Advocates Call For Environmental & Racial Justice At North Birmingham Superfund Site
Dozens of cars decorated with signs and posters formed a procession through the 35th Avenue Superfund site Saturday morning. Members of the “Right to Breathe Caravan” called for racial and environmental justice as they traveled through Fairmont, Collegeville and Harriman Park, north Birmingham neighborhoods that have faced decades of industrial pollution.
Charlie Powell, founder and president of the advocacy group People Against Neighborhood Industrial Contamination (PANIC), helped organize the event with several other groups including GASP and the Birmingham chapter of Black Lives Matter.
“We been fighting this for years and we ain’t been getting no justice,” Powell said. “This is an environmental injustice and we want relief, and we just going to have to start taking to the streets just like everybody else.”
The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) declared part of north Birmingham a Superfund site almost a decade ago due to elevated levels of lead, arsenic and other carcinogens. The area is surrounded by industry, including two coke oven plants, steel producing facilities, quarries and asphalt batch plants. It was recently the subject of a federal bribery investigation involving a Birmingham lawyer, a Drummond coal executive and a state representative.
As part of the cleanup effort, EPA officials have spent years sampling affected neighborhoods and have removed contaminated soil from more than 400 properties. Powell said despite that, industry continues to pollute the area and many residents want the option to relocate to communities with cleaner air and soil.
This is included in a list of demands that the caravan group is proposing for state and local leaders. Advocates also want Gov. Kay Ivey to request to have the 35th Avenue site included on the EPA’s Superfund National Priorities List, and they want the Birmingham City Council to establish an advisory environmental justice commission.
Mary Scott Hodgin,WBHM
Charlie Powell leads the “Right to Breathe Caravan” through north Birmingham.
Michael Hansen, executive director of GASP, said the issues in north Birmingham have been festering for decades, lowering property values and increasing health disparities for the area’s predominantly Black population. He said Saturday’s event was largely inspired by recent calls for racial justice.
“The global uprisings after the murder of George Floyd presented an opportunity to highlight the way that environmental issues intersect with systemic racism and oppression,” Hansen said.
He said the COVID-19 pandemic has also further proven the need for health equity, as data shows minority groups are disproportionately affected by the virus.
Judge orders new Alabama Senate map after ruling found racial gerrymandering
U.S. District Judge Anna Manasco, appointed by President Donald Trump during his first term, issued the ruling Monday putting a new court-selected map in place for the 2026 and 2030 elections.
Construction on Meta’s largest data center brings 600% crash spike, chaos to rural Louisiana
An investigation from the Gulf States Newsroom found that trucks contracted to work at the Meta facility are causing delays and dangerous roads in Holly Ridge.
Bessemer City Council approves rezoning for a massive data center, dividing a community
After the Bessemer City Council voted 5-2 to rezone nearly 700 acres of agricultural land for the “hyperscale” server farm, a dissenting council member said city officials who signed non-disclosure agreements weren’t being transparent with citizens.
Alabama Public Television meeting draws protesters in Birmingham over discussion of disaffiliating from PBS
Some members of the Alabama Educational Television Commission, which oversees APT, said disaffiliation is needed because the network has to cut costs after the Trump administration eliminated all funding for public media this summer.
Gov. Kay Ivey urges delay on PBS decision by public TV board
The Republican governor sent a letter to the Alabama Educational Television Commission ahead of a Nov. 18 meeting in which commissioners were expected to discuss disaffiliation.
A proposed Bessemer data center faces new hurdles: a ‘road to nowhere’ and the Birmingham darter
With the City Council in Bessemer scheduled to vote Tuesday on a “hyperscale” data center, challenges from an environmental group and the Alabama Department of Transportation present potential obstacles for the wildly unpopular project.
