Environmental justice takes root in Camden
By Terri Akman
 Andrea Ferich in the greenhouse at theCenter for Environmental Transformation |
Andrea Ferich is fighting for justice – only not the kind that’s most familiar to you. In her job at the Center for Environmental Transformation in Camden, Ferich is working to relieve the impact the daily delivery of the county’s trash is having on the city and its people. She hopes, prays and works for justice – environmental justice.
What is environmental justice?
Environmental justice means that nobody bears more than their fair share of pollution. Sometimes there are a multitude of toxins in one community that result from things another person does from day to day. Environmental justice means that nobody has a lower quality of life due to pollution, and everybody has access to healthy food. Environmental justice means having good quality jobs that are also good for the environment and the local economy.
What is the Center for Environmental Transformation?
The center is dedicated to environmental transformation and environmental justice, particularly in the Waterfront South neighborhood of Camden. Through education, job training and remediation, we are a model for sustainable community development. We have a greenhouse and a garden, where we grow 12,000 heirloom vegetable seedlings a year. We teach cooking classes for residents in our handmade bread oven. We make sustainable products, such as rain barrels, and grow plants native to a rain garden. We also raise chickens. Food system security is an important part of environmental justice.
Right across the street from our greenhouse, we have a retreat center that sleeps 24 people in a renovated convent. People come from around the county to see firsthand how they are affecting the local lifestyle just by throwing things away. We are hoping they see what they can do to save our community and improve the quality of life in Camden.
The Center started in 2007 after a group of parishioners from Sacred Heart Church returned from serving in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina. They realized that our neighborhood is one of the best places to model environmental justice in response to the disproportionate impact of the region’s environmental and social problems.
Why is your location important to your message?
Most people don’t know where their waste goes. All of the trash, sewage and storm water of the county comes directly to Camden. The Camden County Municipal Utilities Authority brings in 50 million gallons of sludge a day. The trash comes to a trash-to-steam incinerator located here in Waterfront South.
Camden’s sewer systems are hundreds of years old, meaning they were designed at a time when there weren’t a lot of huge parking lots, and they didn’t have as many rooftops and standard sidewalks as we have now. These surfaces are non-pervious – they don't allow storm water to enter back into the underground water table. Instead, it goes into the sewer pipe through the storm drain. When it rains heavily, the storm water combines with the sewage in the pipes underground. The pipes back-up, and sewage fills the streets in Camden.
Can anything be done to properly drain storm water?
You can prevent storm water from going into the sewage system by connecting rainbarrels, building rain gardens and building green roofs. We are working with the Camden Storm Water Management and Resource Training (SMART) Initiative and are planning to plant 40 rain gardens in Camden in the next few years, which will keep storm water from entering the sewage system every year. At the greenhouse, we’re growing native rain garden plants for the rain gardens. This project is grassroots and is a collaborative project with Rutgers Cooperative Extension, CCMUA, Coopers Ferry Development Association and the NJ Tree Foundation.
 Many local children participate in planting and harvesting freshfood in the garden at the Center for Environmental Transformation |
Why is your garden vital to the city of Camden?
People don’t have access to healthy food here. There’s only one grocery store for a city of 80,000 people. But that city has over 4,000 vacant lots. That means there’s a lot of room for farming.
Our gardens are a great place for people to beautify the neighborhood, build community, create jobs and eat better. We grow healthy food and address the production, distribution and availability of healthy, organic, chemical-free food, and we educate people on how to garden.
About one third of our food goes to the Waterfront South Garden Club members who work in the gardens, another third is sold at a farm stand in the neighborhood and at the Brooklawn Shoprite, and we also supply those who come to the center. We hire junior farmers – youth from the neighborhood – who are paid a stipend for their work at the garden. They take produce home to their families and deliver food to the elderly and anyone who can’t get out of the house. People don’t always realize the practical solutions in front of us can create systemic change for places like Camden.
Can you talk about the Waterfront South Environmental Network?
We get together once a month with local industries, the municipality, non-profits and residents from the neighborhood to talk about how we can transform our problems into resources, work together for environmental justice, encourage best practices from industries and impact policy. Pollution is a misuse of a resource. Perhaps there are materials that one factory is releasing into the environment that another factory might need.
One of the things that came out of the meeting was that a local business had large storage food-grade barrels that they were paying to have disposed. Now the com-pany throws the barrels over our fence, and we hire people in the neighborhood to transform them into rain barrels, which we sell for a profit throughout Camden County. People collect rainwater and use that to water their gardens and lawns. The more people can keep storm water away from storm drains, the higher the quality of life in Camden. Only when we can really look at what we are throwing away will we begin to go deep enough into learning how to live sustainably.
Education is a key component to your mission. Can you talk about that?
Learning at the center is quite hands on. In our greenhouse, we hold over 1,000 gallons of storm water in our tanks. These tanks are connected to a hydro-pump on a bike. When you ride the bicycle, it pumps the water out of the tank and waters the plants using the rainwater we collected. This is a great way to learn about storm water run-off. We have developed a whole youth-led, multi-media curriculum about the garden, from the seed to the table. We have students come to talk about things we can do to reduce our waste. We also have weekly cooking classes at our outdoor bread oven. Children learn they can make a difference and that their ideas and cooperation are central to creating a healthy world.
 Ferich teaches student groups the importance ofgrowing and eating healthy, organic foods |
Tell us about the retreats you offer.
We have week-long, weekend and day-long retreats where we discuss environmental injustice and the systemic issues that create places like Camden.
We might go on an environmental justice reality tour of the neighborhood, where we look at the geography of the industries and how they disproportionately affect the people of Camden. We talk about the interwoven nature of race, class, gender and pollution in a complicated cycle of poverty. If we find interesting pieces of trash we might make sculptures or art pieces in our art classroom. We spend a lot of time studying the production and waste cycles of a throwaway, consumer-based society. We also talk about food system security and the current state of industrial agriculture. We might garden. We look at issues of globalization and outsourcing. Camden is a great place to study this. It is the perfect location to model sustainable development through urban ecosystem renewal.
What changes have you seen so far in Camden?
I can see direct changes in the neighborhood. There is a new energy in Waterfront South. Camden is now one of the fastest growing community garden cities in the country. There is an optimism and hope that we’re witnessing a turning point.
Little kids are excited to plant seeds, and some of the neighborhood artists have painted beautiful poetry and paintings on the boarded-up doors and windows. It’s contagious. Now there’s a 99-seat theater, a maritime museum with youth building boats, a planned gymnasium and a firehouse transforming into a community arts center. There’s a great community development corporation in the neighborhood called the Heart of Camden, a sister nonprofit to the center focused on housing and the development of the Broadway Corridor. They continue to work steadily in the complete restoration of this neighborhood. Our work supplements their work in improving the quality of life for Camden residents. Beauty and the goodness of our imaginations will continue to heal Camden.
What are some steps everyone can take to help the environment?
The most important thing is to know where your food comes from. Shop at farmers markets or join a CSA – Community Supported Agriculture. Or grow your own food. Also, understand your ecological footprint. There are ways you can reduce what you throw away by looking at what you’re buying before you buy it. Two thirds of everything we throw away is food packaging, so we should buy things that have less packaging, demand local food and support local businesses. Bring your own bags to the grocery store. Live near your workplace so you don’t have to commute far. The main thing is to reduce what you consume. Think of us when you brush your teeth in the morning. Please turn off the water.