Student activists are pushing back against big polluters – and winning!
Curtis Bay in South Baltimore is a neighborhood with a junkyard that is crushing cars, an old landfill, chemical manufacturing plants, mountains of coal, and 18 wheelers constantly rolling through spewing diesel exhaust. The people in the neighborhood are mostly working class, poor, and people of color. Coal is the biggest problem because black coal dust is easily visible on cars and porches and small enough to get into people’s lungs.
Enter a group of teens from the neighborhood high school called “Free Your Voice,” organized in 2011. The group had already opposed plans to build the country’s largest waste incinerator less than a mile from their school. They also learned that incinerators generated electricity by burning trash that released large amounts of mercury, lead, and soot into the air. The students began a grass roots campaign educating the neighborhood, and then convincing the school board and other agencies not to purchase incinerated electricity, and the incinerator was never built.
Now the group is facing CSX, the massive freight transportation company which brought over 8 million tons of coal through South Baltimore in 2021. They are trying to reduce coal dust in the neighborhood and hoping to get the Maryland Department of Environment to negotiate some protective measures from CSX. THIS IS SO IMPRESSIVE!
References:
https://www.npr.org/2023/10/04/1197954102/student-activists-climate-change-baltimore
https://climatecommunication.yale.edu/publications/global-warmings-six-americas-age-race-ethnicity-gender/
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-021-03821-8
https://www.npr.org/2021/09/09/1035250142/to-avoid-extreme-disasters-most-fossil-fuels-should-stay-underground-scientists-
Twitter photo by Baltimore Firefighters IAFF Local 734.
