Environmental Justice

Attendees at the 10th HBCU Climate Change Conference look at posters created by students based on their projects on Saturday, March 8, 2025 in New Orleans.

How HBCUs are helping grow the next generation of Gulf South environmental activists

Danny McArthur

Marginalized people often bear the brunt of environmental injustices. An annual conference in New Orleans is shaping young Black leaders to solve these issues.

Kaitlyn Joshua is a native of the southeast corridor of Louisiana dubbed “Cancer Alley,” and has spent the last few years leading the fight against a hydrogen and ammonia facility being built within 2,000 feet of an elementary school in Ascension Parish. Joshua says she is ‘horrified’ about the recent deregulation measures the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency recently announced for the petrochemical industry.

Coastal Desk

As EPA pulls back, schoolchildren could face the steepest risks

Terry L. Jones (Floodlight)

Communities living and learning near petrochemical plants will face more pollution and less federal protection under Trump’s new policies.

Heather McTeer Toney, executive director of Beyond Petrochemicals, takes a boat tour of Corpus Christi Bay in Texas with local members of the Coastal Watch Association who are fighting against several proposed petrochemical facilities in the area. Toney says President Donald Trump’s recent attacks on climate groups and environmental justice “feels scary.”

Coastal Desk

Criminal targeting of environmental groups ‘scary,’ advocates say

Terry L. Jones (Floodlight)

Groups now worry about FBI probes as they struggle to rebound from federal spending freeze enacted under President Donald Trump.

FILE - EPA Administrator Michael Regan, left, arrives at the Fifth Ward Elementary School, which is near the Denka plant, with Robert Taylor, second left, founder of Concerned Citizens of St. John's Parish, and Lydia Gerard, third left, a member of the group, in Reserve, La., Nov. 16, 2021. (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert, File)

Coastal Desk

Trump administration to drop lawsuit against Louisiana petrochemical plant, AP sources say

The Associated Press

The Trump administration plans to drop a federal lawsuit against a synthetic rubber manufacturer accused of worsening cancer risks for residents near its Louisiana plant, according to two sources familiar with the matter.