ENVIRONMENTAL COMMUNITY ACTION INC Information

ECO-Action has achieved great success over the years, and has established several smaller organizations to meet the needs of local communities. (See also History). The participatory process at ECO-Action reflects the process we want to see in the broader community and in the nation as a whole. What do you want? Who can give it to you? How can you get it? ECO-Action can help you Create Conditions to Empower Vulnerable Communities: Building power by organizing Unlearning processes that perpetuate injustice and exclusion Emphasizing Social Justice Working in collaboration with the local NAACP and civil rights attorneys, ECO-Action helped restore voting rights to residents of Butler , GA (the County Seat of Taylor County). ECO-Action helped form the Taylor County Environmental Task Force and ultimately allowed citizens to exercise their right to vote after being denied an election for 10 years. In the process, the residents were able to defeat a proposal to pipe wastewater from a sewage treatment plan and spray it on land near a neighborhood outside the city. ECO-Action can help you Collaborate with other Organizations and Individuals: ECO-Action has its own GRASSROOTS ENVIRONMENTAL NETWORK that is invoked to campaign for: Public participation in enforcement of laws: Along with other groups, ECO-Action organized and advocated for regulations which ultimately established the "notice and comment" procedure to give communities a voice regarding EPD enforcement orders (also known as "consent orders," they often serve as a mere slap on the wrist to excessive polluters). The advent of the notice-and-comment process was a groundbreaking change in the way EPD permit violations are handled, allowing for much more input from the individuals and communities actually affected by the pollution. Structural change: Up until ECO-Action's work with residents from Taylor and Talbot counties, only one person presided over both the Dept. of Natural resources and the Environmental Protection Division. This belied a clear conflict of ...