ESGBERT/environment_data · Datasets at Hugging Face

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Earthjustice represented a coalition of environmental groups and clean water advocates and demonstrated that the Ohio Department of Natural Resources violated their own state regulations as well as the federal Safe Drinking Water Act in issuing the contested permit.
OF OFFSHORE OIL DRILLING When our government greenlights fossil-fuel projects without assessing their climate impacts, they are breaking the law.
In December Ocean Energy Management’s approval of the giant Hilcorp Liberty oil and gas project in the Beaufort Sea.
This court win has not only stopped the Liberty project, but it has also set an important precedent that is helping us defeat other fossil fuels development, including the massive Willow drilling project proposed in the Western Arctic.
After years of litigation, Earthjustice and our partners stopped Northwest Innovation Works’ proposed fracked-gas-to-methanol facility behemoth in Kalama, Washington.
This plant would have polluted nearby communities and locked in climate-warming emissions for decades to come.
Since has defeated over a dozen coal export terminals, oil-by-rail proposals, and fracked gas facilities in the Pacific Northwest.
FOREST STANDS PROTECTED Alaska’s Tongass National Forest is one of North America’s greatest ecological treasures and major carbon sinks.
Partnering with Alaska Native Tribes, as well as business and conservation groups, Earthjustice filed a lawsuit and, earlier this year, scored a huge win when the Biden administration announced its intent to reinstate the Roadless Rule in the Tongass.
The Biden plan, when finalized, will at last create durable protections for this precious forest.
CLEANER ALTERNATIVES Earthjustice delivered a win for clean energy and clean air in California when we successfully advocated before the state Public Utilities Commission to approve a $that prioritizes communities bearing the brunt of polluting vehicle emissions, and multi-unit dwellings historically excluded from charging investments.
This big new program complements many other clean energy victories achieved by Earthjustice’s “Right to Zero” campaign.
“Within the footprint of the mine, there are known sites that potentially would be destroyed if the mine would go into operation,” says Cox.
In addition to wholesale destruction of the land next to the river, sulfide ore mines like this one can lead to acid mine drainage—acidic water laden with heavy metals that turns waterways bright yellow.
That’s as bad as it sounds—this toxic runoff is harmful to human, animal, and plant health, according to the EPA.
“When those water quality issues begin, they’re nearly impossible to reverse.
There’s no sulfide mine like this anywhere that’s operated for any significant period of time that hasn’t polluted the environment.
Today, the river is “far from pristine, but it’s a healthy river, well known for its smallmouth bass fishery—which you don’t get without having good water quality and good environmental protection on the river.
There’s a lot of measures of how the ecosystem is still healthy there,” says Cox, and he says the Menominee will always work to keep it that way.
Indian Tribe of Wisconsin ISSUE SUMMARY The Menominee Indian Tribe of Wisconsin, represented by Earthjustice, challenged Aquila Resource’s wetlands permit as well as its mining permit for the Back Forty mine, a massive proposed heavy-metals mine and oreprocessing center.
But Aquila, soon to be Gold Resource Group, has stated its intent to reapply for the permits with a new mine site design.
T oday, Puerto Ricans stand on a dividing line between a dirty, destructive, colonialist status quo, and a clean, green, self determined future.
Almost in the rearview mirror: fossil-fuel-burning plants with transmission lines too-easily blown over by storms, which are likely to increase in our climate-changed future.
Coming soon: a localized, resilient, sun-powered energy infrastructure.
As Puerto Rico leaders stall in abandoning imported coal and gas, local activists are holding power to account.
One group of such activists, the Alliance for Renewable Energy Now, is a coalition that’s pushing for Puerto Rican energy independence with the help of legal representation from Earthjustice.
As alliance members point out, you don’t have to be an energy expert to know that the power system in Puerto Rico is beyond broken.
So this is not something that happens once in a while, this is something that happens a lot,” says Amy Orta-Rivera, an environmental policy coordinator who works with El Puente’s Latino Climate Action Network, part of the Alliance for Renewable Energy Now.
Amy Orta-Rivera, Environmental Policy Coordinator for El Puente’s Latino Climate Action Network, photographed in Ceiba, P.R., in April 2021.
After the disasters of Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority (PREPA) was tasked with proposing a new energy infrastructure plan.
The agency’s solution was to switch some oil-burning plants to fracked gas, a move that still relies on imported fossil fuels, carbon-belching power plants, and centralized electricity generation that requires distribution over storm-vulnerable power lines.
Also in the proposal, the privatized distribution company, Luma Energy, had no obligations to the community.
All this risk for expensive, imported, fossil-fuel power — on an archipelago with abundant sunny days.
