By: EJ News Today | December 29, 2022
The Sierra Club awarded Milwaukee-area environmental justice advocate, Richard Diaz, the “Environmental Hero” award this month for his work in bringing awareness to lead poisoning issues in his community. Diaz co-founded the “Coalition on Lead Emergency” (COLE) and has dedicated several years to driving policy changes with respect to lead issues.
Diaz’s group, COLE has had its share of recent achievements and victories, as reported here by the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel:
- COLE Parents Lead, a group of parents whose children were impacted by lead where they could connect and organize.
- Lobbying for the health department to use federal money to lower the threshold for when the health department could follow up, from 20 micrograms per deciliter to 10 in 2021.
- Helping develop and advise a training program for 250 lead abatement workers, along with Employ Milwaukee and the Social Development Commission (SDC).
- Advocating for an ordinance that punishes landlords who refuse to clean lead hazards, allows the health department to secure a warrant to remove lead nuisances on a property and prevents retaliatory evictions.
Lead poisoning has been featured prominently in recent years as an example of environmental injustice and environmental racism, with the most egregious example coming out of Flint, Michigan.
