Environmental justice advocate to speak

Vernice Miller-Travis, a leading national environmental justice advocate, will give a free public lecture at 4 p.m., Thursday, May 8, in 180 Science Hall, 550 N. Park St., at UW–Madison. Her topic will be “The Challenge of Environmental Justice.”

Environmental justice – where environmental and civil rights issues meet – seeks to remedy the disproportionate siting of waste disposal sites and other environmental hazards in or near minority communities.

Most recently, Miller-Travis managed the environmental justice program of the Ford Foundation. Earlier, from 1993 to 1999, she directed the Environmental Justice Initiative of the Natural Resources Defense Council, a leading national environmental organization.

Miller-Travis has served on the National Environmental Justice Advisory Council, which helps shape federal policies related to the Superfund and its application, brownfields redevelopment, and solid and hazardous waste management. She also co-chaired West Harlem Environmental Action, a group devoted to improving environmental health and quality of life in communities of color, and was a founding member of the New York City Environmental Justice Alliance and the Northeast Environmental Justice Network.

Her lecture is sponsored by the Gaylord Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies and the College of Letters and Science with support from the Ira and Ineva Reilly Baldwin Wisconsin Idea Endowment.