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One recent opponent is the impending World Logistics Center, a warehouse development so big it’s hard to imagine, with a planned size of entire city of Moreno Valley—a footprint about three times the size of New York City’s Central Park.
Estimates are that day would serve this center, some of them coming within 100 feet of where people live, all contributing to the already-poor air quality in the region.
A vast industrial area that includes numerous logistics facilities borders homes in the Rancho Cucamonga and Fontana area of California.
Tens of millions of square feet of warehouse and logistics space have been built in the vast Inland Empire of California since millions more are on the way.
ISSUE SUMMARY Earthjustice and community groups reached a landmark settlement with the developer of a massive warehouse to invest $vehicles and equipment, rooftop solar, and other solutions that will electrify the facility and reduce harms to local air quality, wildlife, and the climate.
A coalition of environmental justice and conservation groups worked to reduce the World Logistics Center’s harmful impacts, filing three lawsuits over the project — the largest of its kind worldwide, at feet.
The settlement mitigates air pollution impacts and highlights the need for the warehouse industry to adopt more zero-emission technologies.
In April, Earthjustice won a settlement that would require the developer of the World Logistics Center to mitigate at least part of this impact, with support for solar panels that would supply half the warehouses’ power needs.
It is also required to provide locals with grants to put toward electric car purchases; $$4 million to the San Jacinto Wildlife Area, home to over 20 species of threatened and endangered raptors including the Swainson’s hawk and Northern harrier, and other animals like the California tiger salamander, tricolored blackbird, and kangaroo rat.
The settlement is valued at up to $as a precedent for the future.
Just two months later, a first-of-its-kind rule was passed by the South Coast Air Quality Management District.
It requires large warehouses — over and rooftop solar into their operations.
Estimated to save up to $health costs, this kind of push for electrification will also impact the air quality wherever those trucks go, even beyond California.
Timothy Preso has been defending wildlife and habitats with Earthjustice for 21 years.
Doug Loneman for Earthjustice With the climate crisis upon us and a still-shrinking window of opportunity to change course, there is an urgent need to work in more regions, take on more cases, and expand our partnerships.
We’ll have to strengthen environmental laws, and to use them to put people and planet before profit with more tenacity than ever before.
Following are a few of the initiatives our teams are scaling up as we look ahead to building a stable and resilient future for all.
THE FIGHT FOR THE GULF One of the biggest fights for climate justice is in the Gulf Coast region, where communities face deadly pollution from concentrations of fossil fuel and petrochemical operations, which are slated to ramp up in the years ahead.
The Gulf Coast already suffers immensely from the climate crisis, including rising seas and extreme weather, and these impacts continue to fall disproportionately on marginalized communities already dealing with generations of exploitation.
Members of the Coalition Against Death Alley and supporters, including RISE St. James, demand justice on the lawn of the Louisiana Governor’s Mansion in Baton Rouge, as part of a five-day march through neighborhoods hardest hit by fossil fuel pollution.
Julie Dermansky 40 41 Roughly an eighth of the Earth’s species are threatened with extinction.
Earthjustice has been responding to these threats for and reef ecosystems in Hawai’i, and protecting umbrella species such as the grizzly bear.
The program’s first case is defending wolves in Wisconsin from further planned wolf hunts.
JUSTICE AROUND THE WORLD Since around the world to establish, strengthen, and enforce legal protections for the environment and human health.
In Latin America, Africa, Australia, Indonesia, and other regions, we work with partners to oppose fossil fuel extraction, challenge barriers to renewable energy, increase access to low-cost clean energy, and protect international ocean waters.
Earthjustice has three scientists, and two professional staff working full-time on international projects.
We will soon expand this team to meet the growing demand for our expertise in partnering to advocate for the right of all people to a healthy environment.
ACROSS THE MOVEMENT We know we cannot effectively advance our mission at Earthjustice without our partners.
For us, genuine partnership requires countering long-standing funding disparities that undermine our collective power to advance justice for people and the planet.
We are growing our capacity to share fundraising skills and tools with our partners; working cooperatively to build their fundraising capacity; and funding networks and projects that bring resources to the field.
