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Community Corner

Environmental Justice Conference

Is your community the home to toxic industrial ruins and brownfield sites? Do your sewers overflow into the ocean or river every time it rains?  Are children in the community being treated for asthma at significantly high rates?

These are questions city residents are faced with each day – and these are the questions our media and citizen journalists should be asking. Which is why we have invited some of the state’s leading experts in environmental justice to share with us their successes in helping our most vulnerable communities.  

Learn from the citizen problem-solvers who are making significant gains in overcoming more than a hundred of years of wear and tear, and in some instances outright abuse, in our urban areas.

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Be empowered with the tools and the knowledge to write a new chapter for our cities on Monday, March 10 from 6pm – 8pm at the Alexander Library at Rutgers University-New Brunswick for our statewide conference, "Environmental Justice, Advocacy & The Media."

Ana Baptista, Director of Environmental & Planning Programs at the Ironbound Community Corporation (ICC) who is leading an initiative to improve the air quality in the City of Newark by linking citizens with city planners will serve as the keynote speaker.

Find out what's happening in Hillsboroughwith free, real-time updates from Patch.

The conference will also shine a spotlight on the environmental challenges facing the urban areas of our state and the evidence-based solutions which can further enhance media coverage of these issues.   

A dynamic panel presentation will be moderated by Randy Solomon, Co-Director of Sustainable Jersey and cover a variety of environmental justice efforts that feature citizen empowerment. Attendees of this free public conference will:

  • Discuss the effort that has improved Trenton’s air quality with Dr. Nicky Sheats, Director of the Center for the Urban Environment at the College of New Jersey.
  • Learn about the successful initiative that has dealt with storm water runoff and waste water in Camden from Andy Kricun, Executive Director of the Camden County Municipal Utilities Authority.
  • Hear about the clean-up of our state’s contaminated sites from Robert Spiegel, Executive Director of the Edison Wetlands Association.

The Environmental Justice, Advocacy, and The Media conference will be held on the Rutgers-New Brunswick Campus at the Alexander Library, 4th Floor. It is free and open to the public however, registration is strongly recommended due to limited seating, please register at www.TheCitizensCampaign.org/events.

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