Sep 18, 2021 - Energy & Environment
1. The toll of environmental racism

Photo illustration: Sarah Grillo/Axios. Photo: Geoff Robins/Getty Images
In August 2015, Steve Benally walked out of his Halchita, Utah, home on the Navajo Nation and heard a warning: Don't use the water. The Gold King Mine near Silverton, Colorado, had spilled toxic wastewater into the Animas River watershed.
The big picture: Benally would lose his harvest and suffer from secondary health effects, highlighting just one of the environmental dangers some Native Americans, Black Americans and Latinos face from pollution and poor government oversight.