When our partners are no longer contending with funding scarcity, our broader community will be strongly positioned to drive the fast, transformative change that is required of our movement.
A gray wolf crosses a stream in the Upper Midwest.
Jim Brandenburg / Minden Pictures migratory birds and pollinators, and push the Biden administration to develop a forest management plan to safeguard old-growth forest ecosystems.
Earthjustice fought Trump’s onslaught of attacks on the environment, filing over throughout his one term to defend our nation’s environmental laws, communities, and wildlife.
None of this would have been possible without the steadfast commitment of supporters like you.
In our 50 years, we’ve never been better resourced or staffed.
At the same time, we have never felt more strongly compelled to do more.
In the face of existential deadlines for our planet, we are working to grow our capacity and meet the ever-growing need for the free services we provide.
While there is a new administration in office, we still have enormous work to do to repair the damage of the Trump era, strengthen our framework of environmental protection, and provide the legal muscle to address climate change, systemic environmental injustice, and an accelerating biodiversity crisis.
We are seizing new opportunities in the federal arena, and we are also contending with the perennial problem that government resources and political will too often run short when it comes to protecting our environment.
Our job at Earthjustice has never been bigger.
All of us at Earthjustice thank you for your commitment to our mission, and for what you are helping us accomplish together with our partners.
We take your commitment seriously and promise you our best in return.
During fiscal year which we use to ensure our ability to carry forward our 630+ ongoing cases to completion.
We draw approximately expenses and will draw as much as 8% annually over the next five years.
As the world’s premier public-interest environmental law organization, Earthjustice represents a wide diversity of clients, from small grassroots groups to large national organizations.
Thanks to the generous support of individual donors and foundations, we are able to represent our clients free of charge, which allows us to choose cases strategically rather than based on a client’s ability to pay.
we formally represent, there are scores of others with whom we partner, co-counsel, and ally to achieve our goals.
Maria Lopez-Nuñez, deputy director of organizing and advocacy at the Ironbound Community Corporation, poses for a portrait at her community garden in the Ironbound section of Newark, N.J.
Hawaiian yellow tang fish and coral reef off the island of Lanai, Maui County, Hawai‘i.
Monica and Michael Sweet / Getty Images Healthy Homes Collaborative Hermanas Dominicas de la Sta.
S Salmon Beyond Borders Salmon for All Salmon State San Bernardino Valley Audubon Society San Francisco Baykeeper San Juan Citizens Alliance Save Lake Superior Association Save Lamu Save Our Cabinets Save Our County, Inc.
Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance Southwest Energy Efficiency Project Southwest Environmental Center Southwestern Indiana Citizens for Quality of Life Spokane Riverkeeper St. Francis Prayer Center St. John’s Riverkeeper Stand.
V Valley Organic Growers Association Valley Watch VAYLA New Orleans Verde Voices in Solidarity Against Oil in Neighborhoods Voltus, Inc.
Wilderness Watch Wilderness Workshop Winnemem Wintu Tribe Wolf Conservation Center Womens’ Earth and Climate Action Network Worksafe, Inc.
The shadow of a small frog sitting on a leaf in California.
NOTE FROM KEN One of the most important and heartening lessons of the past several difficult years has been seeing the positive impact of EWG’s scientific leadership, even in circumstances where facts and science about crucial matters of public health are deliberately ignored by government leaders whose loyalty lies with polluters, big food and chemical companies, and other vested economic interests.
We saw over and over that EWG’s research- and science-based human health standards for food, tap water, and personal care products were critical to national conversations about environmental health.
Our guidance – to lawmakers and industry leaders alike – became more sought-after and respected than ever.
Today we see an increased need for this leadership, as the country’s collective health is crushed under the many impacts of the pandemic, but fresh opportunities are emerging under a new administration in Washington that will be infinitely more receptive to the facts and science with which EWG drives public awareness and policy change.
That is why, now more than ever, EWG must stay the course to maintain its scientific expertise and leadership in the environmental health movement.
Thank you for joining us in that fight.
EWG’S FINANCES EWG provides one of the best returns on your philanthropic dollar, to shape policy conversations on public health, lead entire business sectors away from priority chemicals and reach consumers through the megaphone of our social media and appearances in mainstream media.
And we achieve this impact on an annual budget that is one-tenth the size of other environmental nonprofits with the major national reach of EWG.
