This year’s Environmental Health Leadership Summit will focus on environmental justice principles, civic engagement, community benefits, zero emissions transportation challenges, training the workforce for the just transition, and include opportunities for you to connect with community, advocates, professionals, and experts.

While we are still in the midst of the development of Lithium Valley, we are still dealing with historical challenges in our community. The generational opportunity to transform our local economy and provide future generations with cleaner energy, zero emissions technologies, and high road jobs is tempting, but we musn’t sacrifice our communities to provide these for others without direct benefits to our fenceline populations. As always, we have to remember that we are ALL the stewards of our environment and that just as we inherited a habitable land, we must improve on it and leave it improved for future generations.

We don’t ask to become leaders and advocate for our communities, and our communities don’t ask to become environmental justice waypoints. But everyone here today steps up when injustices happen. It’s in this spirit that Comite Civico del Valle welcomes all to the Environmental Health Leadership Summit to express their passion and their frustrations, and collaborate on ways to build capacity around specific issues or identify solutions where they exist.