An article by Janet Wilson in the Christian Science Monitor highlights the environmental justice work of residents of Maywood:

Across the country, studies have increasingly shown that low-income, minority communities endure a disproportionate share of poor living conditions and contamination. A 2007 study by four universities found that nonwhites are far more likely to live near hazardous waste than whites. Greater Los Angeles led the nation with 1.2 million people living less than two miles from such waste, 91 percent of them minorities.

Maywood, the state’s most densely populated community, is a textbook case. Eight miles southeast of downtown Los Angeles, it sits at the crossroads of an American manufacturing and freight-hauling juggernaut with a legacy of industrial pollution. Nearly 50,000 residents – 98 percent Latino – are squeezed into aging apartment blocks and tidy tract houses between diesel-truck-clogged Interstate 710 and “exclusively industrial” Vernon, home to 1,200 factories and sprawling freight rail yards…

“The idea is not to be stuck in those little regulatory boxes,” says Steven John, head of the EPA’s southern California division. Toward that end, the agencies are also wrestling with bringing together bitterly divided factions in Maywood. At the first meeting of the joint agency initiative with the community in August, a water district manager and an activist ended up in a screaming match over a single mercury testing sample as a translator struggled to keep up with hurled insults.

The manager ultimately apologized. At least the two sides were talking, many said.

Mr. John says Maywood’s activism, however fractious, was extraordinary. “[W]hat really for me has been the hallmark of Maywood,” he says, “is the commitment from the citizens.”

In November, EPA dministrator Lisa Jackson named Maywood and its neighbors along the 710 freeway “environmental justice showcase” communities. She awarded $100,000 to the EPA’s regional office to work with the cities, starting with Maywood. In addition, she sent $160,000 to the state DTSC to spearhead joint agency efforts.

Read the full article here.

In a series entitled Toxic Waters, the New York Times has been chronicling hazards to the nation’s drinking water supply:

Almost four decades after Congress passed the Clean Water Act, the rate of water pollution violations is rising steadily. In the past five years, companies and workplaces have violated pollution laws more than 500,000 times. But the vast majority of polluters have escaped punishment.

A map of Clean Water Act violators in California is available here.

New York Times Andrew C. Revkin published a story on July 16, 2009 about the Cheonggyecheon stream in Seoul , South Korea. For 50 years concrete has encased the historical stream. New generations of children and adolescents in Seoul visit the stream not realizing that it has been there longer than they would ever thought. The waterway has resided there ever since the Choson Dinasty. But due to the acts of the Korean War, the waterbed became an open sewer during the industrial era. The city of Seoul’s population increased to 10,000,ooo due to construction of new housing and roadways. But on July 16, the South Korean government created a $384,000,000 recovery project that would restore the Cheonggyecheon.

Because of the efforts of Seoul, South Korea to restore a sacred waterway, cities all around the world are beginning to do the same. In New York, the town of Yonkers created a plan to expose 1,900 feet of the Saw Mill River. In Los Angeles, officals and residents are researching waterbeds and are planning to restore them to their original states. It is all in an effort to create paths for access water that are from downpour and rain, and because of Global Warming, downpour is becoming a lot heavier each year. I believe it is a start to creating a more sustainable world, but I believe that we still have a long road ahead to restore environmental balance to the rest of the world.