Lower Eastern Shore, Maryland, and Sussex County, Delaware
2024 RWJF Culture of Health Prize Winner
Fighting for Equity and Access to Wellbeing Demonstrates the Power of Solidarity
Through civic engagement, deep trust, and resilience, community partners across Maryland’s Lower Eastern Shore and Delaware’s Sussex County are chipping away at the systems that benefit industry and profit over people and the planet.
Black, Latino, White, and Haitian neighbors across the rural area have formed an unbreakable partnership to end the chokehold that factory poultry farming has had on the region. Rural Maryland and Delaware share shorelines of unincorporated areas where industrial growth has poisoned the land and the people who live there. Large-scale slaughterhouses and concentrated animal feeding operations have long exploited workers and contaminated the water.
With a focus on making the invisible visible, community groups have united to address and undo decades, if not centuries, of systemic injustice, structural racism, and inequity by honoring the region's culture, heritage, and shared experiences. Through their fight for equity and access to wellbeing, this cross-state community has demonstrated the power of solidarity by stopping slaughterhouse expansions, winning class action suits against major polluters, defending immigrant workers, and passing the Delaware Clean Water Act. Key highlights of their work include:
- In partnership with academic institutions, national environmental groups, and grassroots nonprofits—built by, with, and for community—this region has worked exclusively with traditionally marginalized populations, environmental justice communities, and those systemically excluded from access to wealth, health, and political power. They have engaged residents in community-driven and community-owned research, such as air monitoring, a rapid health impact assessment, and the promotion of citizen science.
- The passage of the federal Water Infrastructure Act and local Clean Water for Delaware Act expanded grant programs for testing and remediation, tackling a critical aspect of structural racism and water contamination.
- The community successfully halted the $100 million redevelopment of a local poultry processing plant, which would have exacerbated existing destructive environmental and health impacts in the community.
- An historic $65 million class action lawsuit was settled in favor of the community, providing direct relief to the community after 20 years of poultry wastewater and emissions violations, and resulting in a $205 million investment for facility upgrades and environmental remediation.
Dr. Katera Moore (C), environmental justice coordinator of the Delaware Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Control, speaks at a community forum at the Seaford Library in Seaford, Del.
Chicken houses along the Delaware-Maryland border near Pittsville, Md., a region known for industrial poultry.
Wescenia Wise (L) and Gina Burton (C) speak with Maria Payan (R) and Antonio Bivins (back turned), community ombudsman for the Delaware Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Control, in Millsboro, Del. The water and air quality have been adversely affected by the industrial poultry activities near their homes.
Kris Spicer (L), an environmental health research associate at Johns Hopkins University's Bloomberg School of Public Health; and local resident; James Reid (R), drive around Reid’s neighborhood in a van outfitted with an air-analyzing system in Millsboro, Del.
Michael Payan, co-founder of the Sussex Health & Environmental Network and the Sentinels of Eastern Shore Health discusses environmental contamination and restoration in Selbyville, Del.
Leila Borrero Krouse, a Social Services specialist, medical interpreter, farmworker health educator, and community organizer with the RESPIRAR Project, shares multilingual brochures and pamphlets on immigration rights at her office in Salisbury, Md.
