The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is planning to shut down its environmental justice offices, eliminating crucial resources that have helped protect low-income and marginalized communities from pollution and environmental hazards.
"I've suffered from this. My mother died of cancer. I could go around a litany: my brother, my sister, my nephews. Right now, I've got a 34-year-old nephew, who's where that plant is. He's lost his brother and his sister to cancer, and now he has cancer. Thirty-four years old, and it's happening every day in our community, all around us, and it's a horrible death."
These are the words of Robert Taylor II, 83, who lives in the small town of Reserve in St. John's Parish, Louisiana, dubbed "Cancer Alley" because of sprawling chemical plants that release toxic pollutants into the air and water.
And he is not alone. Over 131 million people in the U.S. live in areas with unhealthy pollution levels, according to a 2024 report from the American Lung Association.
The EPA's Environmental Justice Offices play a key role in ensuring that communities most impacted by industrial pollution, toxic waste, and climate change have a voice in government decision-making.
Without them, millions of Americans will be left more vulnerable to dangerous air and water contamination, with no dedicated federal support to fight back.
Their closure sends a clear message: profits matter more than public health. It weakens oversight, makes it harder for people to hold polluters accountable, and leaves those already suffering from environmental injustice with nowhere to turn.
Take Denka Performance Elastomer LLC in Louisiana, which produces the synthetic rubber neoprene used for wetsuits, laptop sleeves, and other common products.
The facility emits the likely carcinogen chloroprene at such high concentrations that it exposes the surrounding majority-Black community to an unacceptable cancer risk, according to a 2023 federal complaint brought against Denka on behalf of the EPA.
Last year, the EPA warned that the several hundred students who attend 5th Ward Elementary School, located about a quarter mile (0.40 kilometers) from Denka's facility, are among those who face a heightened cancer risk.
Without the EPA's support, the community's fight for their health will be nearly impossible.
Sign the petition to demand the EPA reverse this decision! Every community deserves clean air, safe water, and a government that fights for their health—not against it.