Queremos Sol (“We Want Sun”) is the Alliance for Renewable Energy Now coalition’s proposed solution for independence, resilience, and affordability.
The plan calls for decentralizing power in Puerto Rico by way of installing distributed rooftop solar power on 75% of residential buildings.
“We support the plan for PREPA to install solar panels in every house — a house and be integrated into the electric system,” says Orta-Rivera.
A group of volunteers help install a solar power system on a home in the Puente de Jobos community in Guayama, P.R., in March 2021.
Action Network The Alliance for Renewable Energy Now is making steady progress toward transforming Puerto Rico’s electricity system.
First, they built up enough pressure on the Puerto Rico Energy Bureau that it rejected PREPA’s initial plan for modernizing, which relied too heavily on fossil fuels, and sent the plan back for a redesign.
Legislation signed in energy by 2050, with a reaffirmation in 2020 including a commitment to solar power.
But alliance members know there’s more to improving energy infrastructure than promises on paper.
That’s why organizers have continued to keep the pressure on to turn those statements into action, with Queremos Sol showing exactly what a just and equitable transition to clean energy looks like with their distributed rooftop solar plan.
“According to the Puerto Rico Distributed Energy Resource Integration Study, it’s actually $cheaper than the Integrated Resources Plan that the government is trying to pursue,” says Orta-Rivera.
Orta-Rivera is dedicated to changing the course of her island’s future, and she won’t rest until a clean, affordable, and resilient energy infrastructure for the entire archipelago is realized: “I’m really hopeful, because even though it’s difficult to fight the government or to fight big companies, we have seen wins in the past.
For comrades in the cause of reimagining energy infrastructure, she has a request: “Work in solidarity with us.
For decades Puerto Ricans have been pushing the Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority and the government to address the grave economic and environmental issues presented by the current energy system.
Earthjustice attorneys are representing community and environmental groups as they press the government for meaningful action to transition to clean energy.
Work in this space includes acting as a watchdog to ensure the public has sufficient access to the decision-making process, holding power companies accountable for unapproved developments, and challenging dated and inaccurate environmental impact analyses.
Until Puerto Rico’s energy is clean, stable, and sovereign, we will never rest.
Peopled predominantly by working-class Latino communities, it has a strong agricultural history — it once was called the Orange Empire.
There’s a lot of biodiversity and life,” says Yassi Kavezade, who speaks of her home as a place of people and history, defined by native animals and plants, where you can catch epic sunsets that need no filters.
The industry footprint is huge and still expanding, adding more warehouses.
“We’ve seen an expansion of heavy industries encroaching upon neighborhoods, and the communities encroached upon are often communities of color and frontline communities,” says Kavezade, who is also an organizer with the Sierra Club, which is part of a coalition of conservation, health, and environmental justice organizations that Earthjustice recently represented in a game-changing lawsuit.
There’s also forklifting, and all sorts of cranes, that are all still relying heavily on gas and diesel.
They’re a burden on air pollution outside, but also on workers that are working inside,” says Kavezade.
All that equipment causes “diesel death zones,” so named for their dangerous levels of air pollutants like benzene, nitrogen oxides, and particulates.
Those scenic Box Springs Mountains are beautiful, but they also hem that air in, creating some of the worst air quality in the United States, according to the American Lung Association.
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.
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.
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.
We’ll have to strengthen environmental laws, and to use them to put people and planet before profit with more tenacity than ever before.
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.
Earthjustice has been responding to these threats for and reef ecosystems in Hawai’i, and protecting umbrella species such as the grizzly bear.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Wilderness Watch Wilderness Workshop Winnemem Wintu Tribe Wolf Conservation Center Womens’ Earth and Climate Action Network Worksafe, Inc.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
EWG’S PFAS In the fall of 2019, we focused our PFAS research on contamination in drinking water.
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.
EWG stepped in to fill this data gap with a national water testing campaign.
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.
We also enlisted the participation of military service members and firefighters to highlight the risks of PFAS pollution.
The risks of PFAS have long been understood by regulators and scientists, but media coverage of our map of sites of known or suspected PFAS contamination has dramatically accelerated efforts to reduce and remediate PFAS pollution.
As more people have learned they are drinking PFAS-contaminated water, more state and federal legislators have chosen to act.

