BFA President, Patrick Barnes, is being honored as White House Champion of Change as a Community Resiliency Leader for his passion, commitment and tireless work in the community as it applies to Environmental Issues. I am truly honored to be recognized by the White House as a Champion of Change Community Resiliency Leader. From early in my career as an environmental geologist working in New York and New Jersey, I was struck by the fact that the far majority of the contaminated sites I worked on were in poorer or minority communities. You also couldn’t help but notice that the employees of consultants and contractors doing the environmental assessment and cleanup work did not look like the residents of the area, and often lived directly adjacent to the source of pollution. Adding insult to injury, when additional staff was needed to complete the work, these contractors would routinely bring employees in from other areas. This dichotomy was even starker as my career took me to environmental projects in North Carolina, Florida, Georgia and Louisiana. In 1994, shortly after establishing Barnes, Ferland and Associates, Inc (aka BFA Environmental), in Orlando, Florida, I read “Dumping in Dixie” by Robert Bullard. The book chronicles the tremendous disparities that exist in the siting of hazardous waste facilities, landfills, and industrial plants, and how such facilities are routinely placed in poor and minority communities. Also in 1994, President Clinton signed Executive Order 12898, formally mandating that federal agencies make achieving environmental justice a part of their mission.
It was during this time that I decided the most effective approach for achieving environmental justice, at the grassroots level, would be for firms who are involved in environmental assessment and remediation to be actively engaged in teaching the residents of impacted communities about the environment and how to safeguard and protect it. Additionally, the results would be maximized if much needed job training were provided to at-risk members of these communities in conjunction with this outreach.In essence, the infrastructure repair and environmental restoration needs—which are greatest in poor and areas—represent a great opportunity for renewal, and residents of such communities should have the chance for a direct economic benefit from that opportunity.This issue all came into clear focus for me after the destruction caused by Hurricanes Katrina and Rita along the Gulf Coast. These disasters exposed the tremendous lack of proper environmental infrastructure in poor communities.