In a pocket of neighborhoods in Northwest Atlanta, Black residents live among a cluster of industrial and transportation facilities that researchers fear are silently deteriorating the communities’ health. Scattered amid the tree-lined streets of Collier Heights and nearby residential communities, there are wastewater treatment plants, a train yard, a power plant, a concrete facility, and […]
Environmental Justice
Posted inClimate Change, Environmental Justice
A Flash Flood Submerged Parts of Atlanta. Here’s Why Black Neighborhoods Were the Hardest Hit.
Hunter Hills residents are all too familiar with floodwater creeping into their homes. But even longtime resident Michele McCord was taken aback when a severe thunderstorm brought a torrential downpour on Sept. 14, turning streets into streams that quickly flooded her basement. McCord was sitting at home that afternoon when water began rushing in. Within […]
Posted inCriminal Justice, Environmental Justice, Policing, Public Safety
Key Dates and Moments in Atlanta’s ‘Cop City’ Controversy
The latest chapter in Atlanta’s yearslong public safety training center saga begins this week and tensions at City Hall couldn’t be much higher. The Atlanta City Council is scheduled to vote on legislation that would transfer millions of taxpayer dollars to the Atlanta Police Foundation to pay for construction of the training center that opponents […]
Posted inClimate, Environmental Justice
Lead Cleanup Slowly Earns Trust With Help From Local Institutions
This article originally appeared on Inside Climate News. It is republished with permission. Sign up for their newsletter here. Cosmopolitan African Methodist Episcopal Church has long been a place of trust, a hive of social justice activity on Atlanta’s west side. A week after church members held an abortion rights march, volunteers gathered outside the stately house […]
Posted inClimate, Environmental Justice
For Westside Residents, Fear of Gentrification Turns Lead Remediation Into ‘Two-Edged Sword’
This article originally appeared on Inside Climate News. It is republished with permission. Sign up for their newsletter here. Shade’ Jones did not want the Environmental Protection Agency to test for lead contamination in the soil under her rented home in Atlanta’s English Avenue community. To her, the cleanup cuts both ways: it makes the area a […]
Posted inClimate, Environmental Justice
In Atlanta, Work on a New EPA Superfund Site Leaves Black Neighborhoods Wary, Fearing Gentrification
This article originally appeared on Inside Climate News. It is republished with permission. Sign up for their newsletter here. As a little boy, Byron Amos often played with dark, volcanic-like rocks that he found among the lush greenery that drapes the houses and yards in Vine City and that makes the historically Black neighborhood worthy of its […]
Posted inClimate, Environmental Justice
To Residents, Razing Atlanta Forest for ‘Cop City’ project is ‘an Act of Disinvestment’
In a last-ditch effort to please police leaders who’ve decried a decline in morale amongst officers, Atlanta officials may have approved a plan with a hurricane-sized hole. Atlanta, known as “the city in a forest,” is set to lose more than 100 acres of its South River Forest, the region’s most important landscape in protecting […]