"Protecting Urban
Environments"

Connecticut Coalition
for Environmental Justice

Major Accomplishments 2008

Over the past year, CCEJ has helped achieve institutional change regarding many causes of environmental injustice in Connecticut.

In May 2008, CT Coalition for Environmental Justice and its many legislative and organizational partners (including Coalition for a Safe & Healthy CT) secured a major victory with passage of the Act Concerning Environmental Justice Communities and the Storage of Asbestos-Containing Materials, Connecticut’s first environmental justice law. This new law requires that if certain major polluting facilities are proposed in the state’s low-income towns and neighborhoods two things must occur: First, there must be enhanced public outreach (to include a public meeting) to explain the facility being proposed before the Department of Environmental Protection or the Siting Council makes a decision to okay the project. Second, the polluting facility must negotiate with the chief elected official and the environmental justice community about environmental benefits to offset some of the proposed environmental hazards. These benefits may include funding for environmental education, diesel reduction, walking or biking trails, or urban forestry. The Act Concerning Environmental Justice Communities and the Storage of Asbestos-Containing Materials regulates electric power plants, waste incinerator, sewage treatment plants and other major pollution sources within Connecticut.

The League of Conservation Voters has said this law is one of the two biggest environmental bills passed in the state this year. Groups around the country, including the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, have asked CCEJ about the law.

The EJ law will help reduce the disproportionate environmental impact that the half million low-income people in CT have had to bear.

CCEJ and its partner Consumers for Dental Choice got the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to set a firm date by which it will classify dental amalgam as to its safety. Because it contains up to 50% mercury, a known neurotoxin, dental amalgam can present several health effects although there are few good health studies confirming this. Since dental amalgam is used much more commonly for dental fillings for low-income persons than people of other income levels, it is an environmental justice concern as well. U.S. FDA has already changed wording on its web site to inform the public of the risks dental amalgam poses to children and pregnant women. The FDA policy change will help protect health of low-income people nationwide.

Working with Coalition for a Safe & Healthy CT, the CT Nurse Association, and the CT Public Health Association, CCEJ helped pass legislation to reduce lead and asbestos in children’s toys sold in Connecticut. The law we secured requires manufacturers identify and phase out toxics in toys they sell in state; however, no date has been set when those toxics can no longer be used. The toy law will help safeguard the health of all CT’s children and help give their parents more peace of mind.

Vehicle Retrofits Our organization helped secure a city council ordinance requiring tune-ups to all emergency vehicles in the City of Hartford. The tune-ups will reduce these vehicles’ diesel emissions by up to 20%, thereby removing a major source of air pollution effecting city residents’ health. Emergency vehicles are exempt from any diesel laws or regulation.

CCEJ convinced the Connecticut Resource and Recovery Authority, the quasi-governmental, state agency which accepts and processes recyclables from 77 towns at a Hartford-based facility, to now announce its intentions publicly before siting any new landfill within the state. Currently, CRRA does not have to gain advance approval to build facilities.

Connecticut Coalition for Environmental Justice
P.O. Box 2022, 10 Jefferson St, Hartford, CT 06145-2022
Ph: 860-548-1133 Fax:860-548-9197
email: ccej@environmental-justice.org www.environmental-justice.org