[Durham INC] Fwd: NCNS story: NC Executive Order Focuses on Environmental Justice, Public Input

[bonita green]

NC Executive Order Focuses on Environmental Justice, Public Input
<https://www.publicnewsservice.org/2022-01-12/social-justice/nc-executive-order-focuses-on-environmental-justice-public-input/a77355-1>
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January 12, 2022 - Nadia Ramlagan, Public News Service (NC)

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[image: Gov. Roy Cooper's new executive order is titled "North Carolina's
Transformation to a Clean, Equitable Economy." He signed it last Friday.
(1778011/Pixabay)]
<https://www.newsservice.org/getimage.php?p=c2dpZD03NzM1NSZzaWQ9MQ==>
Gov. Roy Cooper's new executive order is titled "North Carolina's
Transformation to a Clean, Equitable Economy." He signed it last Friday.
(1778011/Pixabay)

Gov. Roy Cooper has signed a new executive order
<https://governor.nc.gov/media/2907/open> that directs cabinet agencies to
consider issues of environmental justice when taking actions related to
climate change, resilience and clean energy. Conservation groups are
applauding the move.

The state will appoint an Environmental Justice Lead at each cabinet
agency, tasked with increasing local residents' participation when projects
are likely to affect their neighborhoods.

Daisha Williams, environmental justice manager with the group CleanAire NC
<https://cleanairenc.org/>, said providing a "point person" to tackle these
issues will boost collaboration between state agencies.

"When they work together," she said, "it will result, of course, in more
direct engagement with not only the agencies themselves but impacted
communities to implement the needed remedies to foster the creative
solutions that we need."

The order also called for more funding to increase public awareness about
the health-related effects of climate change, and provide public updates on
air pollution and heat-related illness risks and their disproportionate
effects on Black and Brown communities.

Bonita Green, president of the Merrick Moore Community Development Corp.
<https://www.facebook.com/MerrickMooreCDC/>, said she supports the
executive order, adding that residents in her historically Black and
increasing gentrified neighborhood feel they've been shut out of
conversations on proposed development.

"The community is frustrated," she said, "the fact that development is just
being shoved down our throats, and we have nothing to say about how our
neighborhoods or communities are being developed."

Ron Ross, president of the Northwood Estates Community Organization
<https://charlottenc.gov/HNS/CE/BoardSupport/New%20Board%20Summaries/Northwood%20Estates.pdf>
in Charlotte, said families there are dealing with chronic health
conditions from a lifetime of breathing polluted air. He said he believes
the governor's latest action is a step in the right direction "for the
communities that I live in - that are surrounded by highways, industrial
facilities and so forth, and continue to be exposed to those situations on
a daily basis."

The order also requires the state to update a greenhouse-gas inventory, to
measure current levels of greenhouse-gas emissions and seek potential
pathways to achieve net-zero emissions by 2050.
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