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We are hiring for an Environmental Justice Organizer for our American Axle/Delavan-Grider campaign!

We are highly encouraging applicants who are from, or highly involved with communities on the East Side of Buffalo to apply. Formal organizing experience is a plus but not a requirement. The ideal candidate for this job has a strong analysis of systemic racism and classism, is adaptable, outgoing, and has a strong interest in building power.

This is a full time, salaried position, working 40 hours per week, paying $50,000 annual salary with a generous benefits package and paid time off.

This position is open until filled; to apply, please send a cover letter, resume and a list of three references to jobs@cacwny.org with the subject line “The Environmental Justice Community Organizer”. Optionally, you may additionally send two relevant work samples with your application.

Please see the full job post below for details.

Download (PDF, 166KB)

As attacks on our civil and human rights are increasing nationwide, I wanted to just take a moment to commemorate Trans Day of Visibility.

Visibility doesn’t protect trans folks – but community does.

With that in mind, I just wanted to say it loud and proud – I am transgender and non-binary.

Someone you know is trans.

I’m also absolutely certain I am not the only one in your life who identifies as such. 

Let’s work to make it safe for everyone to be visible.

-Bridge Rauch, they/them, Environmental Justice Organizer

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A win for residents who have organized against the company for over a decade, but the protracted case still goes on as members demand a resolution

The owner and operator of Battaglia Demolition, Inc., Peter J. Battagalia, has been ordered by New York State Supreme Court to pay a $1 million fine for failure to comply with the terms of a settlement agreement which was signed in August 2022. This is a win for residents who have organized and called for accountability for over a decade. However, the lengthy legal proceedings continue in court, which residents criticize.

“On April 2nd 2018, Judge Chimes shut Batatglia corporation down. Five years later we still have no quality of life because of this business. Peter Battaglia has gotten away with not maintaining or securing his property. We are still living with rats. People illegally dumping and the silica dust still blowing off the mounds and mounds of concrete that are still there and should be taken off the land the way it is, not crushed. The grass has not been cut since the shutdown and is a breeding ground for the rats,” said Diane Lemanski, longtime member and organizer with Clean Air.

“It’s a view of ugliness that we have to live with on a daily basis,” Lemanski continued. “It took the city of Buffalo over four years to step up and clean up the building and the debris that was in it. It is time for us to have our quality of life back and Battaglia to pay the price for his actions. It’s time for this case to be settled. We need a final decision now.” 

Residents living in Buffalo’s Seneca Babcock neighborhood have organized for more than a decade to hold Battaglia Demolition, a waste transfer site that was illegally operating a concrete crusher, accountable. Battaglia’s operations shook the foundations of residents’ homes, polluted the air with diesel particulates, and blanketed the neighborhood in silica dust, a pollutant known to cause respiratory illnesses such as asthma, lung disease and lung cancer. 

Since the 2018 shutdown of Battaglia Demolition, the property has fallen into abandonment, with piles of concrete dust still swirling from the site through the neighborhood air. The derelict property has become a site with illegal dumping, and is now full of garbage and refuse, attracting rats.  The building Battaglia Demolition once occupied caught fire and was demolished after an emergency order from the city’s housing court last year. 

Battaglia reached a settlement agreement with the NYS Attorney General and NYS Department of Environmental Conservation in 2021 under NYS Supreme Court Justice, the Honorable Judge Chimes. After over a year of inaction, Battaglia finally signed the agreement in August 2022.  

“Residents of Peabody Street were cut out of the settlement process and were not happy with the very lenient terms that were given to Battaglia,” said Clean Air Executive Director Chris Murawski. “Now we see it coming full circle that despite being given the benefit of the doubt, he has once again taken no action to improve the site, continuing to negatively affect the residents’ quality of life.” 

Clean Air will continue to monitor the ongoing legal actions however, the community envisions the best use of the land that will bring true justice is for the property to be gifted to the community and held by a Land Trust as green space and a carbon sink to make up for the years of suffering.

“Accountability for the company and its owner are long overdue,”  said Phil Gambini, an organizer with Clean Air. “It’s about time Battaglia faces consequences for his actions.”

