Hillary Announces Ambitious and Unprecedented Plan For Environmental Justice

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from WaPo:


Clinton just vowed to eliminate the lead threat in five years. That’s pretty ambitious.



Hillary Clinton, speaking at Al Sharpton’s National Action Network in Harlem today, vowed to try to eliminate lead as a public health threat in only five years:

“What happened in Flint would have never happened in a wealthy suburb of Detroit. It’s no coincidence that black children are twice as likely as white children to suffer from asthma, three times more likely to be hospitalized, and five times more likely to die from the disease…

“Children of color are more likely than white kids to suffer lead poisoning, which can lead to lifelong learning challenges…it’s no coincidence that nearly half of all Latinos in the United States live in places where the air does not even meet EPA public health standards or that race is the single biggest factor determining whether you live near a toxic site…climate change is going to make the burden even heavier.

“So today I’m announcing a new plan to fight for environmental justice….I want to set an ambitious national goal to eliminate lead as a major public threat within five years.”

The details are here: The proposal on lead in particular includes a promise to establish a Presidential Commission on Childhood Lead Exposure, which would be charged with “writing a national plan to eliminate the risk of lead exposure from paint, pipes, and soil within five years.” It also includes a vow to push for $5 billion to implement the commission’s recommendations, to “replace lead paint, windows, and doors in homes, schools, and child care centers and remediate lead-contaminated soil.” It also references a separate $275 billion plan for infrastructure modernization that includes “drinking and wastewater infrastructure.”

Public health problems such as this one historically attract widespread notice when there are glaringly awful outbreaks of it that command media and public attention, such as the one in Flint, Michigan. But in fact, a national effort along the lines of the one Clinton is suggesting has long been sought by advocates for reform — because this remains a national problem that afflicts other cities and localities, too...


read more: https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/wp/2016/04/13/clinton-just-vowed-to-eliminate-the-lead-threat-in-five-years-thats-pretty-ambitious/

[Barack_America]

1. Glad to hear she's now in favor of a fracking ban.

Considering there's no "environmental justice" without one.

ETA: need coffee.