There are many reasons we can do this.
The most important is the reputation we’ve earned as a scientific leader on the topic of environmental exposure.
This leadership has turned our top issues – like tackling the “forever chemicals” known as PFAS in our water – into national, mainstream priorities.
And our sound, scientific leadership is ensuring that action taken by manufacturers and policymakers has enough teeth to protect public health effectively, the way consumers expect, so that someday when environmental standards are legal they will also equal safe.
Through this difficult time, we kept our focus on our mission, knowing that the environmental problems we face are more enduring than either a pandemic or political upheaval.
And we saw wins for the environmental health movement.
• A death blow to the use of glyphosate pre-harvest, as manufacturers blocked the purchase of oat crops sprayed with the chemical.
These wins illustrate EWG’s skill at pulling different levers as opportunities arise – in the media, in Congress, in markets and with consumer pressure – to great success.
Not all levers are always available or effective.
But when we work strategically to identify where interest or pressure is reaching a tipping point, we can effect change that otherwise appears impossible.
This is the nation’s first state-level ban of toxic ingredients in personal care products, including the toxic fluorinated chemicals known as PFAS, mercury and formaldehyde, as well as endocrine-disrupting phthalates and long-chain parabens, preservatives used in skincare products.
This ban was the brainchild of EWG’s California lobbying team.
Achieving this win took two years of effort on several fronts – working with legislators, the national cosmetics trade association and the Personal Care Products Council.
Because of this comprehensive strategy, the bill got virtually unanimous support in both houses.
What’s more, it was not achieved by watering down the bill to please everyone and serve no one – the law is strong and sets a national benchmark for the industry.
But getting anything banned from any product is a heavy lift, even in California.
Legislators typically don’t want to weigh in on issues of chemicals and contaminants, preferring instead to leave the science to the experts in California’s Green Chemistry program.
But in this instance, EWG had an ace in the hole: our science program, backed by more than personal care product ingredients.
Our scientific leadership – made possible by your long-term funding – is what took this bill from idea to execution.
Your funding is what made ingredients known to cause damage to our health were finally outlawed from use in personal care products and cosmetics.
And as we’ve seen in so many other cases – from California’s regulation of car emissions to Proposition safer formulations across the country, in effect extending the ban to all 50 states.
This is a huge win for science and for consumers.
EWG’S PFAS In the fall of 2019, we focused our PFAS research on contamination in drinking water.
This decision paid off many times over, pushing action and engagement from stakeholders across the country.
The film stars Mark Ruffalo as Rob Bilott, the lawyer who famously fought DuPont on behalf of the citizens of Parkersburg, W.V., after it was discovered the company had polluted the town’s water supply with PFOA, the carcinogenic chemical used to make Teflon.
We knew previous PFAS tests from an EPA-mandated program had failed to address the full scope of PFAS contamination across the country, because the EPA required tests for only six PFAS chemicals, and the test methods were not sufficiently sensitive.
EWG stepped in to fill this data gap with a national water testing campaign.
Our report, published in January and found PFAS levels above EWG’s health benchmark in 40 samples.
Following the release of the test results, EWG scientists published three peerreviewed papers highlighting the carcinogenic characteristics of PFAS chemicals, the challenges and questions involving PFAS disposal, and the management of PFAS as a chemical class.
Because EWG collected and published timely information about PFAS contamination in tap water in communities large and small across the country, all local media outlets whose water utility was included in the study picked up the story with their own community-specific focus.
We saw clearly that people in many locations, in all demographics, want to know what’s in their water.
The laboratory test results were also a revelation in Congress and sparked an outcry from people who would never have previously considered themselves environmentalists, including conservative legislators.
We also enlisted the participation of military service members and firefighters to highlight the risks of PFAS pollution.
They are disproportionately harmed by the health effects of PFAS, because of its use in firefighting foam.
Veterans and firefighters came out to support our efforts to bring awareness to the issue, even testifying along with EWG in congressional hearings.
Their support has accelerated these reform efforts significantly.

