The deadline for Public Comment on the Kimberly-Clark Corporation paper mill and distribution center’s Draft Clean Air Act Title V Major Source Operating Permit (Draft Title V Permit) is tomorrow, Friday, April 23 by 5pmCST, but there’s still time to demand that the Alabama Department of Environmental Management (ADEM) perform an Environmental Justice review as part of the permit!
Insultingly, 27 years after Executive Order 12898 that established Federal Actions to Address Environmental Justice, ADEM still does not perform any of the required Environmental Justice reviews as part of its federal air permitting program when it comes to Africatown air polluters.
It’s time to tell ADEM to do the right thing and consider Environmental Justice factors in its air pollution permits for Africatown polluters like Kimberly-Clark!
Email or Telephone your comments to:
Ronald W. Gore, Chief
ADEM-Air Division
(334) 271-7861
airmail@adem.alabama.gov
(All comments must be received no later than 5:00 p.m., Friday April 23, 2021)
In the past couple of years alone, federal air permits drafted by ADEM for significant Africatown air polluters including UOP LLC (petrochemical refinery), Plains Marketing LP (petrochemical storage tank farm), and Kemira Chemicals INC (petrochemical refinery) have all simply skipped the mandate to perform any Environmental Justice review.
If you find that upsetting, please tell ADEM to do the right thing and consider Environmental Justice factors in its air pollution permits for Africatown polluters like Kimberly-Clark!
Email or Telephone your comments to:
Ronald W. Gore, Chief
ADEM-Air Division
(334) 271-7861
airmail@adem.alabama.gov
(All comments must be received no later than 5:00 p.m., Friday April 23, 2021)
MEJAC and our partners at Africatown~C.H.E.S.S., Mobile AL NAACP, GASP (Birmingham), and the Deep South Center for Environmental Justice (New Orleans) have routinely objected to ADEM’s administration of federal air permits in Africatown, and in our reviews of the permits we’ve mentioned, including Kimberly-Clark’s, we’ve found glaring problems not just with the lack of Environmental Justice reviews but with record keeping requirements, pollution estimates, fugitive dust requirements, facility compliance histories, and much, much more.
We are still analyzing what all this means for our work, but we will keep the communities we fight for informed and will share our findings publicly on the MEJAC blog very soon.
In the meantime, please submit your public comment to ADEM and tell them to do the right thing and consider Environmental Justice factors in its air pollution permits for Africatown polluters like Kimberly-Clark!
Email or Telephone your comments to:
Ronald W. Gore, Chief
ADEM-Air Division
(334) 271-7861
airmail@adem.alabama.gov
(All comments must be received no later than 5:00 p.m., Friday April 23, 2021)