BATON ROUGE, LA.
The National Conference of Black Mayors unveiled a partnership Friday with environmental consultants Envirosource and Historically Black Colleges and Universities aimed at studying the impact of landfills on African-American communities.
Robert Bowser, mayor of East Orange, N.J. and president of the National Conference of Black Mayors, said that 2,800 of the 3,000 landfills in the U.S. today are located in African-American communities.
“There’s a lot that can be done, as far as cleaning up the landfills that we already have,” Bowser said. The National Conference of Black Mayors is having its annual convention in Baton Rouge this week.
In addition, Bowser said the HBCUs and minority-owned Envirosource are looking at alternative disposal methods that are a lot cleaner that traditional landfills. The catch is that the alternative disposal methods require more volume than smaller cities can generate, he said.
“A lot of our cities are not that big, and the disposal methods that we’re going to talk about tomorrow need a certain amount of volume of business to operate. So we may have to look at combining two or three or four communities together to get the volume they need,” Bowser said.
On behalf of Envirosource, Don Baylor said his company wants to work with the National Conference of Black Mayors and the HBCUs to develop plans to educate municipalities about the problems associated with environmental racism, to promote green alternatives to traditional landfills and toxic waste dumps, and to help empower minority populations that are adversely impact by those dumping facilities.
