- Across North Carolina, black and rural communities often find themselves near landfills, highways, and industrial sites, and that has raised questions about health, safety, and equity.

How does your address affect your health?

How safe are the developments near you?

And are they equitably distributed across communities?

A closer look next.

Stay with us.

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(upbeat music) ♪ - Welcome to Black Issues Forum, I'm Kenia Thompson.

When we talk about environmental issues, we might think about global concerns, melting ice caps, endangered species, or rising sea levels.

But environmental conditions are right here, close to home, affecting the air, water, and land we rely on every day.

So how do these conditions take shape?

Well, today we're taking a look at environmental justice and how race, policy, and decision-making influence protection and exposure.

Joining me now are two guests who are deeply invested in this work.

Dr.

Valerie Johnson is the co-director of the North Carolina Environmental Justice Network, as well as the director for infrastructure and development at the institution.

And Bonita Green is the executive director of the Merrick Moore Community Development Corporation in Durham, leading grassroots efforts focused on food, sovereignty, and environmental sustainability.

Thank you both for being here.

- Thank you.

- Thank you.

- You know, this is very interesting work and conversations I think that we can have in the work that you do.

I first wanna start off, Dr.

Johnson, with you just defining what environmental racism looks like and how it shows up in communities.

- When we think about, and I think about environmental racism, my starting point is Warren County, North Carolina, because that exemplifies what happens when a community is selected to have a toxic industry dumped in a place based on race.

And so environmental racism is when you use race to determine where it is that you're going to oppress and basically terrorize a community with environmental injustices, like toxic landfills, like being able, in Warren County, of taking 250 miles of toxic PCB containers, scoop them up, and then say, "Oh, we're gonna place them "in Warren County."

And that is primarily black community, Little Afton, North Carolina.

And so when you have that, that is to me is environmental racism, choosing race as the factor to do these noxious kinds of activities.

- Now, not to make an excuse for anyone who's making these decisions, but how do we know that it's race-driven as far as choosing that space?

Is it optimal land?

Is it, you know, again, playing devil's advocate, I'm not saying they aren't, but how do we know that they are?

- Because these are, first, these are communities that were formerly enslaved populations.

It's always had this black history or brown history, you know, depending on where you are in North Carolina, that these are areas that have been deliberately underdeveloped.

So how is it that you came to put a landfill filled with toxic materials into this community rather than doing some kind of development in concert with the community that uplifts them, that brings resources to their community, rather than use it as a dumping site?

And so you have this activity happening across the South, and "Dumping in Dixie" by Bob Bullard helps explain that these were targeted communities because they're black.

It's not for any other reason and the idea, not the reality, but the idea that they didn't have political power, that they had no political will.

So it was surprising that the community fought back in Warren County, that they said, "No, we're not having this, "and we're gonna protest until something is done "about this thing."

- I'm gonna come to you soon, Benita, but since you addressed all those issues, how do you as an organization start to kind of attack those issues and bring light to them?

- So with the North Carolina Environmental Justice Network, so we founded in 1998, and it was a part of this wave of organizations being founded after the first People of Color Environmental Justice Convening, which was in 1991.

How are we gonna organize ourselves to fight against this?

What are the tools that we need to use?

So for NCEJN in 2026, what we're using is organizing and policy.

So we're addressing what policies are coming down, organizing, organizing, organizing.

Sister Naima Muhammad, who was our senior organizer, had laid the framework for us to do this.

And so then we also have research and education, and that is finding out information for communities and then educating the greater community about what has been found so that there's documentation that supports what community is saying.

They're not just saying things out of the blue.

And then of course, infrastructure and development is our other piece that we have to raise the money to do this, but we're also raising money for our network organizations to have strong infrastructure.

- Okay.

Thank you for that.

Bonita, you are very adjacent in this work and similarly do and help address some of these issues.

Talk about Merrick Moore and the work that you do there.

- So Merrick Moore is a historically black community in Durham that sits on the edge of the city and county boundary lines.

It's a small community, probably just about two square miles in circumference, but it's surrounded by highways, railroad track, and industrial.

And growing up in that neighborhood, I myself was impacted.

I had asthma at a very early age.

And it wasn't until adulthood to learning, you know, some of the reasons why that happened was environmental.

