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environmental justice
Missouri Puts Profits Over People's Lives With New Israeli Chemical Limited Facility
A new ICL facility would further establish St. Louis as a hub of militarization and an exporter of global death and destruction while threatening the health and well-being of residents.
May 08, 2025
Early this year, as snow froze into sheets of solid ice, covering the ground for weeks, almost 20% of St. Louis Public School students were unhoused. Meanwhile, in warm town halls, former city Mayor Tishaura Jones praised a proposed new hazardous chemical facility, displaying the city's economic priorities.
St. Louis's northside has long been subjected to the environmental effects of militarization, from the radiation secretly sprayed on residents of Pruitt Igoe and Northside communities in the 1950s, to the dumped cancer-causing Manhattan Project radioactive waste that poisoned Coldwater Creek. A proposed new Israeli Chemical Limited (ICL) facility in north St. Louis would not only be another colonial imposition, but it also poses disastrous environmental risks for the entire state.
A new ICL facility would further establish St. Louis as a hub of militarization and an exporter of global death and destruction. In St. Charles, Boeing has built more than 500,000 Joint Direct Attack Munition guidance kits, known as JDAMS. An Amnesty International report tied these to attacks on Palestinian civilian homes, families, and children, making our region complicit in war crimes. In addition to hosting the explosives weapons manufacturer Boeing, Missouri is home to Monsanto (now Bayer), which produced Agent Orange.
Why does a foreign chemical company with almost $7 billion in earnings need so much funding from our local and federal government at the expense of our residents?
What's lesser known is that Monsanto is responsible for white phosphorus production in a supply chain trifecta with ICL and Pine Bluffs Arsenal. White phosphorus is a horrific incendiary weapon that heats up to 1,400°F, and international law bans its use against civilians. From 2020 to 2023, the U.S. Department of Defense ordered and paid ICL for over 180,000 lbs of white phosphorus, shipped from their South City Carondelet location to Pine Bluff Arsenal in Arkansas. White phosphorus artillery shells with Pine Bluff Arsenal codes were identified in Lebanon and Gaza after the Israel Defense Forces unlawfully used them over residential homes and refugee camps, according to Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International. Another ICL facility, combined with the new National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency that analyzes drone footage to direct U.S.military attacks, would put North St. Louis squarely on the map for military retaliation from any country seeking to strike back against U.S. global interventionism.
Within a mile of the Carondelet ICL site, the Environmental Protection Agency has identified unsafe levels of cancer-risking air toxins, hazardous waste, and wastewater discharge. The new facility would be built within five miles of intake towers and open-air sedimentation ponds that provide drinking water to St. Louis. An explosion or leak could destroy the city's water supply and harm eastern Missouri towns along the Mississippi. ICL has committed multiple Environmental and Workplace Safety violations, including violating the Clean Air Act at its South City facility. In 2023, it was declared the worst environmental offender by Israel's own Environmental Protection Ministry after the 2017 Ashalim Creek disaster, and were fined $33 million.
ICL claims the new North City site is a safe and green facility for manufacturing lithium iron phosphate for electric vehicles; however, lithium manufacturing is hardly a green or safe process. Lithium and phosphorus mining require enormous amounts of freshwater—a protected resource—resulting in poisoned ecosystems and a limited water supply for residents and wildlife in the local communities where they are sourced.
In October 2024, a lithium battery plant in Fredericktown, Missouri, burst into flames, forcing residents to evacuate and killing thousands of fish in nearby rivers. The company had claimed to have one of the most sophisticated automated fire suppression systems in the world, yet it still caused a fire whose aftermath continues to affect residents today, with comparisons being drawn to East Palestine, Ohio. Meanwhile, in January, over 1,000 people in California had to evacuate due to a massive fire at a lithium facility, the fourth fire there since 2019. Despite ICL claiming that the new site will use a "safer" form of lithium processing, it's clear that lithium facilities are not as safe as profit-driven corporations claim them to be.
Missouri leaders repeatedly prioritize corporate profits over people via tax abatements. ICL is receiving $197 million from the federal government. The city is forgiving a $500,000 loan to troubled investors Green Street to sell the land to ICL and is proposing a 90% tax abatement in personal property taxes for ICL, plus 15 years of real estate tax abatements. This is a troubling regional trend, considering that in 2023, St. Louis County approved $155 million in tax breaks to expand Boeing, also giving them a 50% cut in real estate and personal property taxes over 10 years.
