Brownfields and social/environmental justice in Milwaukee

Although Milwaukee has been one of the many "Rust Belt" victims of deindustrialization, it has been working hard in the past several years to attract new industries and manufacturing jobs. Much of this activity has focused on brownfields - you can find the EPA definition of these here. The highest-profile brownfields redevelopment project is undoubtedly the Menomonee Valley, but Milwaukee has also been working hard to redevelop the many brownfields located in the 30th Street Industrial Corridor.

The inner-city neighborhoods located adjacent to these brownfields redevelopment projects have taken a keen interest, working hard to make sure that they bring well-paid jobs for local residents. My recommendation for the Geography 564 projects is that you see what you can find out about these efforts. Here are some of the key organizations involved, but you'll probably be able to track down others:

16th Street Community Health Center: its program on Sustainable Community Development has been very active in the Menomonee Valley redevelopment project.

Good Jobs and Livable Neighborhoods, now part of Citizen Action, has been very active in the 30th Street Corridor.

Milwaukee's Department of City Development

You should also look up web sites for the neighborhoods surrounding both of these developments; you'll find  community development corporations and other groups that have been involved. One of our geogr PhD alums, Sandra Zupan, wrote her dissertation on these brownfields projects - you'll find this in the UWM library, and you may be able to find a digital copy on the web as well.

Mining and environmental justice in Northern Wisconsin

Mining has been in the news again in Wisconsin, especially with the controversy over the Gogebic Taconite Mine. You'll find a wealth of information about the proposed mine on the Internet, but you should also take a look at the controversies of the past - especially the Crandon mine. The controversies over mining have multiple dimensions, so to keep it manageable you should focus your project on tribes and tribal lands.

Here are some links about the Penokee / Bad River mine to help you get started - you'll find more links at each of these sites, and several are specifically about the environmental justice dimensions of the case:

Mining Impact Coalition

Bad River Band of Lake Superior Chippewa Tribe

Wisconsin Network for Peace and Justice

For background on the Crandon case (for comparison), here's a book: http://www.amazon.com/Exxon-Crandon-Controversy-Michael-OBrien/dp/193254237X. Although there are no academic articles about the Penokee mine (yet!), you'll find some about the earlier controversy.

Also, don't forget to use Google to look around for more links - and there are Facebook pages you can join to help you keep up with the controversy as well. (Just go to Facebook and enter "Penokee" in the search box.)

Valley Coal Plant and Environmental Justice

We Energies' Valley Coal Plant is the site of one of the most visible environmental justice campaigns in Milwaukee - and indeed one of the few at which the term "environmental justice" has been actively used. It is also still active - they hosted a big public meeting in December 2011, and it probably won't be the last.

Here are some sites to help you get started:

The Cleaner Valley Campaign - this blog is a fantastic place to start. There's a lot of information here (indeed, even plenty of data to analyze), and you'll find links to the various partners involved in the campaign. The partnership list will give you some clues about the key constituents who are concerned about their issue. 

Also recommended: join their Facebook page - still more good links here, and this is a great way to keep track of what they might be doing this spring.

CleanWisconsin

Midwest Environmental Advocates

Petition to EPA

To find even more good stuff, don't forget to Google (regular search and news), and try multiple search terms!

Critiques of libertarianism

In Geography 464 and 564, we read a few pieces coming from a libertarian perspective. For those looking for critiques of libertarianism, here's a treasure trove.

Upcoming study of food deserts in Milwaukee

Here's an upcoming study on food deserts in Milwaukee, Chicago, and Detroit - hey, how did UW-Madison land this, and not UWM?

Spatial justice: the non-profit

Here's a link to a non-profit organization in Seattle (I think) "whose mission is to assist other non-profits, community groups and NGO’s in utilizing data mapping, GIS, GPS, and spatial analysis to describe, measure and analyze issues of possible spatial inequality and injustice."

For students interested in using GIS to address justice issues (whether for a class project or beyond), this may be a useful site. If you're in Geography 564, you should take a look at the organization's approach to conceptualizing "spatial justice," here in the Toolbox section. I'm pretty sure that this is "early" David Harvey they are quoting here... They also quote geographer David Smith, whose book Geography and Social Justice is essential reading for graduate students interested in the topic.

What does "local" mean?

Recently in Geography 564 we discussed Born and Purcell's "avoiding the local trap", which discusses the recent glorification of "local" food and agriculture as more sustainable, more just, and well, just plain better. This isn't just an academic argument, as this recent news article makes clear. (If the link doesn't work, try googling Jalonick and local - the author's name is Mary Clare Jalonick.

If you're interested in reading more critiques of the "local," here are some other links for you to check out:

- Here's a blog post that also contains the text of a 2010 New York times article.
- And here's a description of a 2008 academic article on buying local.

Subsistence fish consumption and environmental justice in Wisconsin

This one's part of a series for students in Geography 564: Urban Environmental Change and Social Justice.

Among other things, President Clinton's Executive Order 12898 on Environmental Justice directs federal agencies to research and address subsistence consumption of fish and wildlife (see Section 4-4). Here in Wisconsin, there are a number of communities that rely heavily on subsistence fishing, including Hmong and other southeastern Asian communities, American Indian communities, and low-income inner-city communities. As we'll see in some of our readings, subsistence fishing may put these populations at higher risk of exposure to toxic contamination in our lakes and waterways. How are the social and environmental justice dimensions of this issue being addressed in Wisconsin?