So the Merrick Moore Community Development Corporation, we, you know, function in a way to bring resources to people that really, really need them.

And part of that is our climate justice work and educating people on, you know, what is climate justice?

What does it look like?

How does it show up in your life on a day-to-day basis?

- What is climate justice and how does it show up in our lives on a day-to-day basis, tell us.

- Yeah, so climate justice, if you really think about it, black people used to be told where they could live.

And those were places that either had poor air quality, they were in flood zones, or the soil was not rich to be able to grow food.

So the community that I live in, historically, it was Occaneechi-Saponi.

It became the Millie Roan Hall Plantation on the Roan, Millie Roan Hall Estate on the Roan Plantation, which was sharecropping.

And in the 1940s, V.R.

Pope, who was a real estate developer, kind of carved out the land because the heirs of Millie Roan Hall were told they had to hold onto the property for a certain amount of years before they could sell it.

So as they were selling off the land, and looking back at the original format, Merritt Moore was subdivided and carved out, and it said for colored people, surrounded by highways, industrial sites on either end, a railroad track, and dirt roads.

- So what were some of the environmental issues that started to present itself as you saw the community grow and develop?

- Once again, I didn't, I didn't understand, I'll put it like that.

I didn't understand what they were, as a child growing up with asthma, seeing other people having different respiratory diseases, having kidney problems, developing cancer, and things of those sort.

But about 1920 to '21, I was doing a deeper dive into the environmental justice issue because what I saw was that our neighborhood, which is very small, was being pushed out by development and gentrification.

They were squeezing in on us by developing around us without our voice being in the conversation.

And so as I started diving deeper and I'm learning things, educating myself, I connect with someone at Clean Air North Carolina, and they explained to me how particulate matter and the air that you breathe can impact your entire body because your lungs are the only organ on your body that are not protected from outside elements.

So whatever you breathe in, it goes straight into your lungs and it can be dispersed out.

And the PM2 molecules, if they are small enough, they can actually enter into your bloodstream, which can lead to heart disease, it can lead to kidney disease, it can lead to cancer and a host of other things in your body.

And so that understanding came to me about 1921.

Like I had asthma as a kid, impacted in an area which was part of the county, rural out, dirt roads, people didn't have the infrastructure there.

So we relied on wood stove and kerosene and all of those things.

And back then people smoked a lot as well.

- Well, let me ask this question and you can feel free to add.

We've talked about the decision makers and the people who are coming in and building highways and infrastructure.

Who are these people?

Who are these people that are making these decisions, building the highways?

Who's included in those conversations?

Because you clearly said that the black voice was not included.

- So, (laughs) I would start with conversations that happen in with the planners.

So you've got plans that are made going out 10, 20, 30, 50 years out.

So you're planners and you have to think who is it who's elected to be in our city council, our county commissioners.

So on the local level, it's those kinds of decision makers.

And oftentimes, yes, black folk are excluded out of those bodies of folk for a variety of reasons.

They're the banks.

One of the things that I like to point to is this book by Richard Rothstein called "The Color of Law" that talks about redlining.

So it was the deliberate nature, the deliberate ways in which banks would refuse to loan money to black communities or they would give them loans that were just egregious and they were carved out.

They had red areas, green areas that were the prime, yellow areas that were kind of in between.

Most of the black communities across the country were in these red areas.

So decision making all the way up to the state level and developers.

And we are left out of those rooms in which they are talking.

- When you start to see these trends pop up and appear, how hard is it to actually advocate against this happening and prove that this is an intentional act?

- I'll give an example from work that NCEJ was involved in was against Smithfield Foods because that was where organizing in rural Eastern North Carolina around CAFOs, which are concentrated animal feeding operations.

We know them as hog farms, poultry farms now, turkey farms, but they're large industrial agriculture.

And placing them in agricultural areas.

What do you do with the waste?

The waste from those hogs goes into what they euphemistically call lagoons, those are not lagoons, they're cesspools.

And you talked about, Benita, about the particulate matter going, that comes into your lungs.

This is fecal matter.

That when you smell something that smells like feces, could use the other word, and it's so funny, we don't wanna use those words, but yet people are ingesting feces.

That goes into their system, throughout their system.

And imagine years of this.

So, I kind of maybe veered away from your original question.

But that is where these things are located.

So that location matters.

