Hurricane propels head of EPA to strive for justice

NEW ORLEANS (AP) — More than four years after Hurricane Katrina, the single-story brick rancher in Pontchartrain Park where Lisa Perez Jackson grew up stands empty.

Floodwaters long ago ate away the walls of her corner bedroom, where the current head of the Environmental Protection Agency once hung Michael Jackson and Prince posters and studied her way to the top of her high school class.

Faded spray paint, left by search teams to indicate that no bodies were found, serves as a reminder of the day Jackson evacuated her mother, Marie, to Bossier City ahead of the approaching storm.

Katrina was the closest that an environmental disaster had hit home for someone who has spent her career solving environmental problems. Now, she’s in charge of ensuring that all communities are equally protected from pollution.

The storm’s toll on Jackson’s childhood house and on New Orleans, particularly the Ninth Ward where she was raised, has intensified her quest for what’s known as environmental justice. That means involving and getting fair treatment for the poor and minorities, who often endure the greatest exposure to environmental hazards but are outside the mainstream movement trying to find solutions.

It’s this fight that Jackson wants most to be remembered for from her tenure as President Barack Obama’s chief environmental steward.

As the first black EPA administrator, Jackson has infused race and class into environmental decisions even though she acknowledges it’s not a top priority for Obama. She’s changed the way EPA does business with minorities and has called on the predominantly white environmental movement to diversify.

In speeches, she says she’s trying to alter the face of environmentalism. She started in her own office, appointing a special adviser for environmental justice issues and hiring a multiracial staff to lead an agency where she often finds herself the only nonwhite at the table.

“This is a unique moment, where you now have a person of color in charge of the EPA for the first time ever and not trying to make that into a one-liner, but say, ‘OK, what does that mean?’” said Jackson, 47, in an interview with The Associated Press.

“It means that I can sit in a room ... and maybe use my position to hear in a different way folks who don’t feel heard. ... It’s about me trying to figure out what I would like people to say about the Lisa Jackson EPA when I’m done. And I want them to say, ‘You know, she really opened that agency up, she really made ways that have lived past her for that agency to speak to people of color, to speak to the poor, and to make sure their issues are taken into account.’”

That philosophy was on full display during her first visit back to New Orleans as EPA head in November. Some community activists who felt shut out by the EPA during the Bush administration got a chance to meet with the agency leader for the first time.

Jackson’s next stop was a sit-down with representatives of some of the nation’s largest environmental groups. Not only did the color of those around the table change, but so did the topic. Hasten and others discussed soil contamination, illegal dumping and health problems caused by industries in their communities. The big environmental groups talked to Jackson about the importance of saving the disappearing Gulf Coast.

“I feel both sides,” said Jackson in an interview after the two meetings.