Officials with the federal Environmental Protection Agency and the U.S. Forest Service plan to visit a Baltimore middle school along with city officials on Tuesday to see work being done to confront environmental justice challenges. The term environmental justice applies to efforts to ensure that environmental laws and regulations are applied equally to all areas, regardless of the income, race or other factors.
Green efforts at the school as well as projects to reduce stormwater runoff are among those that federal and city officials will review. Runoff is a growing problem in the Chesapeake Bay watershed where stormwater carries pollutants into waterways and the bay, harming water quality.
The United States Environmental Protection Agency
defines Environmental Justice as follows:
Environmental Justice is the fair treatment and meaningful involvement of all people regardless of race, color, national origin, or income with respect to the development, implementation, and enforcement of environmental laws, regulations, and policies. EPA has this goal for all communities and persons across this Nation [sic]. It will be achieved when everyone enjoys the same degree of protection from environmental and health hazards and equal access to the decision-making process to have a healthy environment in which to live, learn, and work.
This point of view overlooks a basic fact of human nature; poor people will take greater risks with their life and health than the wealthy in an attempt to make ends meet and become wealthy. You don't see many billionaires working to make their money crabbing on the Bering Sea in winter (I have Deadliest Catch on in the background right now). The poor are and should be more willing to take on the challenges of living. All evidence suggests, that in the absence of government intervention, they are. Environment Justice is an excuse for government and the NGOs that feed of it's leavings to intervene in the free market, nothing more.
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