Corporate tax breaks in the city have cost minority students in St. Louis Public Schools $260 million in a region where 30% of children are food insecure. Over 2,000 people in St. Louis city are homeless. Enough babies die each year in St Louis to fill 15 kindergarten classrooms. Black babies are three times more likely to die than white babies before their first birthday, and Black women are 2.4 times more likely to die during pregnancy. Spending public funds on corporate tax breaks instead of directing them toward food, housing, and life-saving medical care for Black women and babies is inexcusable. Why does a foreign chemical company with almost $7 billion in earnings need so much funding from our local and federal government at the expense of our residents?
Officials cite "job creation" as a major reason to expand ICL. Still, the new facility is only expected to create 150 jobs, and there is no evidence that these jobs will be given to people in the community where it is being built. Investing in Black and minority businesses would lead to actual self-sustaining economic development.
Despite receiving hundreds of millions of dollars from the federal government, local tax breaks, the backing of former Gov. Mike Parson, and approval from city committees, the facility's opening is not a done deal. The St. Louis City Board of Alders could still intervene. Stopping a facility with this much federal and international backing would require massive pushback from Missourians. Residents deserve more information and input in this process, especially considering the city's resistance to hearing public comments. Notably, when locals submitted a Sunshine request for the ICL permit in March, it was so heavily redacted that it was unreadable.
This facility would turn local Black neighborhoods into environmental and military sacrifice zones, and our response to city, state, and federal leaders should be a definitive and resounding No!
CODEPINK Missouri has a petition to stop the building of the ICL facility in St. Louis.
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The Forests I Love Are Threatened—But Here’s Why I Still Have Hope
Working together, we can continue to advance a better, more sustainable vision for the South.
May 06, 2025
May is one of my favorite months to go walking through the forests near my home in Cedar Mountain, North Carolina. Up here, near the mountainous border between the Carolinas, the air smells sweet and clean this time of the year, filtered by the bounty of trees. I’ve gotten to know some of them like neighbors: the cucumber magnolias, maples, sourwoods, and, of course, dogwoods.
I am a lifelong lover of forests. I am also the executive director of the Dogwood Alliance, an environmental organization dedicated to preserving Southeastern forests. As such, I make sure to pay attention to the forests and the trees.
Lately, when I visit the forests, I see scars. I see the smoldering scars of the recent fires that sent my husband and me into a panicked evacuation. Or, I see the giant holes where trees used to be before Hurricane Helene, which devastated the area and kept me stranded in New York City for days unable to get in touch with my husband or my daughter. Ironically, I was at the annual gathering known as Climate Week as everyone learned that the Asheville area is not a climate haven. Nowhere really is. My neck of the woods is beautiful, but not invincible.
We’re not only fighting what’s bad but also working toward what’s good.
Still, when it comes to climate change, our forests are our best friends and biggest protectors. They can block the wind and absorb the water before it inundates communities. They’re also among the oldest and best tools in the toolbox when it comes to climate change because nothing—and I mean nothing—stores carbon like a good, old-fashioned tree.
And as destructive as the hurricane and the fires were, the biggest threat to our forests remains the logging industry. The rate of logging in our Southern U.S. forests is four times higher than that of the South American rainforests. Despite claims to the contrary, the logging industry is the biggest tree-killer in the nation.
The wood-pellet biomass industry is a major culprit. Over the last 10 years, our region has become the largest wood-pellet exporter in the entire world. Companies receive massive subsidies to chop our forests into wood pellets that are then shipped overseas to be burned for electricity. This process is a major waste of taxpayer dollars and produces more carbon emissions than coal.
And it seems that regardless of who is in charge at the state or federal level, they consistently fail to protect forests. Most recently, President Donald Trump signed executive orders that threaten to turbocharge logging and wood production while subverting cornerstone legal protections such as the Endangered Species Act and the National Environmental Policy Act. The truth is that policies that increase logging and wood production will only make communities like mine even more vulnerable to climate impacts, while decreasing the likelihood of recovery. The Trump administration's efforts to ramp up logging and close environmental justice offices are especially troublesome given the disproportionate impact that the forestry industry has on disadvantaged communities.
