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As an environmental justice worker, I’ve developed a deep appreciation for Juneteenth as an opportunity to celebrate Black freedom struggles and their connection to diverse ecologies. Today, I can’t help but reflect on the often overlooked yet rich and complex relationships enslaved people had with their local environments as landscapes that both enforced captivity and provided opportunities for liberation. The harrowing realities of enslaved people cultivating cash crops in brutal plantations were also filled with spaces where enslaved people developed intimate knowledge of local ecologies to survive, assert their humanity, and establish cultural practices. Enslaved people did this every day: from foraging for food and gardening to fortify their meager diets, to developing herbal medicinal knowledge, and creating spiritualities tied to their local ecologies. Thousands of enslaved people used this critical knowledge of the environment to brave the wilderness, run away, and self-emancipate.

This complex relationship to the environment did not stop after emancipation. Descendants of enslaved people continue to face challenges from the legacy of slavery and the Jim Crow laws that followed, and this has lasting impacts on their relationship to the environment. Persistent inequality in access to safe and healthy environments, gaps in environmental services such as access to clean, treated water, and the disproportionate effects of environmental disasters and climate change continue to impact Black communities in the U.S. However, Black communities also continue to assert their connection to the environment through the movement of environmental justice, which has made substantial breakthroughs in the past few decades in its quest for a just and sustainable world.

Now, the vibrant environmental justice movement is facing mounting attacks as Republicans gut federal funding, weaken enforcement of environmental policies, and empower corporations to deepen existing environmental inequality. It has been devastating to experience such swift government repression from the Trump administration. But this Juneteenth, I’m remembering that our relationship with the environment has always been complex, enduring, and profound, and caring for the Earth is a Black tradition that can’t be easily erased.

Environmental Justice Has Historical Roots

Juneteenth has its roots in Galveston, Texas, where some of the last enslaved people were emancipated with the arrival of Union troops on June 19, 1865. Though some African American communities in Texas and across the South celebrated Juneteenth for centuries, it became a federal holiday in 2021 under President Joe Biden, in response to demands for racial justice following the murders of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor. I myself only began celebrating this holiday recently, and like millions of Americans, I take the day to commemorate the liberation of enslaved people and their legacy of resistance and resilience. It serves as a reminder of the long history of Black environmental culture that my work in environmental justice hopes to protect and uplift.

We can’t fully understand the devastating impact of settler colonialism on the environment without also understanding its interconnectedness with the enslavement of Black people.

Enslaved people had very complicated relationships with the diverse American environments they were forcibly relocated to. This aspect of enslavement is often overlooked because it is painfully obvious, yet hard to pinpoint how these new environments fundamentally shaped enslaved people’s lives. Europeans violently displaced Native Americans from their traditional homelands beginning in the 16th century, and sought to extract the resources of their new colonies. Africans forced into slavery came from across central and western Africa, hailing from diverse ecologies, from bustling coasts and lush rainforests, to sprawling deserts and arid regions. Enslaved Africans were then shipped across the Americas to work mainly on plantations where they cultivated cash crops like cotton, indigo, sugar cane, coffee, and rice under brutal work regimes, stripped of their dignity and humanity. These agricultural practices and labor regimes imposed by European settlers degraded Southern ecologies and reduced biodiversity while also murdering and maiming enslaved people and denying them their humanity. We can’t fully understand the devastating impact of settler colonialism on the environment without also understanding its interconnectedness with the enslavement of Black people. This painful history of forced labor, exploitation, and violence to people and planet fundamentally shapes contemporary Black communities’ relationship with their American ecologies.

Joshua Jenkins, a fellow Black environmentalist working in the environmental justice space, highlights the deep interconnected links between environmental injustice and U.S. slavery in his work. Jenkins is the Alabama and Mississippi field representative, and former civil rights fellow, at the National Parks Conservation Association (NPCA), where he advocates for national park protection in the Deep South while also highlighting the region’s rich environmental and cultural history. When asked about the links between Juneteenth and environmental justice, he reflects on the fact that the enslaved people who were forced to work the land generated an incredible amount of wealth that became the bedrock for the American economy. He concluded that “this country itself was built on environmental injustice.”

