The Center for Environmental Transformation, located in downtown Camden, New Jersey, was founded in 2007 with the mission to empower the community of Camden through positive environmental duties.
The organization’s advocacy focuses on clean air, clean water, and healthy food, according to its website. With these goals in mind, three programs have been created for individuals interested in making an environmental change in their community by volunteering or donating.
“We still do a program with elementary students with Sacred Heart School, which is right across the street from our garden in South Camden,” said Jon Compton, the executive director of the non-profit since 2020. “We work with first through fifth graders, and they just spend one class in the garden per week.”
One of the programs Compton mentioned is the urban farm, which works with about 75 children weekly to help keep the garden growing. In previous years, the program gave back to the community by selling produce for $1, making hot sauce with peppers grown in the community garden, and doing other projects. However, it has stuck to working with elementary students in the community garden for now.
“Then there’s an environmental justice program, and because there’s so many polluting industries in the city, we try to add advocacy work around improving air quality,” added Compton, who started at the organization as a volunteer.
Compton mentioned that some of the environmental justice work for air quality includes providing resources for residents who are looking to address these types of problems.
He also said that the non-profit was responsible for submitting public comments to the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection (NJDEP). Many of the comments submitted have been about the many industries in South Camden that have affected neighboring residents with poor air quality.
According to Compton, another major problem these companies are creating is the constant fires, one of which occurred recently in a junkyard on the edge of South Camden.
“So for the past four years, they’ve averaged one fire per year, and residents have had to leave their homes and evacuate for more than a day because of the smoke three times in the past four years,” he said.
Although these residents have been provided a place to stay after these toxic fires, they are tired of their effects on the communities and the air quality. Issues such as these are what the environmental justice program comes to help—as a voice for the community.
The last program that has been created is the Camden Coastal Resiliency Master Plan, which is funded through a federal grant from the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation. This program’s primary focus is on the massive flooding problem in the city of Camden.
“We studied the whole city and tried to figure out where is flooding happening and why, and then we’re gonna write a report that contains all this information about where is the flooding happening in the city,” Compton said.
Among the flooding locations, Compton says the program is also trying to figure out which places are most affected and which sewer systems are affected. Many more questions are being asked, which is why the project has evolved into a lengthy investigation designed to find a resolution to the problem.
“So, looking at it from all angles, we hired some engineers to make these flood models, which are these maps that can calculate where rain will collect in different parts of the city when it rains,” said Compton.
This means that if funds continue for this program, which Compton and others hope for, then up to 10 of these models will be put into these high-flooding communities to help reduce the amount of flooding when it rains.
Compton noted that, because they are a small organization, most of its work is spread by word of mouth or volunteers. He hopes to see the organization still running with more volunteers contributing to help raise awareness of their work.
His final hope also includes a high desire to confront lawmakers.
“There needs to be more pressure put on them so they will properly regulate industries and not have them put so much of a burden on a place like South Camden that get like the short end of the stick for all of these different industries being located there,” he said.
