Standing With Communities Burdened by Pollution

Communities of color and low-income communities disproportionately bear the burdens of pollution harms.  Florida’s Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) has failed to ensure non-discrimination in its permitting programs as required under federal law.

• Florida’s incinerators are overwhelmingly in Black and brown communities, threatening residents’ health and quality of life.  Touted as “clean energy,” waste incineration is anything but: it is an outdated practice that converts waste into toxic ash and air pollution.  Earthjustice is fighting back alongside its partner Florida Rising to challenge a polluting incinerator in a Latinx community in Miami and to enforce civil rights protections.
• Alongside American Friends Service Committee, Earthjustice exposed environmental hazards at the Homestead detention center for unaccompanied migrant children, located next to a Superfund site, and sued to compel the release of related records under the Freedom of Information Act.  In partnership with immigrant rights’ groups, Earthjustice demanded that EPA investigate the harmful use of chemical disinfectants at the Glades County Detention Center.
• Earthjustice is challenging EPA’s unconditional registration of the antibiotic Streptomycin as a pesticide for citrus without assessing health harms to farmworkers, impacts to endangered species, or the risk of accelerating antibiotic resistance.  Along with Natural Resources Defense Council and CBD, Earthjustice represents Farmworker Association of Florida, Farmworker Justice, Migrant Clinicians Network, Beyond Pesticides, and ECOSWF.

Supporting A Clean Energy Future in Puerto Rico

More than 1.1 million Puerto Ricans reside in Florida, making it the largest concentration of Puerto Ricans in the diaspora.  Puerto Rico is at the frontline of climate change, extreme weather, and air pollution.  Nearly half the population lives under the poverty line.

• In 2017, Hurricane Maria set off a ten-month blackout — the longest in U.S. history — resulting in the unprecedented loss of 3,000 lives.  This avoidable tragedy demonstrated the life and death consequences of public access to electricity.
• In 2019, Earthjustice challenged the Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority’s (PREPA) 20-year energy plan, which largely recreated the same old system, on behalf of Alliance for Renewable Energy Now.  The Puerto Rico Energy Bureau denied plans for new LNG terminals and gas conversions, ordered an aggressive renewables procurement plan, embraced the distributed solar and storage model, and ordered the creation of energy efficiency programs.
• In 2020, the Energy Bureau began a proceeding to set performance metrics for LUMA Energy, the private company now in charge of energy in Puerto Rico. Earthjustice is working with partners and clients to make sure that performance metrics ensure a reliable energy system prioritizing distributed rooftop solar over a continued dependency on fossil fuels.
• With almost 90% of food on the island being imported, Earthjustice is supporting local groups opposing large-scale industrial solar projects on prime agricultural land or preserves that are essential to food security.  Industrial solar farms have long-term impacts on soil and are unreliable in Puerto Rico, because they rely on vulnerable transmission lines across densely-forested areas.
• AES-Puerto Rico is the most polluting plant in Puerto Rico and the source of coal ash contamination that threatens public health.  Earthjustice is working toward the closure and cleanup of the plant.