It can be an alarming picture to look at, especially when I think about the communities that will be harmed the most: low-income communities of color. But, I’m not new to this movement. I’ve seen again and again, those same communities rise up and fight off some of the biggest multinational corporations on the planet and hold our elected officials’ feet to the fire.
We’ve successfully clawed back subsidies for the biomass industry, slowing the growth of wood-pellet plants, and sounded the alarm when these facilities violated important pollution limits. They’ve had to pay millions of dollars in fines, shut down plants, and scrap plans for expansion. This is what gives me hope for the people and forests of the South.
We’re not only fighting what’s bad but also working toward what’s good.
Just last month, Dogwood Alliance’s community partners in Gloster, Mississippi scored a major victory. The community exerted huge pressure on the state’s Department of Environmental Quality to deny a permit to expand wood-pellet production for Drax—one of the most powerful multinational biomass corporations—and won! This means that the town’s residents will not have to face increased air pollution, noise pollution, traffic, and the greater mutilation of their bucolic landscape. If Gloster, a town of less than 1,000 people, can beat a megacorporation, I know we can stand up to the Trump administration and continue to advance a better, more sustainable vision for the South.
Through my work, I have the absolute privilege of partnering with some of the most inspiring leaders in the environmental justice movement. For example, we are partnering with Reverend Leo Woodberry, a pastor in South Carolina, to create a community forest on the land where his ancestors were once enslaved. With the support of community-focused donors, soon the Britton’s Neck Community Conservation Forest will be full of hiking trails, camp sites, and an ecolodge for locals and tourists from around the world to enjoy. This rise in outdoor recreation and (literal) foot traffic will create a badly needed economic rejuvenation for the local community, thus turning standing trees into gold. After all, outdoor recreation creates five times more jobs than the forestry industry.
This is not an isolated story. Four years ago this month, the Pee Dee Indian Tribe cut the ribbon on their educational center and 100-acre community forest in McColl, South Carolina as part of their effort to create a regenerative economy that prioritizes ecological harmony. All across the South, people are protecting the forests that protect them through a new community-led Justice Conservation initiative, which prioritizes forest protection in the communities on the front lines of our nation's most heavily logged areas.
The other day, when I went for my walk, I noticed that the scars are starting to give way to shoots of new growth. This is the time of year when the trees come alive, lighting the forest with purple and pink and white blossoms. That, to me, is hope. That, to me, is a miracle.
Right now, it feels like the whole world is on edge, bracing for the next major weather event. I know how helpless it can feel to watch the communities you love experience severe damage, I’ve lived it. But we are our own best hope. Just like the trees in a forest, we’re stronger together. Whether you live here in the South or across the country, I invite you to join us in protecting our forests and supporting the types of projects we’re spearheading through the Justice Conservation initiative.
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Trump’s Drive to Undermine Our Progress on Clean Transportation Will Erode Our Health
Instead of making our health a priority, the administration has chosen to delay progress in order preserve a pollution-producing and car-centric status quo.
Apr 23, 2025
Picture this: You’re a kid in New York City living in the South Bronx and you have asthma. While friends go outside to play, you stay behind, worried that an asthma attack could send you to the hospital. Your neighborhood is surrounded by three highways and five bridges, with 300 trucks driving by every hour spewing toxic pollution. Unfortunately, this is common for many children in the lower income areas of the city who face disproportionate air pollution. Children in the South Bronx face a 17% asthma risk, over double the national average. In 2016, asthma-related ER visits were over six times higher in New York City’s low-income areas.
Neighborhoods like the South Bronx and Harlem are uniquely vibrant, but their problem with pollution is not unique as over a third of us—39% of the country—live in areas with failing air quality grades. Despite this clear public health crisis, the Trump administration is actively dismantling solutions to reduce these transportation emissions that disproportionately harm low-income communities and communities of color.
Traffic, industrial activity, and other sources create Particulate Matter 2.5 (soot) pollution. In NYC, soot contributes to 2,000 deaths and 5,150 emergency visits and hospitalizations for respiratory and heart disease each year.
