ER Northeast / Mid-Atlantic

Community Groups Sue EPA to Tighten Its Incinerator Rules

| Cole Rosengren | Waste Dive | May 2026

This article reports on community groups challenging EPA incinerator rules, including East Yard Communities for Environmental Justice and Ironbound Community Corporation. It notes that many covered incinerators are located in environmental justice communities, making the rule especially important for fenceline residents.

THRIVEair: A Community-Based Air Monitoring Network Design in a Pollution-Burdened Philadelphia Neighborhood to Advance Environmental Justice

| Sheila Tripathy et al. | Environmental Health Insights | 2026

This peer-reviewed article describes community-based air monitoring near the former Philadelphia Energy Solutions refinery. It is useful for documenting how fenceline communities affected by refinery operations organized with researchers to monitor benzene and other volatile organic compounds during decommissioning and redevelopment.

'We Want to Live. They Want to Burn Trash': Chester Residents Raise Environmental Racism Concerns Over Incinerator with Covanta

| Kenny Cooper | WHYY | May 3, 2021

This article covers Chester, Pennsylvania, a predominantly Black city burdened by one of the nation's largest waste incinerators. Residents and advocates describe the Covanta facility as part of a wider pattern of environmental racism in which outside trash is burned in a low-income Black community.

Environmental Racism in Chester

| Public Interest Law Center | Public Interest Law Center | No date listed

This case summary describes Chester, Pennsylvania as a low-income African American city with an unusually dense cluster of polluting facilities, including a trash incinerator, sewage treatment plant, waste processors, oil refineries, and other industrial polluters. It is useful for documenting Chester as a long-running environmental justice case.

What Is Environmental Racism?

| Chester Residents Concerned for Quality Living | CRCQL | No date listed

This community resource explains environmental racism through Chester's experience with waste and industrial facilities. It describes Chester as a major example of how polluting industries can become concentrated in low-income Black communities with limited political power.

Unraveling Environmental Racism, Here and Now: What the South Bronx and Other Communities Deserve

| Arif Ullah and Mychal Johnson | South Bronx Unite / New York Daily News | April 22, 2022

This article discusses environmental racism in the South Bronx, where highways, waste facilities, industrial uses, and freight infrastructure have long burdened a largely Black and Latino community. It argues that the neighborhood deserves investment, clean air, and protection from cumulative pollution.

From 'Asthma Alley' to Green Spaces: A Field Trip with South Bronx Unite

| Conor O'Brien | Columbia Climate School | July 11, 2024

This article describes the South Bronx as a major environmental justice case, including the neighborhood's heavy exposure to highways, truck traffic, waste infrastructure, and poor air quality. It is useful for documenting how community groups organize against concentrated pollution in Black and Latino neighborhoods.

What Does Sustainability Mean in the Bronx?

| Terry Nguyen | Vox | September 8, 2021

This article examines sustainability and environmental racism in the Bronx, where working-class communities of color have long faced pollution, waste infrastructure, and unequal urban planning. It is useful for connecting local pollution burdens to broader questions of race, class, and environmental policy.

Breathe At Your Own Risk: Transit Justice in West Harlem

| Peggy Shepard | Race, Poverty & the Environment | Spring 2007

This article discusses West Harlem's fight against diesel bus depots, sewage infrastructure, and transportation-related pollution. It is useful for showing how transit infrastructure and public facilities were concentrated in a community of color, contributing to asthma and other health burdens.

The MTA, Bus Depots and Race

| Robert D. Bullard | The Nation | October 17, 2003

This article examines the racial distribution of bus depots and diesel pollution in New York City, especially in northern Manhattan. It explains how bus depots, sewage treatment plants, lead exposure, and other environmental hazards contributed to disproportionate health burdens in communities of color.

Environmental Justice Delayed Has Been Justice Denied

| Steven Cohen | Columbia Climate School | May 9, 2022

This article discusses the long environmental justice fight over the North River sewage treatment plant in West Harlem. It shows how communities of color spent decades fighting the placement and impacts of large pollution-generating public infrastructure.

The Godmother of the Environmental Justice Movement Speaks Out

| Environmental Defense Fund | EDF | No date listed

This article profiles Peggy Shepard and WE ACT's early work against pollution in Harlem. It describes how activists challenged the placement of toxic industry and polluting infrastructure in minority communities as environmental racism.

Issues of Community Empowerment

| Peggy M. Shepard | Fordham Urban Law Journal | 1994

This legal article discusses community empowerment in the environmental justice movement, including the West Harlem fight over the North River sewage treatment plant. It is useful as an older source showing how communities of color organized against environmental racism in urban planning.

In Maryland, One Community Is Taking a Stand Against Environmental Racism

| Jeremy Deaton | Grist | July 27, 2016

This article focuses on Brandywine, Maryland, a majority-Black community facing multiple polluting power plants within a short distance. It is useful for documenting how fossil fuel infrastructure can become concentrated in Black communities.

Maryland Faces Civil Rights Complaint After Approving Gas Plant in Black Community

| Earthjustice | Earthjustice | May 11, 2016

This press release describes a civil-rights complaint challenging Maryland's approval of a gas-fired power plant in Brandywine. Community advocates argued that the permitting reflected environmental racism because the community was majority African American and already burdened by power plants.

Environmental Racism Prevalent in Brandywine, Maryland

| Center for Health, Environment & Justice | CHEJ | November 18, 2015

This article discusses Brandywine, Maryland as an example of environmental racism, focusing on gas-fired power plants and the burden placed on surrounding communities. It is useful for documenting local opposition to concentrated fossil-fuel infrastructure.