This legacy of environmental racism would go on to shape generations of African Americans. After emancipation, millions of enslaved people were forced to “pay off debts” to former enslavers, and many elements of slavery’s exploitative labor continued under a new system of sharecropping. In the few cases where African Americans were able to purchase land as farmers and businesspeople, the fear of racial violence loomed over these new opportunities. Threats of retaliation, lynching, and capricious white officials who would extort and steal land robbed Black communities of land stewardship, environmental knowledge, wealth, and their very homes for generations throughout the post-Reconstruction South. During the early 20th century, millions of African Americans migrated from the South to the North, West, and Midwest as refugees from racial violence, political repression, and economic disparity, leaving behind their rural backgrounds for cities. But racism continued to shape their relationship with the environment in these bustling cities. Black communities were zoned through housing discrimination into neighborhoods surrounded by higher levels of pollution from factories, sewage systems, and landfills, as well as undesirable lands that were vulnerable to natural disasters.

Recognizing these persistent disparities in environmental access, exposure to pollution, and loss of land on the heels of the civil rights movement, Black communities across the country worked initially independently to address local and statewide inequalities. An early environmental justice action took place in Warren County, North Carolina, between 1978 and 1982, when locals in a majority-Black community organized for over four years against the creation of a toxic landfill with cancer-causing PCBs. As these efforts gained national traction, environmental justice organizing sprang up in Chicago, led by Hazel M. Johnson with the People for Community Recovery; in New York City, with WE ACT for Environmental Justice; and in Houston, Texas, with Robert Bullard and Linda McKeever Bullard of the Bullard Center for Environmental and Climate Justice. These efforts highlighted the disproportionate number of toxic landfills, polluting factories and industries, and the numerous health impacts on predominantly Black and Brown communities.

In 1991, these once-fragmented campaigns, organizing efforts, legal efforts, and the advocates behind them would come together in the National People of Color Environmental Leadership Summit. The summit connected the hundreds of groups and communities across the nation working on environmental justice, as they found common ground. Peggy Shepard, one of the co-founders of New York-based environmental justice organization WE ACT, recalled that the summit “was the first time I really understood that there were hundreds of groups like mine working on similar issues around the country.” This summit transformed the path of the environmental justice movement as the term itself was formalized, and the attendees established the 17 guiding principles of the movement. “[I]f you look at those principles, you’ll see that all of them are just totally relevant today,” Shepard said on the 30th anniversary of the summit in 2021. “They’re important values that we all hold dear and an important roadmap for the future.”

The principles that shape environmental justice were developed through a coalition of diverse stakeholders with a vision of collective liberation. Unlike the mainstream environmental movement of its time (and oftentimes still today), intersectional environmental justice connected the dots across multiple forms of oppression. The crafters of the movement’s principles understood that a just and healthy planet was also one with reproductive rights, Native sovereignty, workers’ rights, and community participation as central facets of policy. A radical movement with a commitment towards justice, sustainability, and liberation was born.

Environmental Justice Victories Are Under Attack

Now, more than three decades later, that movement has grown and seen numerous victories. In 2022, Congress passed Joe Biden’s climate bill, the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), which funneled billions to clean energy, green jobs, and environmental justice efforts. With federal programs like the Justice40 Initiative — which ensured that 40 percent of new climate funding, jobs, and investments would go to historically marginalized communities — things were looking up. Hundreds of organizations, local community groups, state and municipal governments, and advocates applied for grants, loans, and investments for new and exciting projects and to build climate-resilient infrastructure, create green jobs, invest in clean energy, and address persistent issues of pollution and ecological degradation. I was energized in my work as exciting opportunities for funding, collaboration, and advancing environmental justice principles quickly grew. As the country charted a path to address climate change, I was optimistic that Black, Brown, poor, and rural communities wouldn’t be left behind this time.

However, this billion-dollar beacon of hope was quickly derailed as the Trump administration ascended and targeted funding for the environment by pausing the government funding disbursement. This recent shift has devastated the environmental justice movement. Trump’s executive order targeting diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) has been used to discredit programs, funding, and opportunities that addressed inequality, and has also hit the movement hard. The administration took particular issue with the few environmental justice guardrails in government that safeguarded against persistent inequality, with polluting industries disproportionately placed in communities of color and low-income communities. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), which was central to enforcing environmental justice policies, saw significant staff cuts as well, which will undoubtedly hamper — and in some cases, halt — environmental justice work. Routes for remedying environmental injustices through programs like the EPA Superfund, for example, are at risk for cuts.

