Environmental groups are pushing for changes to North Carolina's industry-permitting process, which they say does not account for the cumulative impacts of environmental pollution.

People exposed to multiple chemical and environmental stressors tend to have higher rates of heart disease, cancer, diabetes and other health problems.

Sherri White-Williamson, environmental justice policy director for the North Carolina Conservation Network, said currently, the state Department of Environmental Protection does not consider cumulative impacts when approving or denying permits for facilities often located in vulnerable communities.

"Within a five-mile range of a particular community in Sampson County, there are two facilities now that have been permitted to convert hog waste into biogas," White-Williamson observed. "There are active concentrated feeding operations, they are within very close proximity to an interstate highway."

Earlier this year North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper issued an executive order to create an Environmental Justice Lead position at each state agency tasked with collecting feedback on pollution from residents living in underserved communities. The order also directed state agencies to use federal and state funding to clean up impacted communities.

Daisha Williams, environmental justice manager for CleanAire NC, said while fostering conversations with impacted residents is important, state officials should be working toward implementing policies to incorporate and measure cumulative impacts when deciding where to site new polluting sources.

"Communities are still suffering, and we need to have tools and solutions," Williams argued. "Not just something that is kind of there to check off a box in the permitting or remediation process."

Accruing stressors from air pollution and climate change can also affect mental health. Research in the New England Journal of Medicine shows natural disasters and climate-related displacement can increase the risk of mental health disorders, anxiety and depression.

A coalition of community organizations teamed up in Oregon to force a chronic polluter out of business, and bring environmental justice to a nearby neighborhood.

The groups, known as the West Eugene Community Coalition, used community engagement, education and pressure from regulatory agencies to force the J.H. Baxter Company to close.

Residents of the West Eugene neighborhood say for years, the wood-processing mill dumped cancer-causing chemicals into their air and the soil.

Lin Woodrich is co-chair of the Active Bethel Community. Woodrich helped organize neighbors to pressure the company to do soil tests, but many residents were afraid to participate.

She said company officials didn't treat them as people.

"They talked about us as data, and I kept explaining that these are people," said Woodrich. "These aren't data. These are people with homes and families and the poisoning that's going on. We need to find out, really, what is going on."

Baxter & Co. was a lumber-treatment facility that operated in West Eugene for more than 70 years. It finally closed its doors in January after pressure from state officials and numerous complaints of unbearable smells related to pesticides, creosote and petroleum products.

Woodrich said company officials tried to intimidate the homeowners in the low-income neighborhood with letters written by lawyers announcing soil tests, and the official-sounding text frightened many away from participating.

She said the groups sprung into action, going door-to-door to organize neighbors to pressure state officials to deal with Baxter.

"There's no question about it that my group going out," said Woodrich, "we had our vests on, our official volunteer vests. I had a flyer, and we made sure that they understood how important it was. I definitely think that we made a difference."

Several other groups and organizations helped the coalition through the hearings. Rebeka Dawit is an attorney with the Crag Law Center.

She said she and others provided legal guidance to the groups to help them though the bureaucratic maze and reach their goals. She said that can be a daunting process.

"The clean-up process or the accountability process doesn't just kind of go through bureaucratic administrative processes that doesn't include the public or doesn't involve information that empowers community members that are directly affected," said Dawit.

This week is a great chance to enjoy the great outdoors - with more than fifty free events, up and down the state of California, as part of Latino Conservation Week.

People can go paddle boarding, hiking, take nature walks, attend film screenings and more.

Juan Rosas is a conservation program associate with the Hispanic Access Foundation - which organizes the event with the help of dozens of community, non-profit, faith-based, and government organizations and agencies.

He said the program dispels the misconception that Latinos don't care about the outdoors.

"A lot of the Latino community do live in nature-deprived areas," said Rosas. "So, to be able to take them hiking and fishing, camping - have virtual events, webinars, educational resources that they can firsthand experience - is the goal of Latino Conservation Week."

An event on Saturday, July 23 will promote the proposed Western Riverside County National Wildlife Refuge.

Rep. Ken Calvert - R-Corona - and Rep. Mark Takano - D-Riverside - recently reintroduced a bill in Congress to officially create the new urban refuge. They say the idea is to improve access to nature for millions of people living in Southern California.

Find out more about all the events online at 'LatinoConservationWeek.com.'

This year's event slogan is "Disfrutando y Conservando Nuestra Tierra,"which means "Enjoying and Conserving Our Land." According to Rosas, this annual event has really caught on, growing significantly over the years.

"It started in 2014 with nine events," said Rosas. "And this year, in year nine, it looks like we're just nearing 200 events that are going on, all around the United States. So, we're so excited."

Many of the events touch on environmental justice themes, since so many Latinos in California labor in manufacturing and agriculture - industries that often pollute the air and water in nearby communities.

With a historic budget for parks and recreation, New York City is crafting strategic plans to increase tree canopy through an environmental justice lens.

New York City's $624 million parks budget includes funding for capital projects such as planting 20,000 new trees. City Council recently held an oversight hearing on increasing tree canopy, which gave residents the chance to provide input on shade access in their community.

Council Member representing Elmhurst and Jackson Heights, Shekar Krishnan - who chairs the Committee on Parks and Recreation - said the hearing can inform solutions to addressing disparities of tree presence in different neighborhoods.

"In particular, low-income communities of color have far less tree-canopy coverage than other neighborhoods do," said Krishnan, "and that directly results in hotter temperatures known as the 'urban heat island' effect. And so the brunt of the lack of tree-canopy coverage isn't shared equally."

The budget also includes funding for stump removal, which can make way for new trees. A report from The Nature Conservancy found that as of 2017, the city's overall tree canopy was about 22%.

Victoria Sanders - research analyst with the New York City Environmental Justice Alliance - said as New York City moves forward with plans for improving tree-canopy equity across the city, communities that have long been disinvested due to racially discriminatory policies such as redlining must be prioritized.

"There's all this red tape that impacts the way funds can be used," said Sanders. "A lot of the trees that are being planted are replacing trees that already exist. So I think there needs to be maybe some pushback so that a larger amount of the money can be put toward making sure there's equitable tree distribution."

Emily Nobel Maxwell - New York Cities program director for The Nature Conservancy - said she's excited by the budget investments in urban forests, but said there's more work to be done.

"We know that to better ameliorate the impacts of extreme heat, we need more tree canopy," said Maxwell. "It would mean protecting and maintaining the canopy we have. And that requires maintenance funding, laws to protect our canopy, it requires enforcement."

The Forest For All NYC coalition has called for a citywide goal of 30% tree coverage by 2035.