Environmental Justice

The Coop is the leading, multiracial, environmental, energy, and climate justice organization in Robeson County and Southeastern NC.

Recent organizing successes include the cancellation of the Atlantic Coast Pipeline and the closing of the AERP wood pellet facility and NCRP that incinerated poultry waste and parts. They were two of the most, well-documented polluters in Robeson County. The Coop collaborates with RedTailed Hawk Collective, the Lumber RiverKeeper Program, the Robeson County Black Caucus, and other community, regional, and statewide partners in mounting organizing efforts to promote and protect both environmental and public health in Robeson County and the Southeastern NC region.

The Coop is a founding member of the Impacted Communities Against Wood Pellet Coalition. The Wood Pellet Coalition is organizing to challenge and halt the wood pellet industry in NC that is causing significant pollution in four low-income, racially diverse, rural counties and destroying thousands of acres of forests throughout Eastern NC every year. Foreign owned, Enviva has four facilities that create wood pellets and export NC’s #1 natural resource for overseas use as fuel to generate electricity. The industry claims of being a renewable source of energy and good for the climate have been challenged by scientists, impacted communities, and policy advocates as a false and fantasy solution to our energy and climate crises The Coalition is a partnership with impacted community organizations, Dogwood Alliance, and other state and national organizations.

The Coop is also a founding member of the new SouthEast Coalition for Clean Energy along with RedTailed Hawk Collective, Friends of the Earth, and the Lumber River Keeper Program of Winyah Rivers Alliance The Coalition’s focus is opposition to the Piedmont Pilot Project, a massive waste-to-energy (ala “biogas”) initiative in NC that has been approved twice in six years by the NC Utilities Commission with neither disclosure nor engagement of impacted communities. It includes plans to collect, pipeline and process methane gas from 15 to 43 hog operations in Robeson and Scotland counties and sell it to Duke Energy and Piedmont Natural Gas, its subsidiary. “Biogas” is also touted as a source of renewable energy and good for the climate by industry. This controversial claim is widely challenged and opposed due to the significant bio-hazards that result from the industry and their impact on environmental, public, and climate health.