New funding allocated through the IRA, passed by Congress, has also been a hotbed issue. Organizations, states, local governments, and companies with government contracts were shocked to see contracts quickly revoked, funds frozen, and programs terminated, with threats of legal action from the government. Though a recent court ruling demands that the government resume funding, it is unclear when and how this will happen — if it happens at all. The impact of such hostile policies is devastating. We can “no longer rely on the federal government to support EJ [environmental justice] work. It’s now a divisive topic,” Jenkins says. “So, funding has dried up and larger organizations are less willing to take EJ stances for fear of reprisal from the federal government.”

This harsh reality has had a chilling impact on my own work supporting young climate leaders from historically marginalized backgrounds. I’ve seen firsthand the bleak and uncertain reality of reluctant funders and companies laying off or firing employees. This year alone, I’ve witnessed a number of the partner organizations that I’ve worked with on youth programming and environmental justice issues tighten their belts because of smaller budgets, hiring freezes, or just anxiety around environmental justice being framed as a “partisan issue.” In my programs that link young people to green jobs, I’ve had to email dozens of applicants to let them know the positions that were advertised just last November are no longer available. And this is only the tip of the iceberg; organizations that were dependent on federal funding are preparing to furlough employees as they scurry to secure new funding sources or close down. Even as I work in an organization that doesn’t rely on federal funding, the influx of organizations with new funding gaps makes the limited private funding available even more competitive as we all struggle to stay afloat.

Despite Attacks, the Movement Is Not Dead

However, even with these bleak circumstances, hope is certainly not lost. The environmental justice movement has managed to avoid being totally defanged. Although some diluted elements of environmental justice have only recently penetrated the mainstream environmental movement, for the most part, the movement retains much of its core radical vision for justice.

“This is a really good time for us to put our heads together and think really hard about the world we want to live in. Really hard, like the most aspirational reality we can think of. Afrofuturism levels of imagination,” says Jenkins. “And then we should organize and build coalitions that will help us realize that dream. If we’re the forest, it feels like these times are a massive wildfire. It is destructive and it’s hard to breathe right now, but we know some seeds can’t even germinate unless they’re subjected to the heat.”

As some major environmental organizations back away from their commitments and scrub their websites of environmental justice language, others stand firm and push forward. In this moment of adversity, I’m witnessing many environmental justice advocates, organizations, and communities clarify their vision and deepen their intersectional liberatory aspirations. Amid the U.S.’s descent into fascism, the interconnectedness of reproductive rights, immigration, LGBTQ+ rights, and Black and Brown communities is clearer now than ever as right-wingers mount attacks on us all.

Juneteenth is an opportunity to contemplate and learn from the resilience and ingenuity of enslaved people who formed rich environmental relations. As this current Trump administration rolls back critical policies, climate funding, and enforcement of environmental protection, the environmental justice movement has our work cut out for us. This is the time for us to strengthen coalitions, build upon ambitious visions for liberation, and continue demanding a just and sustainable future.

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A federal judge has ordered the Trump administration to release $180 million in federal funding for environmental justice projects, including $60 million in the Pacific Northwest.

The Environmental Protection Agency had blocked that funding in February.

The agency had selected Seattle-based Philanthropy Northwest in 2023 to distribute competitive grant funds to disadvantaged communities trying to fight pollution or adapt to climate change in Alaska, Idaho, Oregon, and Washington.

Philanthropy Northwest, the Minneapolis Foundation, and Baltimore-based Green and Healthy Homes Initiative sued EPA in April. Each regional organization had $60 million in EPA funds frozen as the agency canceled its environmental justice programs.

“We are thrilled with the court’s decision, and we know that there is a road ahead, and are committed to doing our best to secure these funds,” Meredith Higashi with Philanthropy Northwest said.

An EPA spokesperson declined an interview request and said the agency is reviewing the decision.

The site in question spans city blocks in Rocky Ford, a town in need of a facelift.

The city council and Mayor Duane Gurulé knew this, which is why they sent a letter to U.S. Sens. John Hickenlooper and Michael Bennet and U.S. Rep. Jeff Hurd on April 22, following a wave of executive orders from President Donald Trump.