Here are a few links you should check to get started:

- This has been an important issue along the Fox River near Green Bay, the site of a major cleanup operation that has been ongoing for years. Take a look here and here and here, for instance. For more on the Fox River site in general, you can look here.

- This is also an issue at the Sheboygan River Superfund site - here's a video to check out.

- Here at UWM, the Children's Environmental Health Sciences Core Center has made this area of research a priority - take a look around this site (see, e.g., Michael Carvan and David Petering).

- An organization that has been very active on this issue in Madison is the Madison Environmental Justice Organization.

- These are just starting points - don't forget to google! (And feel free to look at nearby states and cities as well, such as Waukegan and Chicago.)

- And don't forget the EPA - here, for instance.

Parks and environmental justice in Milwaukee

This one's part of a series for students in Geography 564: Urban Environmental Change and Social Justice.

Although the classic environmental justice issue was toxic pollution, access to safe, well-maintained parks has become increasingly salient as an environmental justice issue. Do different groups in the city have better or worse access to parks - and what kinds of parks? What is the status of these parks? We'll consider these issues in readings later in the semester.

Here are some resources to help you get started thinking about this here in Milwaukee:

- A great place to start is a 2002 study by Milwaukee's Public Policy Forum, which will give you a sense of the variations among parks at the turn of the millennium.

- A more recent Public Policy Forum study (2008) also addresses Milwaukee's parks briefly, and it's probably worth a look.

- One possible case study to examine in Milwaukee is Johnsons Park (also here) which has partnered with the Center for Resilient Cities.

- You might also want to look at the Urban Ecology Center, which now operates in Riverside Park and Washington Park.

- A couple of organizations to know about in Milwaukee are Preserve Our Parks and The Park People. And of course, don't forget Milwaukee County Parks itself.

Urban agriculture and food security in Milwaukee

This is a hot topic right now, and there are numerous resources on the web. One of the best places to start is the web site for Growing Power, which you should take the time to explore. You can also check out their blog.

But Growing Power isn't the only game in town. Although this is a little out of date now, the Milwaukee Urban Agriculture Network site is a good source of links and background - another good one to explore. Walnut Way Conservation Corp is also very active in the area of urban agriculture, so make sure to pay their site a visit too.

Some questions to consider: in what ways are these organizations presenting urban agriculture as a potential solution to social/environmental justice in Milwaukee? What are some obstacles, barriers, critiques, controversies, or challenges they face?

The Kinnickinnic River Project

This one's part of a series for students in Geography 564: Urban Environmental Change and Social Justice.

The Kinnickinnic River, sometimes called Milwaukee's "forgotten river," runs through a series of neighborhoods on Milwaukee's south side. The river has been altered and damaged by past contamination, as well as by concrete channels put in decades ago to control flooding, and it is currently the focus of a major restoration effort. The question: will this restoration effort address social and environmental justice issues along the river?

Here are a few sources to help you get started (there are clickable links in the first three bullet points):

- The KK River Project of UWM's Great Lakes Water Institute - a lot of useful material here, including links to other good web sites.

- The 16th Street Community Health Center is highly involved in this project, through its Department of Environmental Health. You should look around the web (and talk to them!) to find out more, but you might want to start with the KK River Action Plan.

- MMSD plays the lead role in the current reconstruction of the river. You'll find several relevant documents on its web site linked here.


- Don't forget to Google - e.g., kinnickinnic river environmental justice. (Try others! Don't just stop at that one.) There are several good sites and articles out there.

SEWRPC's Environmental Justice Task Force

This one's part of a series for students in Geography 564: Urban Environmental Change and Social Justice.

A few years ago, the Southeastern Wisconsin Regional Planning Commission (SEWRPC) created an Environmental Justice Task Force to address concerns about how regional plans (e.g., water supply, transportation, land use, etc.) might adversely affect low-income and minority populations. (President Clinton's Executive Order 12898 requires federal agencies to do this, and since SEWRPC receives funding from the Department of Transportation, it must address environmental justice as well.)

There have been controversies regarding the EJ Task Force's work, particularly with regard to a socio-economic impact analysis of a proposed diversion of Lake Michigan water to the nearby City of Waukesha.

Here are some resources to help you get started (click on the red to get to the web site):

- The EJ Task Force web site: here, you'll find all of the documentation pertaining to the EJ Task Force's activities. You don't have to read all of these documents to get an idea of what the Task Force is up to - I'd recommend focusing on the meeting minutes.

- The EJ Task Force meeting calendar: these meetings are open to the public, and it's pretty easy to get to them on the 15 bus.

- For a critical perspective on the EJ Task Force (from the left) and good summaries of the controversies, check out James Rowen's blog The Political Environment (here's what comes up when you search it for "environmental justice"; you can try out different search terms).

Also make sure to google around. There is plenty of background on the controversy over extending Lake Michigan water to Waukesha available on the Internet, although the sites above will be some of the best sources for considering the relationship between this and social/environmental justice.

Urban farming and inner-city jobs in Milwaukee

Growing Power has attracted national (and even international) attention for its urban agriculture programs in Milwaukee and Chicago. It is an organization that has long sought to connect urban farming with issues of social justice, including food security and unemployment. Here's a recent news article about a proposed new program through which Growing Power would aim to address the latter issue.