Neighborhood Approaches to Environmental Justice

Members of the Lierman Neighborhood Action Committee, residents organizing in the Lierman Ave. and Washington St. area of east Urbana, and of the 5th & Hill Neighborhood Rights Campaign in Champaign on neighborhood approaches to environmental justice. The Lierman residents described housing loss, fencing and transit barriers, and a community garden on city-purchased land. The 5th & Hill speakers recounted a decade-long fight over the former manufactured gas plant site owned by Ameren at 5th and Hill Streets: coal tar contamination, groundwater and vapor-intrusion testing, a buried discharge pipe to the Boneyard Creek, and residents' worries about cancer in the neighborhood. The moderator, Ross Wantland, director of Diversity and Social Justice Education, closed by asking why organizing happens at the neighborhood level. Fall 2017 series "Building A Better Environmental Movement," co-hosted with DiversityEd and the Student Sustainability Committee, presented with the Conversation Cafe collaborative, in Latzer Hall.