Joined by civil rights leaders and participants from the 1982 protests, Michael Regan, announced he is dedicating a new senior level of leadership to the environmental justice movement they ignited.
PUBLISHED 4:20 PM EDT Sep. 24, 2022WARRENTON, N.C. — Forty years after a predominantly Black community in Warren County, North Carolina, rallied against hosting a hazardous waste landfill, President Joe Biden’s top environment official visited what is widely considered the birthplace of the environmental justice movement Saturday to unveil a national office that will distribute $3 billion in block grants to underserved communities burdened by pollution.
“In the past, many of our communities have had to compete for very small grants because EPA’s pot of money was extremely small,” Regan said. “We’re going from tens of thousands of dollars to developing and designing a program that will distribute billions. But we’re also going to be sure that this money goes to those who need it the most and those who’ve never had a seat at the table.”
North Carolina in 1978 designated Warren County, a small, predominantly Black farming community along the Virginia border, as a disposal site for truckloads of soil laced with highly carcinogenic chemical compounds that later contaminated the water supply. “We became a family, no Black or white, no rich or poor — we were all one,” Moseley said. “The state was hell-bent on putting that dump site here. I knew we couldn’t stop it, but we could elevate the consciousness of not only the state but the nation.”