Practicing Repair: Advancing Community-Based Solutions on Coal Dust Pollution in Hampton Roads,Virginia,Through a Practitioner-in-Residence Program

Abstract

Communities with environmental justice concerns are best positioned to drive effective local decision making. The Repair Lab Practitioner-in-Residence (PIR) program supports grassroots activists as they identify and implement policy solutions to environmental justice issues affecting their communities. Here, we describe the Repair Lab PIR program through a case study, the residency of two local grassroots environmental justice activists, who are advancing policy solutions for toxic coal dust mitigation from coal export terminals in the Southeast Community of Newport News and Lambert’s Point, Norfolk in Hampton Roads, Virginia. We summarize the history and context of the coal dust issue, ongoing activism and community preferences in both communities, and obstruction and inaction by the state of Virginia. We present the approach of the Repair Lab PIR program, which prioritizes action over research and foregrounds community expertise in decision making. Coal dust mitigation is political, technical, and emotional, and we discuss the available solutions and production of media that both document and affect change. In the Southeast Community, we are pursuing a new nuisance ordinance through the Newport News City Council, and, in Lambert’s Point, we are supporting ongoing advocacy and legal efforts, with the two approaches based on differences in local organizing and priorities and navigating the limitations on the powers of local governance in Virginia. Finally, we share challenges encountered to implement and sustain the Repair Lab PIR program within a university.