Earthjustice represented a coalition of environmental groups and clean water advocates and demonstrated that the Ohio Department of Natural Resources violated their own state regulations as well as the federal Safe Drinking Water Act in issuing the contested permit.

OF OFFSHORE OIL DRILLING When our government greenlights fossil-fuel projects without assessing their climate impacts, they are breaking the law.

In December Ocean Energy Management’s approval of the giant Hilcorp Liberty oil and gas project in the Beaufort Sea.

This court win has not only stopped the Liberty project, but it has also set an important precedent that is helping us defeat other fossil fuels development, including the massive Willow drilling project proposed in the Western Arctic.

After years of litigation, Earthjustice and our partners stopped Northwest Innovation Works’ proposed fracked-gas-to-methanol facility behemoth in Kalama, Washington.

This plant would have polluted nearby communities and locked in climate-warming emissions for decades to come.

Since has defeated over a dozen coal export terminals, oil-by-rail proposals, and fracked gas facilities in the Pacific Northwest.

FOREST STANDS PROTECTED Alaska’s Tongass National Forest is one of North America’s greatest ecological treasures and major carbon sinks.

Partnering with Alaska Native Tribes, as well as business and conservation groups, Earthjustice filed a lawsuit and, earlier this year, scored a huge win when the Biden administration announced its intent to reinstate the Roadless Rule in the Tongass.

The Biden plan, when finalized, will at last create durable protections for this precious forest.

CLEANER ALTERNATIVES Earthjustice delivered a win for clean energy and clean air in California when we successfully advocated before the state Public Utilities Commission to approve a $that prioritizes communities bearing the brunt of polluting vehicle emissions, and multi-unit dwellings historically excluded from charging investments.

This big new program complements many other clean energy victories achieved by Earthjustice’s “Right to Zero” campaign.

“Within the footprint of the mine, there are known sites that potentially would be destroyed if the mine would go into operation,” says Cox.

In addition to wholesale destruction of the land next to the river, sulfide ore mines like this one can lead to acid mine drainage—acidic water laden with heavy metals that turns waterways bright yellow.

That’s as bad as it sounds—this toxic runoff is harmful to human, animal, and plant health, according to the EPA.

“When those water quality issues begin, they’re nearly impossible to reverse.

There’s no sulfide mine like this anywhere that’s operated for any significant period of time that hasn’t polluted the environment.

Today, the river is “far from pristine, but it’s a healthy river, well known for its smallmouth bass fishery—which you don’t get without having good water quality and good environmental protection on the river.

There’s a lot of measures of how the ecosystem is still healthy there,” says Cox, and he says the Menominee will always work to keep it that way.

Indian Tribe of Wisconsin ISSUE SUMMARY The Menominee Indian Tribe of Wisconsin, represented by Earthjustice, challenged Aquila Resource’s wetlands permit as well as its mining permit for the Back Forty mine, a massive proposed heavy-metals mine and oreprocessing center.

But Aquila, soon to be Gold Resource Group, has stated its intent to reapply for the permits with a new mine site design.

T oday, Puerto Ricans stand on a dividing line between a dirty, destructive, colonialist status quo, and a clean, green, self determined future.

Almost in the rearview mirror: fossil-fuel-burning plants with transmission lines too-easily blown over by storms, which are likely to increase in our climate-changed future.

Coming soon: a localized, resilient, sun-powered energy infrastructure.

As Puerto Rico leaders stall in abandoning imported coal and gas, local activists are holding power to account.

One group of such activists, the Alliance for Renewable Energy Now, is a coalition that’s pushing for Puerto Rican energy independence with the help of legal representation from Earthjustice.

As alliance members point out, you don’t have to be an energy expert to know that the power system in Puerto Rico is beyond broken.

So this is not something that happens once in a while, this is something that happens a lot,” says Amy Orta-Rivera, an environmental policy coordinator who works with El Puente’s Latino Climate Action Network, part of the Alliance for Renewable Energy Now.