Rocky Ford, in Otero County, was a finalist for a $166,000 grant from the Environmental Protection Agency’s Thriving Communities Grantmaking Program to assess and clean up asbestos-laden buildings in the city that had been damaged by fires. The grant was in danger due to funding freezes, they wrote in the letter.

If they received the money administered through the Mountains and Plains Environmental Grants Hub, it would start planning of the much-needed cleanup and begin the revitalization of 20-plus acres of land for essential commercial space and housing, they added.

That fit perfectly with the goal of the program, which was to fund solutions to serious environmental challenges in underserved communities, including clean drinking water, food access and climate readiness. The program fell under the Biden Administration’s Inflation Reduction Act Environmental and Climate Justice Program, through which Congress had appropriated $2.8 billion for community groups to provide block grants to address pollution that takes a disproportionately heavy toll on communities of color and low-income and rural areas.

The Brewer Construction burn site in Rocky Ford is shown in this June 20, 2025 photo. The property, between 10th and 12th streets, was completely destroyed in a 2024 fire. (Mike Sweeney, Special to The Colorado Sun)

But during the first few months of 2025, the EPA teamed up with the Department of Government Efficiency to cut at least $67 million in grant money earmarked for such programs.

On May 2, Rocky Ford learned its grant was included in the slashing. About 550 applications with requests for $137 million were submitted to the program — “a clear sign of both the urgency and the local energy behind this work,” according to Mountains and Plains administrators.

And now every time Gurulé travels U.S. 50 between the Rocky Ford City Hall and the Sonic Drive-In, he’s reminded of the time his town came this close to getting the funding it needed to start addressing its hulking, blackened problems, including the unavoidable eyesore visible down 10th street if he’s driving east, which some Rocky Ford locals have to look at it every day whether they want to or not.

It’s the Brewer Construction burn site, which went up in flames in April 2024.

What’s left — thousands of pounds of contaminated rubble — looks like it could live in a “Mad Max” film. But even worse than how it looks is how toxic it is, Gurulé said. It’s full of asbestos that breaks free when the wind blows. Pieces of tin and shingles fly through the community. And there’s a good chance the patients walking into the doctor’s office nearby are breathing in toxic chemicals, he said.

Spoiler alert: This story has no happy ending.

But that’s why Gurulé wants it told “loudly and clearly,” starting with the fire.

Or fires.

Two blazes in one year and no cleanup

The second fire, in December, burned a hole through the middle of Liberty Elementary School, built in 1950 to accommodate the post-World War II baby boom, by then in grades 1 through 6, according to the Kiowa County Independent. It bustled for a while, but as schools in some rural towns sometimes do, enrollment dwindled until it was forced to close in 2011.

The fire inside it was bad, but two wings remained after it was extinguished. The town council had big plans for it in part because of its location: “It’s more or less connected to the fairgrounds,” which each August hosts the Arkansas Valley Fair, the “oldest continuous in Colorado,” and Crystal Lake, which along with the fairgrounds is undergoing an ambitious transformation with planned parking, a nature trail, a mountain bike park and playgrounds, thanks to a grant from Great Outdoors Colorado.

Rocky Ford will continue to develop this project, for which they received $150,000 in 2022 to begin community engagement and assessment, and another $400,000 in 2024 for planning and design, Gurulé said. They’re applying for $21 million from GOCO and numerous other funders to bring the project to life.

Earl Brewer, left, is the property owner of the former Brewer Construction company in Rocky Ford. He’s shown here speaking with Mayor Duane Gurulé about the circumstances surrounding the fire which destroyed his business in 2024. (Mike Sweeney, Special to The Colorado Sun)

While the Brewer burn site, if demolished, decontaminated and cleaned up, would be perfect for commercial use, the Liberty School site could become mixed use housing, something the city desperately needs, Gurulé said.

But without funding from the federal government, Rocky Ford isn’t getting so much as an assessment of the environmental and health issues the building damage brings as well as the economic impacts. That means the eyesore stays, the asbestos particles float and the sorely needed facelift for the commercial district and north side of Rocky Ford won’t likely happen in the near future. “It’s hurting us in several different ways,” Gurulé said.

Now what?

