The Houston, Texas ship channel area is home to hundreds of petroleum and petrochemical facilities. These include refineries, and plants that produce the materials that will become the millions of tons of plastic items produced each year.
They also produce toxic emissions that pollute the air, water and soil and that endanger the health of all area residents.
Fenceline Watch is a community-based environmental justice group whose leaders live in the same area. You’ll hear from Yvette Arellano, Founder and Director and Shiv Srivastava, Policy Director of Fenceline Watch, both of whom work to expose the toxic harm that their community faces daily, and the conditions that exist to protect the companies responsible for the pollutants.
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Yvette Arellano (They/elle) is a Mexican American Gulf Coast organizer based in Houston, Texas, the largest chemical port in the nation. They are the founder & director of Fenceline Watch, an environmental justice organization dedicated to the eradication of toxic multigenerational harm on fenceline communities. They were instrumental in the Center for International Environmental Law ‘Plastic and Health: The Hidden Cost of a Plastic Planet’.
Yvette has testified before the EPA, federal, state, and intergovernmental bodies about public health impacts from toxic exposure and potential solutions. Their advocacy focuses on protecting open and public processes, toxic exposure, community right-to-know, and chemical disasters fueled by expanding plastic production. The expansion of plastic production in the petrochemical sector has driven their participation in the Global Plastics Treaty with the Break Free From Plastics coalition.
Yvette is a board member of the Center for International Environmental Law, Green Latinos, and Backbone Campaign.
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Since it began in 2015, Mothering Earth has been bringing listeners informative programs on a broad range of environmental and sustainable living topics .
Shiv Srivastava is an organizer and policy director at the environmental justice organization, Fenceline Watch, based in Houston, Texas. He has a background in political strategy and opposition research, having worked on campaigns for local, city and state elected officials.
As a fellow in the Mickey Leland Internship Program at the Hobby School for Public Affairs, under the Obama administration, he served as an intern for Texas Representative for the 35th District Lloyd Doggett in Washington D.C.
As part of Fenceline Watch he has contributed in efforts related to language justice for limited English proficient populations under Title VI, to help push back against oil and gas expansion. As a lifelong resident of Houston and the Gulf Coast, he has seen the impacts of industry firsthand in his family and friends.
Shiv believes that those most vulnerable in society should be afforded the greatest protections, and be served by those willing to fight the hard fights. He believes that the narrative often presented to communities between a clean, safe environment or economic security is a false choice; his vision is of a just transition for workers and communities away from oil and gas through increased civic and political participation, achieved through narrative building, education, and increased public transparency.
Check Mothering Earth on your favorite podcast platform using the links below. For more recent programs, check out our Archives page.
Since it began in 2015, Mothering Earth has been bringing listeners informative programs on a broad range of environmental and sustainable living topics .