Clean Air opposes Christofascism in all forms and we stand with our trans siblings in the collective fight for liberation.

Clean Air stands with the Transgender Community and Allied activists in condemning the proposed UB event hosting Michael Knowles who is a proponent of transphobic hate speech calling for genocidal violence against trans people as well as other white supremacist beliefs.

As we seek to imagine a new world in our fight for Environmental, Climate and Racial Justice we cannot tolerate violent rhetoric of this nature.

The fight for trans rights directly intersects with our fight for Environmental Justice.

Trans Americans are statistically more likely to have unstable housing and to live in poverty than cisgender people which leads them to face more disproportionate environmental burdens. Trans individuals are 4 times more likely to face violence with Black trans women facing even higher likelihood.

This language has consequences and directly endangers people in our community. Those of us working in the EJ field have seen trans folks on the front lines of struggles across the country. When we stand with and fight to protect the most vulnerable among us we protect all of us.

In response to Michael Knowles appearance, we encourage our members and supporters to send a donation to GLYS WNY by visiting their website, glyswny.org

We also encourage members and supporters to join our Mutual Aid team to strengthen our solidarity by visiting cacwny.org/mutual-aid

With bread and roses,

Chris, Bridge and Phil

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Clean Air received several inquiries this week from WNY residents concerned about possible air quality issues locally related to the Norfolk Southern Derailment in East Palestine, OH. This worry is understandable – the images of a looming black cloud are shocking, and the information floating around has been confusing and contradictory.

We’re also far more aware now with the growth in western wildfires, worsened by climate change, that smoke can carry very far, making our summers here in WNY hazy.

We want to be clear – the risk of any health and environmental impacts on us here in WNY, over 150 miles away from the East Palestine derailment, is not zero, but is statistically so low that it may as well be. 

The danger from this derailment is to the community of East Palestine and to folks who live in the surrounding area. 

Official statements during the initial fire called for an evacuation of a one mile radius, and the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection called for residents within two miles to shelter in place. Dead fish and a sheen on the water was reported five miles away, and a lawsuit filed by residents is for up to 30 miles surrounding. 

For a local comparison, let’s remember the Bethlehem Steel fire in 2016 – the smoke from that fire was visible for miles, with some officials concerned about the smoke as far south as Orchard Park. NYS DEC detected contaminants in the air in Lackawanna for several days after the fire was put out. Coverage of the fire was featured in national news outlets, like the New York Times. It was an environmental disaster for Lackawanna, Buffalo, and the surrounding suburbs, and, for those who live or lived nearby, still is.

That said, it was unlikely you were concerned at all about environmental contamination from this fire if you lived in Syracuse or even Rochester – the distance was far enough to reduce any risk to you.

There are, however, several direct impacts related to this incident that we hope our members and supporters will come away with, and be ready to take action on.

• We should all support rail unions and rail workers in their calls for more time off, more staffing, and better working conditions.
  • Rail unions and workers have been sounding the alarm about the increasing dangers from understaffing, insufficient time off, and worsening infrastructure for several years now. Understaffing and overworking was at the core of a possible rail strike just a few months ago.
  • Just a few months ago several tanker cars derailed in the Lovejoy/Broadway Fillmore neighborhood, and in 2020 a derailment in East Aurora forced evacuations of 41 homes – corporate greed is putting us all at risk!

• Our air quality has been poor recently, but this is due to our existing local pollution sources and current weather patterns, which are far more of a risk to the health and well being of WNY residents.
  • Erie and Niagara County have close to three dozen Title V facilities, many located within our membership neighborhoods. These permits allow these facilities to emit a restricted amount of air pollution into our communities – worse, as our members who live with the health impacts from Tonawanda Coke can attest, other businesses are run by irresponsible managers who do not even follow the restrictions of their permits, and our regulators are so understaffed and under resourced that they cannot always act.
  • Our continued reliance on fossil fuels for the heating and fueling of our cars and homes adds to local air pollution, and in certain weather conditions, like cold winter days with dry air, that pollution becomes trapped at the ground level.
  • Join us on March 16 at our General Meeting to learn more about Air Quality – click here to register.