Increased emergency room visits, cancer rates, and even premature deaths are the consequences of our current economic system and policies that pollute our communities, schools, workplaces, and places of worship. Traffic, industrial activity, and other sources create Particulate Matter 2.5 (soot) pollution. In NYC, soot contributes to 2,000 deaths and 5,150 emergency visits and hospitalizations for respiratory and heart disease each year. For people of color this risk is greater as they are 2.3 times more likely than white people to live in a county with failing air quality grades. Our freight system, which moves the goods we all rely on, creates especially dangerous “Diesel Death Zones,” that harm primarily low-income and communities of color. Freight trucks and buses make up less than 10% of the vehicles on U.S. roads, but are responsible for more than half of the soot and nitrogen oxide emissions from the transportation sector. Decades of racist zoning decisions, weak environmental and public health protections, and other discriminatory policies have resulted in a dirty transportation system that overwhelmingly hurts our communities.
The reality is not hopeless: The electrification of personal and freight vehicles, the expansion of mass transit, and other strategies can expand affordable transportation options, reduce air pollution, and save lives. Electrifying trucking and transitioning our grid to clean renewable energy would result in over $1.2 trillion in public health benefits and an 84% decrease in deaths from diesel emissions by 2050. With public transit expansion, we could further reduce emissions and lower transportation costs for families. Currently, low-income families spend around 30% of their salary on transportation, but with transit expansion we could save residents in urban areas an average of $2,000 per year. This would also open up options for those unable to drive and save 84,000 lives from traffic fatalities by 2050. The bottom line is that transitioning to cleaner vehicles and improving public transit makes us healthier and more connected, reduces emissions driving climate change, creates jobs, and boosts the economy.
For decades, WE ACT for Environmental Justice has advocated for and advanced equitable, clean transportation regulations and investments at the city, state, and federal levels. In New York, our initiatives, including the successful Dirty Diesel campaign, helped reduce emissions from the Metropolitan Transportation Authority’s (MTA) bus fleet by 95% citywide. At the Federal level, WE ACT and the “Clean Air for the Long Haul” cohort worked with the Biden-Harris administration and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to update federal regulations to reduce pollution from vehicles. We also advocated passing the largest ever investments for climate justice, which provided long-needed funds for decarbonizing transportation through the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) and Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA), as well as to advance landmark executive orders. After decades of advocacy, the Biden-Harris administration finally began moving toward a holistic approach to center environmental justice.
Freight trucks and buses make up less than 10% of the vehicles on U.S. roads, but are responsible for more than half of the soot and nitrogen oxide emissions from the transportation sector.
Today, this progress is under threat as the Trump administration and Republican allies are determined to attack environmental justice and dismantle these policies. On his first day in office, President Donald Trump signed Executive Order 14154 “Unleashing American Energy,” which called to repeal the “Electric Vehicle (EV) Mandate.” The term “EV Mandate” conflated several federal and state regulations that curbed vehicle emissions. Under the false banner of protecting consumer choice, the administration aims to undo protective emissions regulations, despite pleas from even automakers not to do so. In addition, the administration has rescinded memos that directed state transportation agencies to take into account environmental justice in transportation planning. Most viciously, the administration illegally froze funds for programs like the Clean School Bus Program, established under IIJA, which supports school districts in transitioning to clean, zero-emission buses. This threatens the health of children and families, and puts school districts in a difficult position.
Instead of making our health a priority, the administration has chosen to delay progress in order preserve a pollution-producing and car-centric status quo. Actions violating the U.S. Constitution, rule of law, and sound science, along with ignoring the needs of everyday people, have become hallmarks of this administration. Now, Trump and his allies are attempting to illegally remove California’s right to lead in the clean transportation transition by repealing the state’s waivers to regulate vehicle emissions. The administration is also interfering in NYC’s efforts to curb emissions and to fund the MTA’s public transportation through congestion pricing.
Right now, we need our elected officials to stand up for their constituents, for clean air, and for our future. Vulnerable communities across the country bear the overwhelming majority and heavy toll of air pollution, economic struggles, and worsening extreme weather driven by the climate crisis. Our leaders should address these issues, not make them worse to serve the interests of polluting industries.
We have the opportunity to clean up our dirty transportation sector, address and reverse decades of discriminatory policies, and better our lives. Children with asthma; families; and residents of the South Bronx, Harlem, and communities nationwide deserve clean air and fair, accessible transportation. The Trump administration and allies are pushing to shift us into reverse; instead, we must protect our clean transportation progress and drive positive change forward.
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