Despite it all, Rocky Ford tries to remain hopeful.

“We’re waiting to see what new programs the EPA will release and we’re working with the Colorado Department of Local Affairs and Colorado Department of Public Heath and Environment to identify funding we can use,” said Gurulé.

In an ideal scenario, Rocky Ford “receives technical assistance to apply for funding from the EPA to address this cleanup, is able to support and attract new business expansion or growth, and has development of homes that meet the needs of our region across all housing types and all income levels,” he added. “We nurture the growth of a Rocky Ford for the next generations.”

But hope becomes challenging when Gurulé thinks about Trump terminating the program that could have helped them, with the grant that “was more than just dollars, it was a rare opportunity for a small city with limited staff and resources to finally address long-standing environmental hazards.

Fencing intended to keep trespassers out of the razed Brewer Construction company property in Rocky Ford has been rendered useless by people scavenging for copper and other materials says property owner Earl Brewer. The business was completely destroyed in a 2024 fire. (Mike Sweeney, Special to The Colorado Sun)

“It didn’t just cancel a funding stream. It sent a message that rural communities like Rocky Ford — where people pay federal taxes just like folks in big cities, but don’t have full-time grant writers or million-dollar budgets to chase federal funds – don’t matter. That our health, our environment and our future are not a priority.”

So Gurulé keeps telling the story. “Because when policies are made without rural voices at the table, we are the ones left cleaning up the mess, sometimes literally, like with asbestos in our neighborhoods. And if we don’t speak up, these decisions will keep happening in D.C., while our communities are left to ‘make do’ with less and less.”

On Tuesday, a tiny stroke of luck may have arrived, when a federal judge ruled that cancelling $600 million in environmental justice grants, including those administered through the Thriving Communities Grantmaking Program, was illegal.

More Colorado Safeway stores go on strike

A shopper heads into a Safeway store, which is part of the Albertson’s grocery chain, Tuesday, Dec. 10, 2024, in Denver. (AP Photo/David Zalubowski)

Safeway stores in Boulder, Brighton and Lone Tree joined the ongoing labor strike on Thursday, even as negotiations between the union and Safeway management resumed this week.

But in a note to members of United Food and Commercial Workers International Union Local 7 late Thursday, President Kim Cordova said, “the company remains unwilling to offer an agreement that meets the needs of workers.”

Negotiations have ended for the week and more stores are expected to join the strike in a staggered rollout to keep the company guessing which store will need temporary workers next.

Stores in Pueblo, Fountain and Estes Park first hit the picket lines on Sunday. And nearly every day since, more stores joined, including locations in Grand Junction, Littleton and Castle Rock.

Union workers are asking for management to address the issue of understaffed stores. They’re also concerned about reduced benefits, especially to retired workers.

Safeway spokesperson Heather Halpape said in an email that the company is trying to “achieve a balanced agreement that rewards our associates, benefits our customers, and is sustainable for our company in the competitive grocery industry.”

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Sun economy stories you may have missed

George Lopez secures a hand railing on a backyard patio for a senior homeowner June 12 in Thornton. Working through Colorado Housing Connects, Lopez performs mostly handyman work for homeowners. (Kathryn Scott, Special to The Colorado Sun)

➔ As Colorado ages, seniors are colliding with the housing crisis. Most older residents want to age in place. But experts say Colorado’s housing stock wasn’t built with their needs in mind. >> Read story

➔ Colorado just faced a tough budget year. It’s forecast to get much worse. In the best-case scenario, there’s a $700 million hole next year if the legislature wants to maintain current spending plans. >> Read story

➔ What the Colorado legislature did — and didn’t do — this year to address the housing crisis. Lawmakers cracked down on “junk fees” in rental agreements, created new tools to combat negligent landlords and built on efforts to increase density. But other proposals fell short. >> Read story

➔ Peak Ski Co. shutters amid allegations of mismanagement, lack of payment at Montana ski-maker. The Montana-based Peak Ski Co. — launched in 2021 by racing legend Bode Miller and Colorado resort veteran Andy Wirth — has collapsed. >> Read story

➔ Beloved grocery store serving secluded Colorado town of 500 people looks for ways to buy local. The Walsh Community Grocery Store was resurrected in 2007 with the help of its residents. Seventeen years later, its manager is seeking creative ways to stock the shelves. >> Read story

➔ A pair of CU hockey buds are brewing up business with recycled coffee waste. The owners of Blazin’ Joe fire logs are pushing recycling innovation in Colorado, which has lagged behind other states in sustainable waste systems. >> Read story

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Other working bits

➔ April hiring in Colorado saw largest one-month drop in the U.S. Local employers eased up on hiring in April, compared with March, more so than any other state nationwide, according to the latest Job Openings and Labor Turnover summary from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. But that may be due to a hiring spree in March, when the state had the highest one-month increase in the U.S.

