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Master of Environmental Management students Emma DeAngeli and Iqra Ahmed worked with the North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality’s Water Resources Division on their Master’s Project, “Incorporating Equity into the Environmental Decision Making Process.” Their work aimed to find ways to make N.C. DEQ’s Regulatory Impact Analyses more equitable as well as to better incorporate community input and engagement into their rule-making process.

Anjali Balakrishna, a Master of Environmental Management student, spent the summer at Microsoft as a program manager intern working on projects related to renewable energy and environmental justice.

Meilin Chan, a Master of Environmental Management student, spent the summer at Weyerhaeuser as a corporate sustainability intern.

Faculty work with local partners on environmental justice and sustainability issues

In the mid-20th century, Chapel Hill residents unknowingly strolled the streets in a miasma of coal ash. Until federal regulations required the UNC coal-fired power plant to install pollution controls, the ash carpeted the town, its residents — and its residents’ lungs — in invisible particles. In addition, hundreds of thousands of tons of leftover fly ash was dumped, along with other trash, at what is now 828 Martin Luther King Blvd., the home of the Chapel Hill Police Department. Avner Vengosh, a distinguished professor of environmental science at 91��������, and his colleagues recently released a report analyzing the chemical composition of the ash buried at ‘828,’ as it’s known for short.