One recent opponent is the impending World Logistics Center, a warehouse development so big it’s hard to imagine, with a planned size of entire city of Moreno Valley—a footprint about three times the size of New York City’s Central Park.

Estimates are that day would serve this center, some of them coming within 100 feet of where people live, all contributing to the already-poor air quality in the region.

A vast industrial area that includes numerous logistics facilities borders homes in the Rancho Cucamonga and Fontana area of California.

Tens of millions of square feet of warehouse and logistics space have been built in the vast Inland Empire of California since millions more are on the way.

ISSUE SUMMARY Earthjustice and community groups reached a landmark settlement with the developer of a massive warehouse to invest $vehicles and equipment, rooftop solar, and other solutions that will electrify the facility and reduce harms to local air quality, wildlife, and the climate.

A coalition of environmental justice and conservation groups worked to reduce the World Logistics Center’s harmful impacts, filing three lawsuits over the project — the largest of its kind worldwide, at feet.

The settlement mitigates air pollution impacts and highlights the need for the warehouse industry to adopt more zero-emission technologies.

In April, Earthjustice won a settlement that would require the developer of the World Logistics Center to mitigate at least part of this impact, with support for solar panels that would supply half the warehouses’ power needs.

It is also required to provide locals with grants to put toward electric car purchases; $$4 million to the San Jacinto Wildlife Area, home to over 20 species of threatened and endangered raptors including the Swainson’s hawk and Northern harrier, and other animals like the California tiger salamander, tricolored blackbird, and kangaroo rat.

The settlement is valued at up to $as a precedent for the future.

Just two months later, a first-of-its-kind rule was passed by the South Coast Air Quality Management District.

It requires large warehouses — over and rooftop solar into their operations.

Estimated to save up to $health costs, this kind of push for electrification will also impact the air quality wherever those trucks go, even beyond California.

Timothy Preso has been defending wildlife and habitats with Earthjustice for 21 years.

Doug Loneman for Earthjustice With the climate crisis upon us and a still-shrinking window of opportunity to change course, there is an urgent need to work in more regions, take on more cases, and expand our partnerships.

We’ll have to strengthen environmental laws, and to use them to put people and planet before profit with more tenacity than ever before.

Following are a few of the initiatives our teams are scaling up as we look ahead to building a stable and resilient future for all.

THE FIGHT FOR THE GULF One of the biggest fights for climate justice is in the Gulf Coast region, where communities face deadly pollution from concentrations of fossil fuel and petrochemical operations, which are slated to ramp up in the years ahead.

The Gulf Coast already suffers immensely from the climate crisis, including rising seas and extreme weather, and these impacts continue to fall disproportionately on marginalized communities already dealing with generations of exploitation.

Members of the Coalition Against Death Alley and supporters, including RISE St. James, demand justice on the lawn of the Louisiana Governor’s Mansion in Baton Rouge, as part of a five-day march through neighborhoods hardest hit by fossil fuel pollution.

Julie Dermansky 40 41 Roughly an eighth of the Earth’s species are threatened with extinction.

Earthjustice has been responding to these threats for and reef ecosystems in Hawai’i, and protecting umbrella species such as the grizzly bear.

The program’s first case is defending wolves in Wisconsin from further planned wolf hunts.

JUSTICE AROUND THE WORLD Since around the world to establish, strengthen, and enforce legal protections for the environment and human health.

In Latin America, Africa, Australia, Indonesia, and other regions, we work with partners to oppose fossil fuel extraction, challenge barriers to renewable energy, increase access to low-cost clean energy, and protect international ocean waters.

Earthjustice has three scientists, and two professional staff working full-time on international projects.

We will soon expand this team to meet the growing demand for our expertise in partnering to advocate for the right of all people to a healthy environment.

ACROSS THE MOVEMENT We know we cannot effectively advance our mission at Earthjustice without our partners.

For us, genuine partnership requires countering long-standing funding disparities that undermine our collective power to advance justice for people and the planet.

We are growing our capacity to share fundraising skills and tools with our partners; working cooperatively to build their fundraising capacity; and funding networks and projects that bring resources to the field.