• We need better communication in crisis situations and during the subsequent clean-up.
  • Ultimately all communities deserve community advocates participating in communications and being fully briefed, like with the Tonawanda Coke and American Axle Working Groups. Municipal officials everywhere should engage community groups in their communications about community concerns.
  • When the Tonawanda Coke smokestacks were demolished, area residents were concerned about possible contamination from the dust. Clean Air helped analyze what the risks were and were not, and then shared that information as well as precautions residents could take.
  • Disinformation can run rampant during crisis events, especially when public officials are absent in the initial communications, or worse, corporate entities who benefit from downplaying risks are allowed to lead on messaging.
  • Given the current state of the media and how the far right weaponizes people’s fears, we need our public officials to be better advocates for the community and to be out front in sharing information with the public.

• Part of household disaster planning should include plans for chemical spills and industrial contamination.
  • Industrial contamination from accidents will continue to remain a fact of our lives so long as we continue to rely on a fossil fuel based economy. We should all take time to plan for industrial accidents in our neighborhoods. What would you need to do to shelter in place? Do you have the means to seal off a room? And, if it comes to it, do you have plans for what to do if an evacuation is called for? 
  • Check out Ready.gov for more resources, and join Clean Air for our next mutual aid disaster prep trainings.

• No more sacrifice zones.
  • Ultimately, freight rail needs to be part of our transition to a renewable economy, but we need to decarbonize to phase down and eliminate our demand for dangerous fossil fuels and petrochemicals that are currently being carried on rail, and we need a Just Transition that prioritizes both our communities as well as workers in the planning and implementation.

In the following few weeks, we will post a couple more blog entries on the East Palestine derailment and how we can all take action in support. In the meantime, we encourage our members to support these mutual aid requests and to sign this petition being shared by affected communities.

RSVP today for our events in March!

March 5 – Climate Cafe

• Join fellow Clean Air members for a Climate Cafe where we will discuss how climate change is affecting us.

March 16 – Clean Air General Meeting

• Join us for our General Meeting for organization updates and to learn about Air Quality.

March 21 – Town of Tonawanda Rezoning Introduction Meeting

• The Town of Tonawanda is preparing to roll out the draft of the new townwide zoning code and map. Join Clean Air for an introduction to zoning and to review the current map, so we are better prepared to review the new map and code when it’s made public.

March 28 – Clean Air Annual Meeting

• Join us for our 2023 Annual Member Meeting! Also be sure to renew your member dues to vote for our 2023 Board Members.

Also save the date for these events in April!

April 17 – a discussion about the book A Paradise Built in Hell with the Progressive Book Club
April 20 – first Clean Air Power Building Mixer, a chance to meet with other members and folks in WNY movement justice work

Clean Air continues to attend the Tonawanda Coke Working Group meetings to receive updates on the ongoing clean-up and provide oversight. The Town recently released a community update bulletin to review the progress made so far.

Download (PDF, 1.38MB)

At the most recent meeting, workers from Inventum, the firm conducting the clean up of the site, voiced that they continue to be surprised by new sources of contamination, such as an unexpected find of contaminants under an asbestos tank – as Clean Air members have warned for years, the site is far more contaminated than officials initially believed.

We were also given the following updates at this meeting –

• 3970 tons solid waste and 6600 tons of hazardous waste have been removed from the site, with 9600 tons altogether recycled
• The riverside coal lift is scheduled for demolition this spring, likely before March 15
• The coal pipe that runs over River Road will also be demolished soon, likely in the latter half of 2023 or early 2024

If interested in learning more about the Tonawanda Coke Working Group, we encourage reviewing the previous meeting slides and notes available at http://www.riverviewtechcampus.com/citizen-plans-updates/ and https://tonawanda.ny.us/development/tonawanda-community-working-group.html 

If you are interested in participating in the Tonawanda Coke Working Group, or in becoming generally more involved with clean up oversight of sites throughout the River Road corridor, please contact us today!