In April, Colorado employers hired an estimated 113,000 people, down from the 146,000 in March. On the other hand, the number of layoffs saw a sharp decline, dropping to 23,000, from 39,000 in March. The change was the second-largest decline in layoffs.

But Colorado hiring trends have weakened compared with 2024. The nation’s hiring rate was little changed, according to the report. >> Latest JOLTS report

➔ Denver Auditor recognizes employee union. A little over 30 employees who work at Denver Labor, which is part of the city auditor’s office, received the blessing of their employer this week to unionize. Denver Auditor Timothy M. O’Brien threw his “full support for employees” to start collective bargaining, a process that could begin in the near future, said Brian Winkler, with Communication Workers of America Local 7777, which is helping the Denver Labor employees in the process of unionizing.

The employees apparently love their jobs and their boss but, Winkler said, there’s concern that O’Brien is on his third and final term and “this glaring fact had been noticed by the workers and they wanted to form a Union to maintain the conditions and culture they are currently in, knowing that that could change through leadership in the future.”

➔ State grants $800,000 to rural businesses. The awards were part of the Rural Economic Development Initiative from the state Department of Local Affairs. Recipients included the Moffat County Geothermal Equipment Project, which was awarded $62,470 to buy equipment to help retain workers; $16,500 to the town of Lyons to create a small business incubator; and $100,000 to tire-recycler Retread to expand its Sterling facility, which repurposes old tires to keep them out of landfills. Retread said the funds will help create up to 10 new jobs. >> See the winners

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NC climate justice hampered by fight over federal funding

TROY HULL | THE CHARLOTTE POST Davidson West resident Letha Smith recalls difficulty breathing as a child in the historically Black and marginalized neighborhood, likely due to air pollution. “I was a kid who did have asthma,” she said, “and I was a kid who swam in a creek that was filled with asbestos, and then we were not able to have access to many things because we were Black.”

Letha Smith grew up on Davidson West pollution.

The historically Black neighborhood in north Mecklenburg County has long-term air and soil pollution from a now-shuttered asbestos mill where waste product was used to fill yards driveways. Smith’s grandmother lived there before Lake Norman was created by Duke Energy in 1959. And she has family in nearby Huntersville, where generations of ancestors lived since the early 1700s.

“We are tight with the land,” Smith said. “And the land is very important, because when you move, when you when you don’t take care of the land, then the people are the ones who suffer for it because they’re missing minerals, vegetation, a lot of these things come from the land that you were born (on).”

To mitigate decades of environmental impact and subsequent neglect, the neighborhood is partnering with CleanAIRE NC, a Charlotte-based climate and environmental justice advocacy group. The nonprofit, which works primarily with underserved communities of color, launched air quality initiatives to detect pollution and educate residents in Huntington Green and Pottstown in Huntersville, Smithfield in Cornelius and Davidson West.

“In north Mecklenburg, we’re working with four underserved communities to address long standing environmental inequities, and we’ve been partnering with these communities to expand air monitoring, to provide educational resources and to equip the residents to advocate cleaner air,” spokesman Andrew Whelan said. “These communities, they’re all, … what would maybe be called impacted communities or environmental justice communities. All four of these areas experienced higher pollution exposure than the more affluent neighborhoods surrounding them, resulting in vastly different experiences in health outcomes and so clean air.”

When the Trump administration cut off funding previously approved by Congress, CleanAIRE NC’s budget took a hit, and those programs were scuttled or reduced as a result. In March, the Southern Environmental Law Center and the Public Rights Project filed suit on behalf of 13 nonprofits, including CleanAiRE NC as well as six municipalities forced to furlough employees and pause programs that support communities, farmers, and public health.

