GALVESTON, Texas — The Community Outreach and Education Core of the Sealy Center for Environmental Health and Medicine and NIEHS Center in Environmental Toxicology at UTMB Galveston will present the Houston-Galveston Environmental Research and Outreach (HERO) Awards during their annual stakeholders meeting on August 7, 2009 at Moody Gardens on Galveston Island.  The awards will be presented on the Viewfinders Terrace on the 9^th floor of the Moody Gardens Hotel.

The HERO award honors individuals whose work has improved the environment of the communities in which we live. This year UTMB’sSealy Center for Environmental Health and Medicine and the NIEHSCenter in Environmental Toxicology celebrate the grassroots by honoring three community-based environmental health and justice advocates whose energy, ideas and commitment have significantly improved the quality of the environment in coastal Texas.

This year’s recipients — Suzie Canales (Corpus Christi), Hilton Kelley (Port Arthur) and Juan Parras (Houston) — have served their communities and the Texas Gulf Coast region as tireless environmental educators, advocates for environmental justice and role models of commitment and perseverance.  They have moved their communities beyond protest toward informed advocacy and collaborative engagement in our regional dialogue on environmental health. 

Houston mayor Bill White received the 2008 HERO award and was honored for the leadership he provided in working to improve air quality. He used an evidence-based approach to prioritizing of air pollution problems and developed policy approaches that are based on science and practically achievable. This work will have long-term benefits for the health and well-being of the greater Houston area.

Mayor White was the third recipient of the Environmental HERO award. The first award was given to Dina Cappielio and Carlos Rios for their ground-breaking series of reports in the Houston Chronicle on exposure to toxic air pollutants. The second award went to John Wilson for his careful analysis of air quality issues and advocacy to address these problems as director of the Galveston-Houston Association for Smog Prevention.

The HERO award recipients will be invited back to UTMB during the 2009-2010 NIEHS seminar series to participate in a moderated panel discussion on improving environmental health through community-based research.

Awardees Bios  (Photos available by request)

Each of this year’s honorees have produced tangible changes in public policy, quality of life and levels of environmental health literacy within their communities, and garnered numerous awards and honors in the process.

Suzie Canales serves as executive director and co-founder of Citizens for Environmental Justice (CfEJ) in Corpus Christi, Texas.  She has worked closely with Denny Larson of Global Community Monitor (GCM) and Refinery Reform Campaign on community monitoring, expansion of production capacity and permitting requirements, media campaigns and numerous environmental justice issues. In collaboration with GCM Suzie published a report on environmental justice implications of pollution in Corpus Christi, “Criminal Injustice in an All AmericanCity — Toxic Crimes, Race Zoning and Oil Industry Pollution Cover-up.”  With Public Citizen and the Refinery Reform Campaign she also published “Supplemental Environmental Projects — The Most Affected Communities Are Not Receiving Satisfactory Benefits.”  Suzie has worked with Eric Shaeffer’s Environmental Integrity Project (EIP) fighting permit expansions and reducing emissions. A collaborative effort with EIP and GCM as well as Enrique Valdivia of Texas Rio Grande Legal Aid stopped a refinery expansion at a local refinery that would have increased sulfur dioxide, a respiratory toxicant, by 500 tons a year in the local community.

Under Suzie’s leadership, CfEJ partnered with the Texas Department of State Health Services on a long-term epidemiological study of birth defects incidence and causation in Nueces County that documented that Corpus Christi had an 84 percent overall higher rate of birth defects than the rest of Texas for 1996-2002. For several years, Suzie advocated for the need of bio-monitoring studies of fence-line communities. This advocacy work resulted in a collaborative effort with the Texas A&M School of Rural Public Health and the Coastal Bend Health Education Center on the Nueces County Family Health Study, a landmark biomarker study keyed toward detection of benzene, toluene, ethylene xylene (BTEX) and their metabolites in blood and urine samples of fence-line community residents in the Hillcrest neighborhood in Corpus Christi.  The study found alarmingly high levels of benzene, a known carcinogen, in the blood of adults, and high levels of BTEX in the urine of children.

Ms Canales has received the Congressional Hispanic Caucus Institute Award for Outstanding Achievement in Environmental Justice and a Community Service Award from the HIALCO Neighborhood Council for dedication to improving the community.  She currently serves as a member of the board of directors for Lois Gibbs’ Center for Environment, Health and Justice. At the request of Robert Bullard, Suzie was a keynote speaker at a press conference for the rollout of “Toxic Wastes and Race in the United States, 20 Years Later” in Washington, DC.   Suzie Canales isa strong contributor to the Environmental Justice Encuentro Network, a community engagement project of the NIEHS Center in Environmental Toxicology Community Outreach and Education Core at UTMB.

