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Introduction
Environmental racism is a term used within the environmental justice movement that aims to take into consideration the environmental injustices that disproportionality affects marginalized communities due to issues of race, class and gender. This concept has been prevalent in Nova Scotia, Canada for decades, regarding environmental injustices faced by Black-Canadian and Indigenous communities. These injustices are often caused by the disproportionate siting of toxic facilities such as landfills/waste disposal, thermal generating stations, and paper mills. These facilities have caused multi-generational traumas within marginalized communities and have proven long-lasting health implications such as higher rates of illness and cancers, water insecurity and other various health problems due to exposure to toxins in the air, land and water.

Shelburne
In Shelburne, a predominantly African Nova Scotian population, many residents live in very close proximity to a landfill site primarily used for industrial, medical, and residential waste for over seventy-five years. Although the landfill has been closed for nearly thirty years, over time the waste has contaminated the community's primary water sources and the site until 2016 was used as a transfer station for oil barrels and other industrial waste. These environmental hazards cause not only long-lasting physical harm to these communities but also on mental health.

Boat Harbour
Over fifty years ago the government of Nova Scotia approved the siting of a pulp mill in Pictou County, Nova Scotia. The land which this pulp mill was built upon (A’se’k) belonged to Mi’kmaq communities who relied on the natural resources in this area to live, fish, and hunt. The siting of this pulp mill leads to large amounts of toxic effluent being released onto the surrounding land and Indigenous communities. This resulted in major health and environmental damage such as the death of fish populations, air pollution, contaminated drinking water.

Stewiacke
The Alton Gas Storage Project aimed to use water from the sacred Shubenacadie River in Nova Scotia to flush out salt deposits in order to store natural gas. This Project posed significant environmental risks and violations of Indigenous rights. The river is the center of Mi’kmaq territory and culture, and the placement of the natural gas deposits on this land would violate treaty rights and impact access to clean water, wildlife and fish. After years of protests, opposition and concern lead by grassroots Indigenous movements and environmental activists, in October of 2021, it was announced that the Alton Gas project was decommissioned after AltaGas released a statement outlining the mixed support, challenges and experienced delay in the project.

Ingrid Waldrin
In response to these environmental and social injustices, sociologist and Social Scientist Ingrid Waldron has been an active leader of environmental justice in rural Nova Scotian communities, actively advocating for the rights of marginalized groups within Nova Scotia and Canada. Waldron has continuously worked to study the social and health impacts of environmental racism within African Nova Scotian and Mi’kmaq communities in the province of Nova Scotia through her work in ENRICH project (see ENRICH project section), her 2018 book There’s Something In The Water and the accompanying film, and her work to develop Bill NO.32 in Canadain legislature An Act to Address Environmental Racism in Nova Scotia.

ENRICH Project
The Environmental Noxiousness, Racial Inequalities & Community Health (ENRICH) project, started by social scientist and activist Ingrid Waldron in 2012 examines environmental racism and injustices in marginalized communities across Canada. This project uses multidisciplinary innovation to educate, engage, and advocate racial and environmental inequalities around the country. ENRICH works to consult the government head-on, develop bills, formulate curriculum and educational workshops, and conduct policy-relevant research to gain traction both within communities and on a larger scale.