Environmental justice forum focuses on a healthier Buffalo

BUFFALO, N.Y. – Local activists, academics, community organizers and federal experts will exchange ideas toward making Western New York’s homes and communities healthier at a daylong environmental justice forum on April 26.

The gathering, titled “An Environmental Justice Forum for Buffalo Homes and Neighborhoods,” will run from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. at the University at Buffalo’s Clinical and Translational Research Center, 875 Ellicott St.

Matthew Tejada, recently installed as director of the Environmental Protection Agency’s Office of Environmental Justice, will open the forum. William J. Hochul, U.S. attorney for the Western District of New York, will discuss the importance of enforcement in addressing healthy homes matters. Other presenters include environmental justice experts from the EPA’s headquarters offices, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, and the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry.

The program’s sponsors include the University at Buffalo Law School and its Healthy Homes Legal Practicum, the Community Foundation for Greater Buffalo’s Green and Healthy Homes Initiative, Neighborhood Legal Services, UB’s Civic Engagement and Public Policy Research Initiative and the UB Office of Sustainability.

Students participating in the Law School practicum provide legal support to the National Green and Healthy Homes Initiative, which has chosen Buffalo as one of 17 pilot cities for its work in promoting safer housing. Among the work produced by practicum students is a 36-page publication called “A Neighborhood’s Continuing Evolution: An Environmental Justice Walking Tour of Buffalo, N.Y.’s, West Side.”

Professor Kim Diana Connolly, who directs the Law School’s clinical program and is one of three instructors of the practicum, says of the conference: “This forum will showcase the on-the-ground work being done by UB Law School students and faculty that’s changing lives here in Buffalo while becoming a model for next-generation environmental justice elsewhere in the nation.”

The conference recognizes the presence, especially in the City of Buffalo, of an aging and deteriorating housing stock, environmentally unhealthy conditions in many neighborhoods, as well as high poverty and unemployment rates. Many families live in homes or communities that are unhealthy, unsafe and not energy-efficient.

Though local groups have been working to address these problems, their efforts are incompletely coordinated. The forum seeks to begin to develop “a truly sustainable strategy for healthy homes and communities that can become a model for other cities.”

For more information about the Green & Healthy Homes Initiative, visit www.cfgb.org/leadership/green-and-healthy-homes-initiative/.

Since its founding in 1887, the University at Buffalo Law School – the State University of New York system’s only law school – has established an excellent reputation and is widely regarded as a leader in legal education. Its cutting-edge curriculum provides both a strong theoretical foundation and the practical tools graduates need to succeed in a competitive marketplace, wherever they choose to practice. A special emphasis on interdisciplinary studies, public service and opportunities for hands-on clinical education makes the University at Buffalo Law School unique among the nation’s premier public law schools.