Pollution Burdens Nearly Half of New York and Communities of Color Most Harmed

| Aliya Uteuova | The Guardian | April 5, 2024

This article reports on New York City environmental justice data showing that communities of color face disproportionate pollution burdens. It is useful for documenting modern municipal recognition of unequal exposure to pollution, heat, flooding, and other environmental harms.

'Asthma Alley': Why Minorities Bear Burden of Pollution Inequity Caused by White People

| Oliver Milman | The Guardian | April 4, 2019

This article focuses on the South Bronx and other communities where people of color bear disproportionate pollution burdens. It connects traffic, industrial siting, asthma, and air pollution to long-standing environmental racism.

From Environmental Racism to Environmental Justice

| New Jersey State Bar Foundation | New Jersey State Bar Foundation | August 13, 2024

This article explains environmental racism and environmental justice through legal and civic examples. It is useful as a general educational source on how race, pollution, and unequal protection intersect.

Discriminatory Environmental Permitting in Camden, N.J.

| Public Interest Law Center | Public Interest Law Center | No date listed

This case summary describes Camden, New Jersey as a 90-percent-minority city burdened by a regional incinerator, regional sewage treatment plant, and multiple Superfund sites. It is useful for documenting environmental racism in municipal permitting and cumulative pollution.

Fighting for Air

| Shelterforce | Shelterforce | November 1, 2002

This article covers Camden's Waterfront South neighborhood and the fight against discriminatory environmental permitting. It is useful for documenting how residents challenged a dense concentration of polluting facilities in a low-income community of color.

The Challenge of Environmental Justice

| Sheila R. Foster | Rutgers Journal of Law and Urban Policy | 2004

This legal article examines environmental justice battles in Camden, New Jersey. It is useful for documenting the limitations of civil-rights law when communities of color challenge incinerators, sewage plants, and other locally unwanted land uses.

Air Quality Injustices Put Neighbors in Two Local Towns at Risk

| 6abc Philadelphia | 6abc Action News | October 26, 2021

This article discusses air pollution burdens in New Jersey environmental justice communities, including Camden's Waterfront South. It is useful for documenting how neighborhoods with high minority and low-income populations face disproportionate pollution.

What New Jersey's New Environmental Justice Law Will Mean for Newark and Camden

| Justine Calma | Grist | July 23, 2020

This article discusses Newark and Camden as pollution-burdened communities targeted by New Jersey's environmental justice law. It is useful for documenting garbage incinerators, sewage treatment, ports, airports, and chemical corridors in communities of color.

Ironbound Unyielding

| Earthjustice | Earthjustice | January 22, 2021

This feature profiles Newark's Ironbound neighborhood, where residents live near a garbage incinerator, sewage-treatment plants, power plants, port activity, and heavy truck traffic. It is useful for documenting a largely immigrant community's fight against being treated as a sacrifice zone.

With N.J.'s Tough New Environmental Justice Law in Place, Why Is Newark in Line for Another Power Plant?

| Emilie Lounsberry | Inside Climate News | November 15, 2024

This article reports on a proposed power plant in Newark's Ironbound neighborhood despite New Jersey's environmental justice law. It is useful for documenting ongoing fights over adding new polluting infrastructure in an already overburdened community of color.

Free to Breathe Clean Air

| Surdna Foundation | Surdna Foundation | September 23, 2025

This article describes Newark's Ironbound as a multiply burdened neighborhood with power plants, a major garbage incinerator, a sewage facility, port traffic, and industrial pollution. It is useful for documenting cumulative pollution burdens in a community of color.

Don't Trash the Ironbound

| Climate Reality Project | Climate Reality Project | May 5, 2022

This article focuses on waste incineration in Newark's Ironbound neighborhood. It is useful for documenting how trash from elsewhere is burned in a largely immigrant and working-class community already burdened by multiple pollution sources.

Discriminatory Environmental Permitting in Camden, New Jersey

| Public Interest Law Center | Public Interest Law Center | No date listed

This case summary describes Camden as a 90-percent-minority city burdened by a regional incinerator, sewage treatment plant, and multiple Superfund sites. It is useful for documenting how environmental permitting can concentrate polluting facilities in communities of color.

'Enough Pollution' in Low-Income New Jersey Area with One Power Plant

| Wayne Parry | Associated Press | March 1, 2023

This article reports on community opposition to additional power-plant pollution in an already overburdened New Jersey area. It is useful for documenting how environmental justice laws are tested when new polluters seek permits in low-income and minority communities.

NJ Groups Fight Power Plants and Wait for Environmental Justice Law

| Wayne Parry | Associated Press / KSAT | February 14, 2023

This article discusses New Jersey communities, including Perth Amboy-area advocates, fighting additional power-plant pollution. It is useful for documenting how civil-rights and environmental justice arguments are used against new fossil-fuel infrastructure.

New Jersey Communities Spotlight: The Trouble with Neighborhood Trash

| A. Peterson | Rutgers Policy Lab | 2025

This article discusses neighborhood trash infrastructure and environmental justice in New Jersey. It is useful for documenting how waste facilities and related truck traffic can burden low-income communities and communities of color.

This Juneteenth, Black New Jerseyans Still Can't Breathe Free

| New Jersey League of Conservation Voters | NJLCV | No date listed

This opinion article discusses environmental racism affecting Black neighborhoods in New Jersey. It is useful for documenting how toxic air, polluted water, lack of green space, and industrial siting continue to affect communities of color.