Environmental Justice in North Carolina: Cooper’s Executive Order and Winston-Salem’s Fertilizer Plant Fire
Winston Weaver Co. fertilizer plant, located in majority-BIPOC neighborhoods in Winston-Salem, burns with 600 tons of ammonium nitrate trapped inside. Source: WFMY News
On January 7, 2022, Governor Roy Cooper signed Executive Order No. 246, titled “North Carolina’s Transformation to a Clean, Equitable Economy.” Acknowledging that climate change is deeply affecting North Carolina, E.O. 246 draws on the state’s constitutional obligation for conservation, reaffirms North Carolina’s commitment to the 2015 Paris Climate Accords, and, drawing praise from social justice groups, recognized the particular danger of climate change for majority-BIPOC communities and low-income communities. The executive order takes action to update the NC Greenhouse Gas Inventory, sets a goal to achieve net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050, and requires each cabinet agency to create an environmental justice and equity lead and work to increase workforce diversity in clean energy industries. These goals build on 2018’s Executive Order 80 and focus on transportation emissions, which are the nation’s top contributors to climate change. Activist groups applauded the order, saying it would hold state agencies more accountable to the public and allow citizens to have more of a say in major economic development decisions.
However, the Republican response to E.O. 246 was cutting, with three state senators writing in an open letter to Cooper that his order was “legally unenforceable” and that it “confuses the public and appears to shift the goalposts.” The letter claimed E.O. 246 conflicted with the bipartisan House Bill 951, and implied executive overreach in pursuit of “political theatre.” Dionne Delli-Gatti, NC Director for Clean Energy, wrote back on behalf of the Office of the Governor, framing E.O. 246 as an extension of the bipartisan work that had been done in H.B. 951, highlighting the issue of cleaner transportation, as Cooper did in his press release.
Absent in this discourse was any explicit mention of environmental justice, but cleaner transit is a crucial part of environmental justice. Greensboro, where Cooper signed E.O. 246, was the first city in North Carolina to switch to an all-electric bus fleet, which significantly improved the city’s air quality in low-income areas. However, North Carolina’s transportation emissions are only on pace to drop 39% from 2005 levels by 2030, which falls short of the 50% reduction goal set. Pollution has a disproportionate impact on communities of color, emblematic of a larger state failure to protect minority communities.
North Carolina’s failure to protect majority-BIPOC communities was particularly evident on January 31, 2022, when the Winston Weaver Co. fertilizer plant in Winston-Salem caught fire, creating the possibility of one of the worst explosions in US history due to the 600 tons of highly explosive ammonium nitrate inside. Out of caution, a one-mile radius around the plant was evacuated, with firefighters giving up the effort out of fear of an explosion. Even without an explosion, the area around the fire was subject to unhealthy particles carried by smoke in excess of seven times higher than what the EPA classifies as hazardous, causing negative health effects, such as shortness of breath, coughing, headaches, and lung irritation. Additionally, over 4.1 million gallons of water were used to fight the fire, resulting in chemical runoff into the local ecosystem and threatening to cause algal blooms. During the fire, the city advised people not to swim in the nearby river and to cease fishing, as dead fish were found in creeks near the fire.
The area around the Winston Weaver fertilizer plant is 81% to 85% people of color, with the area directly surrounding the plant 93% people of color, likely due to Winston-Salem’s history of redlining and construction of US Highway 52 in the 1960s through historically black neighborhoods, both of which resulted in many minority residents moving to the neighborhood near the plant. Accordingly, the impact of the fire fell overwhelmingly on BIPOC residents, as other environmental crises have historically done in the US and continue to do.
For example, 70% of the most polluted sites in the US are within one mile of federally assisted housing, which disproportionately houses BIPOC residents. Black neighborhoods have been historical “sacrifice zones” for industrial plants, as the EPA consistently fails to protect predominantly Black neighborhoods located near industrial plants, and these communities of color continue to suffer the lingering effects of racist housing practices such as redlining. The Winston Weaver fertilizer fire is another entry in a long list of disasters BIPOC communities in America bear the brunt of.
Recourse remains limited. The finance committee of Winston-Salem has proposed a $1 million dollar grant to assist residents affected by the days-long evacuation from the area around the fire, but it only covers personal costs, such as hotel rooms and lost wages. Much like Cooper’s executive order, this is but one small, incremental step in the long, difficult path to environmental justice.