When our partners are no longer contending with funding scarcity, our broader community will be strongly positioned to drive the fast, transformative change that is required of our movement.

A gray wolf crosses a stream in the Upper Midwest.

Jim Brandenburg / Minden Pictures migratory birds and pollinators, and push the Biden administration to develop a forest management plan to safeguard old-growth forest ecosystems.

Earthjustice fought Trump’s onslaught of attacks on the environment, filing over throughout his one term to defend our nation’s environmental laws, communities, and wildlife.

None of this would have been possible without the steadfast commitment of supporters like you.

In our 50 years, we’ve never been better resourced or staffed.

At the same time, we have never felt more strongly compelled to do more.

In the face of existential deadlines for our planet, we are working to grow our capacity and meet the ever-growing need for the free services we provide.

While there is a new administration in office, we still have enormous work to do to repair the damage of the Trump era, strengthen our framework of environmental protection, and provide the legal muscle to address climate change, systemic environmental injustice, and an accelerating biodiversity crisis.

We are seizing new opportunities in the federal arena, and we are also contending with the perennial problem that government resources and political will too often run short when it comes to protecting our environment.

Our job at Earthjustice has never been bigger.

All of us at Earthjustice thank you for your commitment to our mission, and for what you are helping us accomplish together with our partners.

We take your commitment seriously and promise you our best in return.

During fiscal year which we use to ensure our ability to carry forward our 630+ ongoing cases to completion.

We draw approximately expenses and will draw as much as 8% annually over the next five years.

As the world’s premier public-interest environmental law organization, Earthjustice represents a wide diversity of clients, from small grassroots groups to large national organizations.

Thanks to the generous support of individual donors and foundations, we are able to represent our clients free of charge, which allows us to choose cases strategically rather than based on a client’s ability to pay.

we formally represent, there are scores of others with whom we partner, co-counsel, and ally to achieve our goals.

Maria Lopez-Nuñez, deputy director of organizing and advocacy at the Ironbound Community Corporation, poses for a portrait at her community garden in the Ironbound section of Newark, N.J.

Hawaiian yellow tang fish and coral reef off the island of Lanai, Maui County, Hawai‘i.

Monica and Michael Sweet / Getty Images Healthy Homes Collaborative Hermanas Dominicas de la Sta.

S Salmon Beyond Borders Salmon for All Salmon State San Bernardino Valley Audubon Society San Francisco Baykeeper San Juan Citizens Alliance Save Lake Superior Association Save Lamu Save Our Cabinets Save Our County, Inc.

Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance Southwest Energy Efficiency Project Southwest Environmental Center Southwestern Indiana Citizens for Quality of Life Spokane Riverkeeper St. Francis Prayer Center St. John’s Riverkeeper Stand.

V Valley Organic Growers Association Valley Watch VAYLA New Orleans Verde Voices in Solidarity Against Oil in Neighborhoods Voltus, Inc.

Wilderness Watch Wilderness Workshop Winnemem Wintu Tribe Wolf Conservation Center Womens’ Earth and Climate Action Network Worksafe, Inc.

The shadow of a small frog sitting on a leaf in California.

NOTE FROM KEN One of the most important and heartening lessons of the past several difficult years has been seeing the positive impact of EWG’s scientific leadership, even in circumstances where facts and science about crucial matters of public health are deliberately ignored by government leaders whose loyalty lies with polluters, big food and chemical companies, and other vested economic interests.

We saw over and over that EWG’s research- and science-based human health standards for food, tap water, and personal care products were critical to national conversations about environmental health.

Our guidance – to lawmakers and industry leaders alike – became more sought-after and respected than ever.

Today we see an increased need for this leadership, as the country’s collective health is crushed under the many impacts of the pandemic, but fresh opportunities are emerging under a new administration in Washington that will be infinitely more receptive to the facts and science with which EWG drives public awareness and policy change.

That is why, now more than ever, EWG must stay the course to maintain its scientific expertise and leadership in the environmental health movement.

Thank you for joining us in that fight.

EWG’S FINANCES EWG provides one of the best returns on your philanthropic dollar, to shape policy conversations on public health, lead entire business sectors away from priority chemicals and reach consumers through the megaphone of our social media and appearances in mainstream media.

