do not exist for rural black communities. Even though they have experienced generations of systematic racism rooted in slavery and the attempted destruction of African culture, these communities are expected to develop infrastructure without such support. They are expected to employ highly-trained operators and secure funding themselves. If their water quality does not meet federal standards, communities will receive a letter stating that they are in violation rather than a helping hand to guide them in the right direction.

We need better support black rural communities that are struggling to build and maintain the basic infrastructure their communities need. The precedent already exists with support for Native Nations, and while these efforts could use improvement, we can use them as a framework for action to support predominately black rural communities. Moving forward, we can make strides to establish these systems of support through the following actions:

1. Throughout the United States, we need to recognize that many rural communities, largely communities of color, are still working to build and rebuild their public infrastructure. Too often, individuals make generalizations by saying, “in the US, you can turn a tap and get clean water.” But this is simply not true, and we need to stop pretending it is.

2. At the same time, we need to call on federal and non-profit organizations to be more intentional about who gets funding and technical assistance– they can’t be colorblind. USDA Rural Development provides over 1.5 billion dollars in loans and grants to support the waste water and water systems of rural communities each year. Further, only a few organizations, like Rural Community Assistance Partnership, provide technical assistance to communities in need. However, the only requirement for a community to receive funding or assistance is that they must be classified as rural. We need to call on governmental agencies and organizations to provide more intentional financial and technical support to rural black communities in the US.

3. Further, establishing systems of support for basic infrastructure is a step forward, but we also need to shift perspectives. Today, many people in the US are quick to blame rural communities of color for poverty, crime, and poor infrastructure without recognizing the history of injustice that has led to these circumstances. Instead, it is important to see the other side of the coin. These rural communities of color have persevered through years of discrimination and racial exodus, and it is time we support their visions, hear their voices, recognize their resilience.

A singular wind farm can consist of as many as 4000 wind turbines alone!

Dear Proponents of Wind Energy,

Does a society that runs on “clean” renewable energy seem like a dream of the distant future? In the United States, the rise of wind energy may be just around the corner. This year, the U.S. Department of Energy estimated that the amount of power produced by the wind industry will increase by over 350% in the next thirty-five years. This transition is only possible thanks to the adoption of President Obama’s Clean Power Plan in August. The plan, which combats global warming, will reduce U.S. carbon dioxide emissions by 32% by 2030. Over half of these reductions will come from the replacement of fossil fuel power plants with carbon-free wind farms.

Unfortunately, the wind turbines that will lead this energy revolution may not be as “green” as you may think. Proper functioning of the wind turbine’s engine depends upon a rare earth element (REE) known as neodymium, a special metal with permanent magnetic properties. Each medium-sized (two megawatt) wind turbine contains approximately 800 pounds of neodymium! In perspective, if all 49,000 of the existing wind turbines in the U.S. were medium-sized, they would contain nearly 40 million pounds of neodymium, roughly 200 times greater than annual U.S. neodymium consumption!

The mining and processing of neodymium is highly destructive. It and other rare earth elements are only found in low concentrations, and often in the presence of radioactive minerals. That means mining and processing them poses significant challenges. Manufacturers use dangerous chemicals such as sulfuric acid to separate miniscule specks of neodymium from mined radioactive ores. The process creates enormous amounts of waste that range from discarded rock and leftover acid to radioactive material. For example, mining just one ton of neodymium generates one ton of radioactive waste. As a result, the “green” U.S. wind industry creates more radioactive waste than the U.S. nuclear power industry in a single year.

What is happening to this dangerous waste? Unfortunately, most of it is dumped directly into the environment – just not in the U.S. This is because 86% of REEs come from China, a country whose enforcement of environmental and human health regulations is often non-existent. China’s dominance in the REE market is no accident; in the late 1990s, they artificially lowered REE prices for such an extended period that REE mining in other countries, including the United States, went bankrupt. While the U.S. temporarily reopened one of its REE mines in 2011, it went bankrupt earlier this year, and U.S. wind turbine producers remain entirely dependent upon Chinese neodymium manufacturers.

In northern China’s Baotou region, where most REE mining takes place, seven million tons of radioactive, acidic waste (including discarded rock, ores, radioactive materials, and acids) are annually dumped directly into a polluted “waste” lake that is already 100 feet high. This toxic waste has destroyed the lives of local farming communities that border the REE mining and processing facilities, because crops and livestock are unable to survive in such a polluted environment. Humans are also affected. Villagers say that their teeth are falling out and they have unusual skin and respiratory diseases.  Childhood cancer is especially high in these regions. These local impacts are not entirely surprising, given that the lake’s radiation levels are ten times higher than in unaffected areas.

The wind industry advertises itself as “green,” and compared to fossil fuel energy producers, it is. For the wind industry to be truly environmentally friendly in all respects, however, it cannot simply outsource American environmental problems to poor, vulnerable communities in China. If we do not act now, the exponential growth of the U.S. wind industry will result in an expansion of neodymium mining, and the poisoning of many more local communities.

As the largest U.S. wind turbine producer, General Electric (GE) is a key player who can redefine U.S. wind turbine manufacturing processes. The company has already identified a solution to alleviate the environmental costs of REE mining. In 2011, GE announced that REE use could be decreased by as much as 80% by simply altering wasteful manufacturing processes. Indeed, the GE Sustainability website describes the company’s commitment to minimize the environmental impacts associated with the entire life cycle of its products, from mining and manufacture to use and disposal. Despite these claims, GE has yet to substantially reduce REEs in its wind turbines, and has not identified the issue as a high priority.

By applying substantial public pressure to companies like GE, you as a consumer have the power to influence the future of the wind industry. Let GE know that consumers care about the environmental damages associated with wind turbines. Flood GE’s social media (@generalelectric on Twitter, or comment on their Facebook page here)! Spread the word to other consumers with hashtags like #REEwillcleanupwindenergy. And contact General Electrics’ communication and media executives (Shaun Wiggins and Kristine Fallon) in the Energy and Power departments. Let GE know that it must target REE reductions in wind turbines as a top priority. We want truly green wind products!

In the upcoming years, the U.S. wind industry will play an essential role in the battle against climate change. In doing so, however, it risks pouring millions of tons of toxic, radioactive waste into the environment. Tell GE today that #REEwillnotoutsourcepollution. Now is the time to reduce our REE consumption and its waste. Now is the time to clean up wind energy.