And then you have folks who enforce the interests of industry.

So we gotta bring industry in here, because they're the ones who get the money.

- So you said that with Smithfield Foods, how did you prove or argue that this was racially driven?

- Several ways.

We did it through protesting, protesting all the way at the state level.

People were organized.

We had groups of folk organized.

One is REACH, which is down in Duplin County.

There's EJCAN now in Sampson County.

But organizing the people, affecting policy, voting, the ways in which we vote.

But also, I think, we also utilize the academy.

That is to demonstrate that this is actually happening.

Because there's the denial.

Oh, that's nothing wrong.

- That's what I was gonna say.

- But we had Steve Wing, Dr.

Steve Wing, who has since passed from cancer.

Steve Wing was a part of NCEJN with Gary Grant and Nan Freeland.

And documented with his students from the school public, he was at UNC School of Public Health, documenting that, in fact, this particulate matter is toxic.

It does cause cancer.

Now, folk back away from causation, but he could prove that in that particulate matter was fecal contamination, and that you would swab, they would go into homes.

- And I think what I'm hearing is, while you can't concretely say that this is a racial move, but when we look at who's in the red, and we look at the numbers that are being impacted, the people, the households, as you say, that are being impacted, we can now deduce that they're potentially, by the trends, is a racial motive.

- And another indication, just an example that got from Elsie Herring, who died, who has since died, was key to the environmental movement.

When local law enforcement comes in and follows you as you're coming in and out of your home, follows you on the road, intimidate, comes into your yard and say, "You can't do that, you can't do this," and it's predominantly white law enforcement, and you're black, you know that is the racial component.

So it's a compounding of various things that tells you this is race.

- It's race.

I wanna bring Benita back in and talk about data centers, AI's kind of taking over when we look at technology, and we see that rural areas are being targeted to put these huge data plants.

Why, and what is the impact, and do we know the full impact of what these centers are gonna have?

- I think we can kind of see a little bit by what's happening in Memphis.

- Tell us about what's happening in Memphis.

- Number one, well, in Memphis, this data center that was built there was built next to a black community, and it's a rural black town.

And what they're doing is extracting water to cool the machines, to cool the machines.

We're told a lie, and that this water is gonna be filtered out and recirculate.

When it doesn't happen, the water that's brought in evaporates into the air, so it's not recirculating, so you're constantly bringing more and more from, taking more and more of the water supply that the people in the city use, but also the chemicals that they're pushing out is contaminating the water as well.

But then there's also the aspect of the noise.

One thing we don't talk about a lot is noise pollution.

And so imagine you've got all of this machinery that's really noisy when you're used to a quiet space, and now at night you can't sleep, you can't rest 'cause you hear this 24 hours a day.

And also the impact that it has on the electric grid, because you have this big utility in a residential neighborhood, those costs are being passed off to all of the people in the area.

So the company itself, the owner of the data center, is not absorbing the cost of the energy that they're using.

- And we're seeing that a lot, right?

We're having a lot of conversations around the energy costs and usage going up, right?

Our light bills are exorbitantly much higher.

How do folks who live in those areas, and even outside of those areas, combat what's happening, understanding that the water is evaporating into the air, we are not breathing in these contaminants.

How do residents day to day fight this?

- I think as community leaders, we have to educate ourselves so that we can educate our people.

And that's one thing that, you know, my nonprofit is a community-based nonprofit.

And so we take on the task of providing that education so that we have informed residents, in particular our seniors, who are cut out of the digital divide.

Most of the young people can find out everything on their phone or an app or whatever.

But a lot of our seniors are not connected in that way.

They're still waiting on the newspapers, which have gone away, or they're waiting on something to come in the mail, or they're depending on regular news media, which I'm not gonna say what I'm thinking.

(all laughing) But, so, you know, we take on the mantle as community leaders, we have to educate our residents so that they fully understand.

And when you understand the all angles of the problem, or even that it's a problem, then you're able to know how can I move and what do I need to do to protect.

- And to that end, and this is another thing that NCEJN has done, and it's being led by Rania Mazri, one of the co-directors, and her team.

We convened a meeting in the early part of the month, of last month, a meeting around data centers.

And we had about over 65 people to come to this meeting to talk about what is it that, to strategize around, what is it that we can do, because they're coming to all these different communities.