A federal judge last month sided with the plaintiffs. The government is appealing.

“Obviously, we’re very happy with the result,” Whelan said. “We’re excited by the result, and we believe that the ruling that the judge reached was the correct one. We feel that the government, during their arguments, were not able to produce any evidence showing that the grant has been terminated due to waste or fraud or abuse. They have no documentation on either us or any of the other nonprofits that were members of our legal coalition showing mismanagement of the funds.

“We believe that this was the right ruling, and we believe that this ruling will hopefully yield real benefits to the communities of north Mecklenburg through the reinstatement of the funds, we’re hoping that those become accessible again soon.”

“If these communities have been around long enough, this isn’t the first disappointment they’ve experienced,” said Steve Justus M.D., a community health physician who collaborates with CleanAIRE NC. “It’s unfortunately something that impacts their trust when it comes to government support. It’s just the pendulum swinging back and forth over time and the forward movement and the backlash, and historically, that’s just been the way that our country’s told the story – three steps forward, two steps back, and this is a step back time frame. Over the course of the long haul, what you do hope is that the net progress is your you’ve made more steps forward in your lifetime than backward steps, so that at least you make some forward progress.”

“We were kind of just getting started, and we were just meeting on how to move forward in the community,” Smith said. “We still are working on getting out the awareness of the potential threats of air pollution, and we are still working on getting monitors in the community now that the budget cuts seem to have better news. We’re still moving forward.”

So is CleanAIRE NC, through the lawsuit to force the Trump administration to return its funding.

“We believe it’s been illegal, and it’s been extremely disruptive to our critical air monitoring work and health work in north Mecklenburg,” Whelan said. “These funds were already appropriated by Congress and signed into law, and when that happened, we entered into a legally binding agreement with the federal government to do this work and to deliver specific services to the communities in north Mecklenburg.

“The sudden disruption that resulted from at first our funds being frozen and then terminated, barred us from filling our legally binding commitments to both Congress and communities we serve, which ultimately left us with no choice but to file suit.”

In Davidson West, neighbors are still working to get air quality monitors as well as educate residents on how air quality affects people health – especially with major emission sources nearby.

CLEANAire NC earlier this month debuted, the AirKeeper Dashboard, an interactive mapping tool that allows communities to access real-time and historic air quality data, demographic information and health information.

“There’s too much pollution going on, like with construction we have” in Davidson West Smith said. “We are close to a highway, and so we get a lot of the runoff, and then we have a lot of construction going on.”

The impact of pollution also includes an economic cost. Lower income residents often don’t have the means to move while predatory developers move to snap up property to build more upscale neighborhoods as the region gentrifies. The result is often displacement of people who can’t keep pace with the cost of living.

“I grew up here, so when you’re in the predominantly Black neighborhood, they discourage you to build or add on or do any type of upgrades, and then they use that … against you,” Smith said. “Then they’ll come in and they’ll buy up land and then place condos and better houses, larger houses, more up to date houses in there with you, and it causes your property value to go up.”

Another project Davidson West residents hope to collaborate with CleanAIRE NC is locating health records that disappeared when the town doctor retired. Smith suspects those files could hold clues to environmental impacts over the years.

“I’m 52 years old, and my childhood records are gone because the town doctor that we went to when he went out of practice,” she said. “We don’t know what happened to our records or anything, but a lot of information containing our health and … any data is gone, and so it’s a lot of obstacles that also plays a part in segregation, or should I say, being segregated in this town. …

“We had to go to this doctor, then once this doctor was not practicing anymore, and I don’t know about his how legit the practice was, but where did the records go? A lot of us had asthma growing up. I was a kid who did have asthma, and I was a kid who swam in a creek that was filled with asbestos, and then we were not able to have access to many things because we were Black.”

Justus, who lives in Davidson, believes the work of environmental justice will continue, although the scope – and funding sources – may change.

“Commitments not honored by following administrations and federal government level is a disappointing turn of events, to say the least,” he said. “But then, CleanAIRE is a good partner, and it’s not like they’re going to abandon the communities. I think there’s going to be some limitations due to lack of resources.

“There are a number of things that they were going to implement, and during the course of this grant program, are still going to happen. It may have to be dialed back somewhat … but it’s not like it just completely shuts down their engagement with the community.”

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