Hilton Kelley is the founder and CEO of Community In-Power & Development Association (CIDA), the Coordinator of the Southeast Texas Bucket Brigade and Community Outreach Director of the Coming Clean Collaborative.   CIDA is part of the Shell Global Accountability Campaign (SGAC), and Kelley has been a featured speaker at annual SGAC meetings in London and The Hague.  Kelley has been instrumental in training grassroots community organizations in the U.S. and Africa to construct low-tech grab sampling devices to monitor local air quality and document emission events.  He has also pioneered the use of the CEREX real-time air monitor regionally, and frequently conducts air quality monitoring projects throughout Texasand Louisiana.  His advocacy efforts were instrumental in accessing and disseminating information to the public about plans for hazardous waste incineration in Port Arthur, and CIDA was a prime mover in a collaborative agreement with Valero Energy Corporation to revitalize the city’s west side community.   CIDA worked closely with the NIEHS COEC throughout 2005 and 2008 hurricane seasons distributing information on environmental hazards, protective gear for safe citizen reentry after the storms and building materials to homeowners struggling through the recovery process in Beaumont, Port Arthur and Orange TX.

Kelley has received the Texas Sierra Club’s Environmental Justice Award and keynoted the Rice University Environmental Club’s fifteenth annual conference (“Whose Earth Is It?: People, Petrochemicals and Environmental Justice”). The City of Port Arthur declared July 1, 2008, “Hilton Kelley Day,” in honor of his outstanding environmental efforts.  In 2008, Hilton received the prestigious Damu Smith Environmental Achievement Award from the American Public Health Association (Environmental Section), and he currently serves on the National Environmental Justice Advisory Council), an EPA-sponsored deliberative body that promotes justice and inclusive community engagement in environmental decision-making.  In the tradition of African environmental advocate Ken Saro-Wiwa, Hilton Kelley is also an accomplished screen, TV and live theatre actor who holds a Screen Actors Guild union card.  He is an active director, playwright and spoken word artist and has received awards for his creative work with youth and adults.  His original plays have been produced by the Black Repertory Theatre in Berkeley,California.

Juan Parras is the founder and executive director of T.e.j.a.s. (Texas Environmental Justice Advocacy Services).  Coming out of a labor background with the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, Mr. Parras provided organizing, environmental health information and technical expertise to communities of color throughout Louisiana as part of the Labor-Neighbor Project.   Building on this experience, he became a key field organizer with Greenpeace USA in a famously successful struggle waged by citizens of Convent, Louisiana to prevent construction of a polyvinyl-chloride manufacturing facility that would have markedly increased the community’s cumulative risk burden.  Juan’s lead-off independent grassroots organization, Unidos Contra Environmental Racism, coalesced around the issue of siting schools close to point sources of industrial pollution in Houston’s east end.   He later served as Outreach Coordinator for the Texas Southern University Environmental Law and Justice Center working with environmental attorneys, Grover Hankins and Martina Cartwright on community cases involving particulate exposure, landfill expansion, and water safety, and helped coordinate community involvement in the EPA-sponsored Houston / Galveston Citizens Air Monitoring Project.    He founded T.e.j.a.s. in 2006 to pursue environmental justice goals with greater focus, and served simultaneously with the Citizens League for Environmental Action Now (CLEAN) as the community outreach director on environmental justice. 

Working in tandem, CLEAN and T.e.j.a.s. have distributed bucket-style grab sampling equipment in numerous East Houston fence-line neighborhoods, instituted a Communities at Risk project in Houston Ship Channel communities, and spearheaded efforts to strengthen EPA’s National Emissions Standards for Hazardous Air Pollutants (by organizing and hosting the only public hearing on revision of these standards in the nation; this session was situated in the East Houston Manchester neighborhood, a major participant in the Communities at Risk Project.   T.e.j.a.s. also partnered with the UTMB Preventive Medicine and Community Health Department’s division of environmental toxicology as community liaison in a Houston biomarkers study comparing exposure levels in the Manchester and Aldine communities.   T.e.j.a.s. partnered with the NIEHS Center in Environmental Toxicology COEC to produce the 2008 Environmental Justice Encuentro Network conference inHouston TX.  Since 2005, T.e.j.a.s. has received a series of Gulf Coast Fund recovery grants to coordinate environmental hazard outreach and essential materials distribution in communities such as Port Arthur,Beaumont, Orange and Bridge City, Texas.   In 2008 Parras lead a team of volunteers to Galveston Island to distribute bilingual information on hurricane reentry hazards, safe reentry kits and cleaning materials immediately after Hurricane Ike. Parras is a former member of the National Environmental Justice Advisory Council (EPA), a member of the Galveston Houston Association for Smog Prevention and Alliance for Healthy Homes board of directors, a former Gulf Restoration Network board member, and a featured speaker at environmental justice conferences, nationwide, and the regional Texas Bioneers conference.