Projects that include empowering residents to clean up New Orleans East for a safe return after Hurricane Katrina and developing a tool to target high-risk homes with lead contamination in Durham, N.C., are winners of EPA’s first Environmental Achievement Awards. Twelve award recipients include community-based organizations, universities, and state and local governments from nine states.

“We all have a stake in ensuring that our air is cleaner, our water is purer, and our land is better protected,” said Granta Nakayama, assistant administrator for EPA’s Office of Enforcement and Compliance Assurance. “These organizations are making a positive impact in their communities by promoting a clean and healthy environment for all people.”

The awards recognize organizations for their distinguished accomplishments in addressing environmental justice issues. EPA received dozens of nominations from across the United States.

For information on recipients of the Environmental Justice Achievement Awards visit: http://www.epa.gov/compliance/environmentaljustice/awards

The following organizations received awards:

1. Anahola Homesteaders Council (Anahola, Kauai, Hawaii)
2. Center for Environmental and Economic Justice (Biloxi, Miss.)
3. Citizens for Environmental Justice (Savannah, Ga.)
4. Communities for a Better Environment (Huntington Park, Calif.)
5. Dillard University, Deep South Center for Environmental Justice (New Orleans)
6. Duke University, Children’s Environmental Health Initiative (Durham, N.C.)
7. Medical University of South Carolina (Charleston, S.C.)
8. Negocio Verde Environmental Justice Task Force (County of San Diego, Calif.)
9. New Mexico Environment Department (Santa Fe, N.M.)
10. Safer Pest Control Project (Chicago)
11. South Carolina Department of Health and Environmental Control (Columbia, S.C.)
12. West End Revitalization Association (Mebane, N.C.)

Read the full story in the Los Angeles Times.

Marcela Herrera wiped sweat from her nose as the screeching sound of a saw cutting lumber mixed with mariachi music blaring from a house across the street. Clipboard in hand, Herrera jotted down addresses in this Pacoima neighborhood where lumber, steel, ironworks and heavy equipment rental shops operate near homes.

A few blocks away she noted a child care center, where youngsters played outside in air that reeked of a chemical.

“There are a lot of hazardous waste sites around my house,” Herrera said in Spanish through an interpreter. “I wanted to do something to help out.”

Frustrated because she must keep her asthma- and bronchitis-suffering daughters indoors to protect their health, Herrera recently joined a cadre of northeastern San Fernando Valley residents to catalog the location of industrial businesses and their proximity to gathering places for young and elderly residents, who could be most affected by contaminated air and water.

The effort, known as “ground truthing,” is part of an ambitious project devised by environmental justice researchers and a local nonprofit group to compile an accurate picture of where toxic and hazardous sites are located in Southern California and how they affect the health of nearby communities.