And we achieve this impact on an annual budget that is one-tenth the size of other environmental nonprofits with the major national reach of EWG.

There are many reasons we can do this.

The most important is the reputation we’ve earned as a scientific leader on the topic of environmental exposure.

This leadership has turned our top issues – like tackling the “forever chemicals” known as PFAS in our water – into national, mainstream priorities.

And our sound, scientific leadership is ensuring that action taken by manufacturers and policymakers has enough teeth to protect public health effectively, the way consumers expect, so that someday when environmental standards are legal they will also equal safe.

Through this difficult time, we kept our focus on our mission, knowing that the environmental problems we face are more enduring than either a pandemic or political upheaval.

And we saw wins for the environmental health movement.

• A death blow to the use of glyphosate pre-harvest, as manufacturers blocked the purchase of oat crops sprayed with the chemical.

These wins illustrate EWG’s skill at pulling different levers as opportunities arise – in the media, in Congress, in markets and with consumer pressure – to great success.

Not all levers are always available or effective.

But when we work strategically to identify where interest or pressure is reaching a tipping point, we can effect change that otherwise appears impossible.

This is the nation’s first state-level ban of toxic ingredients in personal care products, including the toxic fluorinated chemicals known as PFAS, mercury and formaldehyde, as well as endocrine-disrupting phthalates and long-chain parabens, preservatives used in skincare products.

This ban was the brainchild of EWG’s California lobbying team.

Achieving this win took two years of effort on several fronts – working with legislators, the national cosmetics trade association and the Personal Care Products Council.

Because of this comprehensive strategy, the bill got virtually unanimous support in both houses.

What’s more, it was not achieved by watering down the bill to please everyone and serve no one – the law is strong and sets a national benchmark for the industry.

But getting anything banned from any product is a heavy lift, even in California.

Legislators typically don’t want to weigh in on issues of chemicals and contaminants, preferring instead to leave the science to the experts in California’s Green Chemistry program.

But in this instance, EWG had an ace in the hole: our science program, backed by more than personal care product ingredients.

Our scientific leadership – made possible by your long-term funding – is what took this bill from idea to execution.

Your funding is what made ingredients known to cause damage to our health were finally outlawed from use in personal care products and cosmetics.

And as we’ve seen in so many other cases – from California’s regulation of car emissions to Proposition safer formulations across the country, in effect extending the ban to all 50 states.

This is a huge win for science and for consumers.

EWG’S PFAS In the fall of 2019, we focused our PFAS research on contamination in drinking water.

This decision paid off many times over, pushing action and engagement from stakeholders across the country.

The film stars Mark Ruffalo as Rob Bilott, the lawyer who famously fought DuPont on behalf of the citizens of Parkersburg, W.V., after it was discovered the company had polluted the town’s water supply with PFOA, the carcinogenic chemical used to make Teflon.

We knew previous PFAS tests from an EPA-mandated program had failed to address the full scope of PFAS contamination across the country, because the EPA required tests for only six PFAS chemicals, and the test methods were not sufficiently sensitive.

EWG stepped in to fill this data gap with a national water testing campaign.

Our report, published in January and found PFAS levels above EWG’s health benchmark in 40 samples.

Following the release of the test results, EWG scientists published three peerreviewed papers highlighting the carcinogenic characteristics of PFAS chemicals, the challenges and questions involving PFAS disposal, and the management of PFAS as a chemical class.

Because EWG collected and published timely information about PFAS contamination in tap water in communities large and small across the country, all local media outlets whose water utility was included in the study picked up the story with their own community-specific focus.

We saw clearly that people in many locations, in all demographics, want to know what’s in their water.

The laboratory test results were also a revelation in Congress and sparked an outcry from people who would never have previously considered themselves environmentalists, including conservative legislators.

We also enlisted the participation of military service members and firefighters to highlight the risks of PFAS pollution.

They are disproportionately harmed by the health effects of PFAS, because of its use in firefighting foam.

Veterans and firefighters came out to support our efforts to bring awareness to the issue, even testifying along with EWG in congressional hearings.

Their support has accelerated these reform efforts significantly.