Negro Environmentalist Association?

- - As per Harry Reid

Will EPA & OMB Ignore & Abuse Blacks With Fly Ash?

While OMB Regulatory Czar* Cass Sunstein, right, is meeting with coal industry representatives and evildently delaying EPA's regulations on coal ash, Blacks are once again left out of the business side and literally dumped on, on the pollution side. In other words, the coal ash from the Kingston, Tennessee spill disaster in Debember 2008 is being shipped to a black community in a different state, while contracts for environmentally friendly reuses seem to end up everywhere except with black contractors. We are confident that EPA Administrator Lisa Perez Jackson, left, is promoting environmental and economic justice in the deliberations with OMB, which is charged with reviewing all proposed regulations.

Congresswoman Eddie Bernice Johnson, right, is chairwoman of the House committee with jurisdiction over the TVA spill/fly ash issue. The House Infrastructure Committee Subcommittee on Water Resources and Environment held the first oversight hearing on the spill on March 31, 2009. Johnson held a second hearing a month later on April 30, 2009. In fact, the entire Congressional Black Caucus should get involved in this issue and monitor the promulgation of this regulation. EPA, OMB & TVA are required to consider environmental injustice under Presidential Executive Order 12898 on Environmental Justice. To date, such consideration has been given short shrift.


Fly ash from coal-fired power plants will have to be ruled a hazardous waste. AAEA believes there should be exemptions for positive reuse of fly ash, such as producing cement and concrete. AAEA promoted keeping the fly ash on site and constructing a cement/concrete production facility there to process the contaminated ash. Moreover, minority contractors should be included in reuse production. The Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) is spending $1 billion on cleanup/export and a fair share of the clean up should go to minority vendors. After all, the toxic ash is being transported from Tennessee to a black community in Alabama. AAEA opposed the waste being shipped to that landfill, but since it is already happening, the blacks in that area should be properly compensated, or even relocated. It is simply unconscionable that blacks will get none of the business but most of the pollution. This is the height of environmental injustice. (WSJ, 1/9/10)

* Directs the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs within the White House Office of Management and Budget.

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Jerome Ringo Joins GreenPort

Jerome Ringo, left, president of the Apollo Alliance since 2005, has accepted the position as senior executive for global strategies with GreenPort, a private company that focuses on establishing sustainable “green” ports around the world. Ringo will continue as a member of the board of directors at the Apollo Alliance.

Our very first blog article in March 2005 was about Jerome Ringo when he was elected Chairman of the Board of the National Wildlife Federation.

Ringo has been a dedicated champion of environmental justice and vocal clean energy advocate. He began his career working in Louisiana’s petrochemical industry, where for more than a decade he was an active union member and worked with fellow members to secure a safe work environment and quality jobs. As he began to observe the negative impacts of the industry’s pollution on local communities – primarily poor, minority communities – Jerome began organizing community and environmental justice groups. His experience organizing environmental and labor communities and his drive to further diversify the environmental movement helped solidify his lifelong dedication to environmental and social justice. (Apollo Alliance)

AAEA Is The Canary in the Coal Mine

AAEA opposes mountaintop removal, pictured at left, because it destroys streams and threatens human health. AAEA supports African American ownership of coal mines (even in a global warming world), but using the less efficient, less safe and more labor intensive mine shaft method of extracting coal. Blacks do not own any coal mines in the United States even though 50 percent of the nation's electricity is produced with coal.

West Virginia's senior senator Robert Byrd has it wrong in his belief that:

"...mountaintop removal allows companies to employ fewer miners to produce the same amount of coal."

We need more employment in West Virginia, not less. We also need African American ownership of coal mines. And even though shaft mining, pictured at right, is more dangerous, numerous workers are willing to take that chance. We should have the strictest safety standards for coal mine workers and all coal mining should be shaft mining. We need to ban mountaintop coal mining that pollutes streams and threatens human health and AAEA will be working actively to do so. EPA should reject the Spruce No. 1 mine in Logan County, West Virginia. Mingo Logan Mining Company, a subsidiary of Arch Coal, which owns the mine, should be required to shift to shaft mining and should recruit a 49 percent minority partner to extract the coal.

A recent study by 12 environmental scientists, headed by the University of Maryland, supports AAEA's position that the scientific evidence shows that mountaintop coal mining destroys streams and threatens human health. The scientific team also concludes that the evidence is so strong the government should stop granting new permits for mountaintop removal. (The Bellinghead Herald, 1/7/10)

Sonja Ebron: blackEnergy

Sonja Ebron, left, is the chief executive officer of blackEnergy, based in Atlanta, Georgia. blackEnergy is a national distributor of energy conservation products and an organizer of energy buying groups that help people use their utility bills to support Black communities.

Sonja has a PhD electrical engineering and is a former college professor with a background in utilities. Ms. Magazine described her as a change agent for "the belief that environmental and social consciousness can create satisfaction in the soul and the wallet."

Sonja is the recipient of the Atlanta Business League's 2007 Super Tuesday Award for Non-Traditional Business, and she was named a 2008 SuperWoman by the Atlanta Tribune.

Sonja is a longtime friend of AAEA and we salute her work with blackEnergy.

Black-On-Black Murder Rate Dropping All Over America

Washington, DC: 143 killings in 2009, the lowest tally in the nation's capital since 1966.

San Francisco: 45 homicides in 2009, its lowest in 48 years.

Los Angeles: 314 homicides in 2009 -- the lowest number of killings since 1967.

Chicago: 453 homicides in 2009, down 11% from 509 over the same period in 2008.

New York: 466 homicides in 2009, down 10.9% from 2008.

Dallas: 166 homicides, the lowest number of killings there since 1967, when the city registered 133.

"It is a crisis that youth today think they have more in common with Scarface than with Martin Luther King Jr." -- Al Sharpton

(WSJ, 1/7/10)

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Coal Ash From Kingston, Tenn To Perry County, Alabama

On Dec. 22, 2008 a disaster of historic proportions happened in Kingston, Tennessee when a pond containing several million cubic yards of coal ash burst into the Emory River.

That ash is now being shipped by the train load to Perry County, Alabama, an Environmental Justice Community.

It is then mixed with household garbage and the leachate trucked to nearby Marion Alabama. Listen to these citizens describe the horrible living conditions.