Amy Orta-Rivera, Environmental Policy Coordinator for El Puente’s Latino Climate Action Network, photographed in Ceiba, P.R., in April 2021.

After the disasters of Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority (PREPA) was tasked with proposing a new energy infrastructure plan.

The agency’s solution was to switch some oil-burning plants to fracked gas, a move that still relies on imported fossil fuels, carbon-belching power plants, and centralized electricity generation that requires distribution over storm-vulnerable power lines.

Also in the proposal, the privatized distribution company, Luma Energy, had no obligations to the community.

All this risk for expensive, imported, fossil-fuel power — on an archipelago with abundant sunny days.

Queremos Sol (“We Want Sun”) is the Alliance for Renewable Energy Now coalition’s proposed solution for independence, resilience, and affordability.

The plan calls for decentralizing power in Puerto Rico by way of installing distributed rooftop solar power on 75% of residential buildings.

“We support the plan for PREPA to install solar panels in every house — a house and be integrated into the electric system,” says Orta-Rivera.

A group of volunteers help install a solar power system on a home in the Puente de Jobos community in Guayama, P.R., in March 2021.

Action Network The Alliance for Renewable Energy Now is making steady progress toward transforming Puerto Rico’s electricity system.

First, they built up enough pressure on the Puerto Rico Energy Bureau that it rejected PREPA’s initial plan for modernizing, which relied too heavily on fossil fuels, and sent the plan back for a redesign.

Legislation signed in energy by 2050, with a reaffirmation in 2020 including a commitment to solar power.

But alliance members know there’s more to improving energy infrastructure than promises on paper.

That’s why organizers have continued to keep the pressure on to turn those statements into action, with Queremos Sol showing exactly what a just and equitable transition to clean energy looks like with their distributed rooftop solar plan.

“According to the Puerto Rico Distributed Energy Resource Integration Study, it’s actually $cheaper than the Integrated Resources Plan that the government is trying to pursue,” says Orta-Rivera.

Orta-Rivera is dedicated to changing the course of her island’s future, and she won’t rest until a clean, affordable, and resilient energy infrastructure for the entire archipelago is realized: “I’m really hopeful, because even though it’s difficult to fight the government or to fight big companies, we have seen wins in the past.

For comrades in the cause of reimagining energy infrastructure, she has a request: “Work in solidarity with us.

For decades Puerto Ricans have been pushing the Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority and the government to address the grave economic and environmental issues presented by the current energy system.

Earthjustice attorneys are representing community and environmental groups as they press the government for meaningful action to transition to clean energy.

Work in this space includes acting as a watchdog to ensure the public has sufficient access to the decision-making process, holding power companies accountable for unapproved developments, and challenging dated and inaccurate environmental impact analyses.

Until Puerto Rico’s energy is clean, stable, and sovereign, we will never rest.

Peopled predominantly by working-class Latino communities, it has a strong agricultural history — it once was called the Orange Empire.

There’s a lot of biodiversity and life,” says Yassi Kavezade, who speaks of her home as a place of people and history, defined by native animals and plants, where you can catch epic sunsets that need no filters.

The industry footprint is huge and still expanding, adding more warehouses.

“We’ve seen an expansion of heavy industries encroaching upon neighborhoods, and the communities encroached upon are often communities of color and frontline communities,” says Kavezade, who is also an organizer with the Sierra Club, which is part of a coalition of conservation, health, and environmental justice organizations that Earthjustice recently represented in a game-changing lawsuit.

There’s also forklifting, and all sorts of cranes, that are all still relying heavily on gas and diesel.

They’re a burden on air pollution outside, but also on workers that are working inside,” says Kavezade.

All that equipment causes “diesel death zones,” so named for their dangerous levels of air pollutants like benzene, nitrogen oxides, and particulates.

Those scenic Box Springs Mountains are beautiful, but they also hem that air in, creating some of the worst air quality in the United States, according to the American Lung Association.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

The risks of PFAS have long been understood by regulators and scientists, but media coverage of our map of sites of known or suspected PFAS contamination has dramatically accelerated efforts to reduce and remediate PFAS pollution.

As more people have learned they are drinking PFAS-contaminated water, more state and federal legislators have chosen to act.