Sasol announced a project of build­ing gas-to-liq­uid facil­i­ty and ethane crack­er in Lake Charles Louisiana after long-term nego­ti­a­tion with the Louisiana gov­ern­ment offi­cials. How­ev­er, its pol­lu­tion lev­el seems not to be as sat­is­fy­ing as it claims. What’s more, the relo­ca­tion of local res­i­dents in Mossville is insuf­fi­cient and racial­ly discriminative.

This study ana­lyzes a num­ber of geot­ech­ni­cal risk assess­ment reports, and address­es how well they deal with the core prin­ci­ples and themes of envi­ron­men­tal jus­tice. The find­ings are rather lack­lus­ter, how­ev­er the paper also gives a num­ber of pos­si­ble rea­sons why this might be the case.

This study was con­duct­ed to address pos­si­ble dis­par­i­ties across socioe­co­nom­ic stra­ta in regards to drink­ing water con­t­a­m­i­na­tion. Seek­ing to look specif­i­cal­ly at nitrate, a num­ber of find­ings were made that raised con­cern — specif­i­cal­ly that His­pan­ic com­mu­ni­ties are much more like­ly to expe­ri­ence high nitrate con­t­a­m­i­na­tion in the water.

A 1.3 GW coal-fired pow­er plant is con­struct­ed along the Bay of Isk­enderun in the north­east­ern cor­ner of the Mediter­ranean Sea and already starts oper­at­ing in 2022. It’s the biggest direct invest­ment of Chi­na in Turkey, as part of the Belt and Road Ini­tia­tive (BRI). While it has eco­nom­ic ben­e­fits to Turkey, it may not pay back in the 30 year oper­at­ing peri­od and it faces protests about bio­di­ver­si­ty loss, exces­sive air pol­lu­tion and health impact.

In an attempt to sta­bal­ize ener­gy mar­ket and boost domes­tic ener­gy pro­duc­tion, Biden admin­is­tra­tion decid­ed to push for­ward the con­struc­tion of wil­lowtree oil drilling project. How­ev­er, this approval is a betray­al of Biden’s stop­ping oil and gas drilling com­paign promise and rais­es huge objec­tion from pub­lic. The ten­sion also lies with­in the Alas­ka res­i­dents, some think it would fos­ter racial jus­tice, by cre­at­ing job oppor­tu­ni­ties and increas­ing rev­enues, while oth­er con­cerns more about envi­ron­men­tal impacts. Last but not the least, there’s debate over the envi­ron­men­tal con­se­quences of the project itself: will it actu­al­ly lead to more emission?

In the ear­ly 90’s, the town of Hol­ly Springs was pre­dom­i­nant­ly African Amer­i­can, and was cho­sen for a site for a land­fill to be built. Over time, the area shift­ed demo­graph­ics until it was pre­dom­i­nant­ly white, at which time the per­mit for the site was issued, denied, and re-issued. This is in spite of the fact that there appeared to be no such con­cerns when the area was pre­dom­i­nant­ly African American.

In recent years, the Mer­amec Riv­er has been expe­ri­enc­ing his­toric flood­ing that may be exac­er­bat­ed by the Val­ley Park lev­ee that was built by the Army Corps of Engi­neers and pro­tects an afflu­ent com­mu­ni­ty. Near­by com­mu­ni­ties who are less for­tu­nate, expe­ri­ence fre­quent flood­ing where homes are rou­tine­ly lost and rebuilt at the expense of lack of flood man­age­ment in the area and the near­by lev­ee being built on out­dat­ed models.

Urban Inte­grat­ed Field Lab­o­ra­to­ries are to be con­struct­ed in three U.S. cities through fund­ing by the Depart­ment of Ener­gy. These Urban IFL projects will aim to bet­ter under­stand the cli­mate chal­lenges affect­ing the des­ig­nat­ed areas and how to address cli­mate adap­ta­tions while tak­ing into account groups that have his­tor­i­cal­ly been underrepresented.