Environmental Justice Community Action Network Archives

Environmental Justice Community Action Network

April 17, 2025

Groups move for disclosure of Chemours’ sealed PFAS documents

By Trisha Talton, Coastal Review

The chemical manufacturing company that has publicly touted its products, business strategies and chemistries in ad campaigns aimed at polishing its image will further harm North Carolinians if it is successful in keeping thousands of pages of documents sealed in court, environmental organizations argue. The Southern Environmental Law Center on Monday filed a court motion to intervene in a case brought against Chemours and its predecessor company DuPont, attorneys for which have asked the court to keep up to 21,000 pages of documents under seal.

The Southern Environmental Law Center on Monday filed a court motion to intervene in a case brought against Chemours and its predecessor company DuPont, attorneys for which have asked the court to keep up to 21,000 pages of documents under seal.

Those documents, SELC argues in its motion, “will help communities understand the harm the facility has caused, and will continue to cause, to their own health, their property values, and even the lives of future generations.” The motion was filed on behalf of Cape Fear River Watch, the North Carolina Coastal Federation, which publishes Coastal Review, and the Environmental Justice Community Action Network in U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of North Carolina.

In February, attorneys for Chemours and DuPont requested the court keep from public view what they say are mostly internal communications between company employees about “non-public facts” that pertain, in part, to chemical production and is therefore “competitively sensitive.”

March 25, 2025

As EPA shutters environmental justice offices, rural Americans at risk

By Julia Tilton / The Daily Yonder

Environmental justice efforts at the 10 US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) regional offices have stopped and employees have been placed on administrative leave, per an announcement from EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin earlier this month. Former EPA employees involved with environmental justice work across the country say rural communities will suffer as a result.

Before being shuttered in early March, the EPA’s environmental justice arm was aimed at making sure communities were being treated fairly and receiving their due protection under the Clean Air Act and Clean Water Act. Zealan Hoover, former senior advisor to the EPA administrator under the Biden administration, told the Daily Yonder that this work had big implications for rural places since there are pollution concerns in rural areas across the country.

“EPA was very focused on making sure that not just on the regulatory side, but also on the investment side, we were pushing resources into rural communities,” said Hoover.

According to Hoover, most of the pollution challenges the US faces are not new. He said that the employees—now on leave—who staffed the EPA’s regional environmental justice offices were deeply knowledgeable on the issues affecting communities in their regions; issues which can go on for decades. Hoover said he worries about recent changes to the agency under the Trump administration, which also include a series of deregulatory actions and a proposed 65% budget cut.

“I trust that the great folks at EPA who remain will still try valiantly to fill those gaps, but the reality is that this administration is pushing to cut EPA’s budget, pushing employees to leave, and that’s going to restrict EPA’s ability to help rural communities tackle their most significant pollution challenges,” Hoover said.