The Heinz Family Foundation recently announced the recipients of this year’s Heinz Awards. It is the program’s 30th anniversary. The awards recognize extraordinary contributions in the arts, the environment, and the economy.
Sacoby Wilson, Ph.D., is one of the recipients being honored for his work on the environment. Wilson is an environmental health scientist and a leader in environmental justice. He’s the Director of The Health, Environmental, and Economic Justice Lab, or T.H.E. EJ Lab, at the University of Maryland. The Allegheny Front’s Kara Holsopple spoke with Sacoby Wilson about the award and his approach to environmental health and justice.
LISTEN to their conversation
Kara Holsopple: Thank you for speaking with me, and congratulations on your Heinz Award.
Sacoby Wilson: Thank you. It’s great to be a winner of the 30th Heinz Awards. And it’s pretty overwhelming, quite humbling. Actually, when they called me, I literally cried, which I normally don’t do. But it is a huge deal. It is great when you’re honored for your work and with all the things that are happening in the country, the anti-environmental justice sentiment, this not just a recognition for me, but a recognition for the entire environmental justice movement. That we are on the right path, that we are doing God’s work, and that we’re having impact. So, it’s a great honor for me.
Kara Holsopple: Tell me a little bit about the work that T.H.E. EJ Lab does. What’s your mission?
Sacoby Wilson: Our mission is to do research that supports communities that are experiencing environmental justice issues. There are many communities around the country, populations due to their race or income, who tend to have a higher burden of environmental hazards, things like landfills, power plants.
What we do is provide scientific, technical assistance to those communities. One of my main buckets of work is really air quality monitoring. We build a lot of hyperlocal air quality monitor networks, and we do what we call community-based monitoring. Community members live in places with these stationary or mobile sources of pollution. They are the contextual experts. They have the lived experience; they know what’s going on. We want to make sure the monitoring is responsive to their needs and concerns.
We’ve done monitoring in Charleston, South Carolina, around the port expansion in North Charleston. We’ve done monitoring in Prince George’s County Schools, trying to educate young people about air pollution in their schools, to help empower them, educate them so they can do something about it. That’s one of our biggest areas of work is really helping communities get the tools and the data around air quality so they can translate to action.
[O]ne of our biggest areas of work is really helping communities get the tools and the data around air quality so they can translate to action.
Kara Holsopple: What’s your philosophy on engaging residents in your work, and what does that look like on the ground?
Sacoby Wilson: You know, early on in my career, usually community groups or residents would get to know us through a green group. They have this environmental problem or environmental health issue, and so initially they would contact the Sierra Club or a group like that. Then it would be like a referral process. But over time now people really got to know the EJ Lab and the work that we do. People contact us directly.
Most of the work that we do when it comes to engaging residents is in collaboration with a local grassroots organization. In many cases, they’re reacting to building a new facility. That’s usually what happens, or a facility is getting a permit. We built this network in the region where grassroots organizations are working together. Grassroots organizations are working with academic partners.
We also have community-university partnerships where communities are helping to build the study design. They develop the research questions, help drive the study, design, etc. So a lot of it is really ground-up research. They are working with partners like us, partners that they trust. And that trust has been built over years, in some cases decades of working together.
Kara Holsopple: President Trump and his administration are doing away with environmental justice funding, staffing and initiatives in the federal government. They are also targeting universities that work on racial and other disparities. What impact does or will that have on your work and others in the field?
Sacoby Wilson: It’s had a tremendous negative impact. We’ve had grants that I would say have been illegally terminated on the university side. I am, I was going to say was, but I am the co-director of the U.S. EPA Region 3 TCTAC. That’s the Thriving Communities Technical Assistance Center. The idea behind this center is to provide technical assistance for front-line, fence-line groups that are impacted by environmental and justice issues to build a capacity to apply for funding, including federal grants.
It’s been a huge negative impact of the administration when it comes to the illegal termination grants, and shutting down the programs like the Community Change Grant Program. I think the Community Change Grant Program, was a $2 billion fund, probably one of the EPA’s best programs in its history.
That program would have provided monies, in some cases, $20 million for collaborations to look at climate action strategies. So think about putting in EV charging stations, putting in solar, training folks in how to do HVAC, putting in green infrastructure, tracking reduction of greenhouse gases, and those important co-pollutants like particulate matter. Improving people’s lives and also providing jobs.
But guess what? The EJ movement is about people and what can be disassembled could be reassembled.
That would have had many co-benefits and dividends, so that $20 million investment could have led to $100 million of return of co-benefits because of reducing pollution, improving health outcomes, and providing jobs. So you’re saving lives, saving money, and creating opportunity. That was a beautiful program. I think that’s a loss for the country. Many of the grants that have been canceled also impacted rural, low-income, white residents, and impacted folks who already had a lack of access to good infrastructure in rural areas.
Also, the dismantling of the environmental justice infrastructure at the federal level. The hard work of folks in the Office of Environmental Justice. A small but mighty team in the EPA for years that was really not provided the support until the last [EPA] administrator, Administrator Regan. [He was] probably the administrator who did the most on environmental justice, who really led with his heart and really provided the infrastructure and leadership. So having that infrastructure dismantled is problematic.
But guess what? The EJ movement is about people and what can be disassembled could be reassembled. So the movement, it’s not over. The movement wasn’t ended. It’s just a delay. Yes, the money is a problem, but what is the statement? The revolution will not be televised, nor will it be funded. We went for years without having money in the EJ movement and getting things done. I think it’s going to make the movement stronger because we have more power together. Let’s move forward better together in this moment.
Kara Holsopple: You’ve been in the environmental justice field for a while now. What changes have you seen in how environmental justice work is perceived and the impact that it’s made in these communities?
Sacoby Wilson: I was on the EPA, am I still on it? I’m not sure, but I was on the EPA Science Advisory Board. And for the first time at the EPA Science Advisory Board, they started focusing on environmental justice. I was part of the Fifth National Climate Assessment, a very important annual climate assessment that talks about climate change and what we need to do. We had environmental justice in the Fifth National Climate Assessment in every chapter. That’s huge.
[There’s] lot of work at the state level as well when it comes to building programs, initiatives, and passing legislation and policies that really help to advance environmental justice and address environmental injustices.
You see academic institutions focusing more on environmental justice. You still don’t have a lot of degree programs yet, which I think is problematic. But you see more classes, more people doing research. And also, there are many more nonprofits out there doing environmental justice work.
You have a lot of alliances and networks around the country where folks have come together. You see more community-based groups focusing on environmental justice, and you’re seeing more networks, alliances, coalitions coming together to really push on environmental justice. That’s been a change. And then you also see more intersectional work with climate change, reproductive justice, others. I think people see what environmental justice is as a framework.
And also you’re seeing more policy change. Let me not forget that. We’ve seen legislation across the country trying to pass at the federal level the EJ For All Act, which hasn’t passed, but I know they will keep at it, just like we kept at the Civil Rights Act.
At the state level, all the actions, of course, in California, around environmental justice, climate justice. We just had Governor Westmore over a month ago sign an executive order of environmental justice for the state of Maryland. Even in many of our red states, where you haven’t seen as much progress, some states have EJ commissions. South Carolina had an EJ commission. So you’ve seen a lot of work, not just the federal level, but a lot of work at the state level as well when it comes to building programs, initiatives, and passing legislation and policies that really help to advance environmental justice and address environmental injustices.
Sacoby Wilson, Ph.D., is director of T.H.E. EJ Lab at the University of Maryland. He’ll be honored in Pittsburgh on October 21 with the other Heinz Awards recipients.