We had 37 different groups represented in just that one convening, and folks talked about how it is we're gonna organize, educating themselves as leaders within their community.

And one of the things we're calling for is a moratorium to stop, - To stop.

- Before, because we do need to do the assessment.

These hyperscale data centers, not only are they using up so much energy, they are also utilizing energy in what's called generative AI.

- Right.

- And that is an issue, because that's between AI, AI.

- Right.

- We as humans are not consuming that much.

So we're paying for those energy costs.

- I heard you say earlier about, knowing who we're voting for.

So I hear advocacy, policy work.

So how does that, how do we get in on that now, so that we're not trying to, I mean, I don't know if it's too late, if a lot has been happening before we even realize it, and now we're here.

But what does dismantling some of the policy that is allowing this to happen, what does that look like?

- One tool, one thing that's used is lawsuits.

So to prevent a landfill from coming, a ginormous landfill from growing larger in Sampson County, EJ Can, with lawyers from the Southern Environmental Law Center, sued the company.

And they were able to stop not only the landfill, but to do some remediation.

So one of the ways in which we do that is bringing suit.

Is saying, okay, we've got to stop what's going on.

For data centers, it really is community by community.

So for example, Stokes Community, pressured the community group, pressured their commissioners, enough so that they rescinded the rezoning, they voided the rezoning that they did for the data center.

- Okay.

- And so mounting that resistance is key.

- Are there any safe spaces for data centers?

- No.

- No.

- And right now Durham is actually, there's gonna be a hearing, that's how they're pushing for a moratorium on these data centers until more studies can be done.

Sometimes local officials are just only looking at revenue.

And they're not considering the long-term impacts in people's lives, and even their own lives.

They're not considering that.

They're just looking at right now, and revenue.

- Right.

- But in this world, in order to have a healthy earth, we need a healthy earth for us to still be here, for human life to sustain.

- For those who are saying, this doesn't impact me, I don't live in a rural community, I'm not black.

How does it impact-- - You know what I say?

- How does your energy feel?

- You know what I say?

It may not, 'cause not my monkey, not my circus, not my monkeys.

It may not be on your street now, but it will eventually impact you.

Even though you think, this doesn't bother me, I can afford to do this, and I can afford, it will impact you in ways, and sometimes in subtle ways, until it slaps you in your face.

- Yeah, tell us how folks can find out more about the work that you're doing at NCEJN.

- North Carolina Environmental Justice Network, NCEJN.

We have a website, ncejn.com, and we have a newsletter that goes out twice a week, which is amazing, and Luma Kennedy is one of our folks who helps get that newsletter out.

And it informs people about events, what's going on around the state.

We're a network, so we're not a single organization just doing things in one location.

We network together because collaboration is how community works, and that's what we do.

- Benita, we didn't get to touch on the work that you do at Merrick Moore about food access and all of that.

I know that that's a big piece.

We got like a minute left, though.

- Okay, so in a nutshell, we own a property that's just under two acres, where we have, from 2019, been developing.

We have a community garden that's there where we're growing fresh produce, and last year we installed over 20 fruit and nut trees on the property.

Our goal, we're a charitable organization, and so what we grow, we donate to those who are in need, whether in community, community means Durham, not just my neighborhood.

So we donate everything out.

We operate off grants and donations.

- And those that wanna help and provide support, go to our website.

- Our website is merrickmoorecdc.org.

We're also on Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, Merrick Moore CDC.

- Okay.

- Yeah.

- Wonderful, Benita Green, Dr.

Valerie Johnson, thank you both so much.

Appreciate all the work that you're doing.

- Thank you.

- Thank you so much.

Do we have time for my quote?

- Real quick, real quick.

- Just wanna leave this with you from Lucille Clifton, an extraordinary poet who passed in 2010.

Come celebrate with me that every day something has tried to kill me and has failed.

- Thank you, thank you.

And I thank you for watching.

If you want more content like this, invite us.

We invite you to engage with us on Instagram using the hashtag #BlackIssuesForum.

You can also find all of our full episodes on pbsnc.org/blackissuesforum and on the PBS Video app.

I'm Kenia Thompson, I'll see you next time.

(upbeat music) ♪ ♪ - Quality public television is made possible through the financial contributions of viewers like you who invite you to join them in supporting PBSNC.