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Allied members of the Campaign for Healthier Solutions, including farmworkers, environmental justice advocates, parents, and dollar store shoppers demonstrated outside 99 Cents Only Stores Headquarters and local stores across the state, urging the company to phase out chemicals of concern from its products. A delegation representing the campaign also delivered a letter requesting a meeting with 99 Cents Only Stores’ interim Chief Operations Officer Michael Simoncic and Director of Compliance Edgar Flores, to begin the work of drafting a corporate chemical management policy.

This April, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced a proposal to significantly reduce emissions of toxic and other harmful air pollution from chemical plants, with the goal of dramatically reducing the number of people who face elevated air toxics-related cancer risks. Coming Clean and the Environmental Justice Health Alliance (EJHA) both applauded this proposed rule, and encouraged members to submit public comments supporting its finalization. However, as our networks reviewed the details of this rule, and the list of facilities that it would actually regulate, many of our members soon realized that it wouldn’t impact all the facilities emitting cancer-causing chemicals in their neighborhoods.

With warmth and deep appreciation, we thank Richard Moore for his twelve years as National Co-Coordinator of the Environmental Justice Health Alliance for Chemical Policy Reform (EJHA). Richard will be stepping down from this role today, while continuing to serve as Co-Coordinator of Los Jardines Institute in Albuquerque, New Mexico, an affiliate member of EJHA. During his time as National Co-Coordinator, Richard helped secure historic commitments from the White House and federal agencies to advance environmental justice, the result of decades of dedicated bottom-up organizing rooted in solidarity and respect.

President Biden on Friday announced the creation of a White House Office of Environmental Justice, one of several actions to address the unequal burden that people of color carry from environmental hazards.“Every federal agency must take into account environmental and health impacts on communities and work to prevent those negative impacts,” Mr. Biden told a crowd of applauding activists gathered at a Rose Garden ceremony. “Environmental justice will be the mission of the entire government.” Richard Moore, a co-coordinator of the Los Jardines Institute in Albuquerque, N.M., and a co-chairman of the White House Environmental Justice Advisory Council, said the executive order was “answering a decades-long call to put environmental justice at the heart of federal policy.”

Wracked by some of the highest poverty rates in Albuquerque, New Mexico, the predominantly Chicano community of Mountain View, seven miles south of downtown, may seem an unlikely setting for a national wildlife refuge. The 11-square-mile area some 6,000 people call home also contains the state’s largest sewage treatment facility, several chemical manufacturing, asphalt, and concrete plants, sprawling auto salvage lots, bulk-fuel terminals, two Superfund sites and more than 40 other industrial sites regulated by the EPA. Not surprisingly, there are high levels of air pollution and groundwater contamination here.But thanks to decades of grassroots efforts, it is now also home to the first-ever national wildlife refuge being built, literally, from the ground up and in collaboration with the community it serves.