lowcountry-alliance-for-model-communities-facebook
lowcountry-alliance-for-model-communities-facebook

North Charleston, South Carolina

Lowcountry Alliance for Model Communities

In SC, North Charleston’s busy port booms with manufacturing and shipping-related businesses yet offers little of value for the nearby predominantly Black communities. Diesel trucks and trains whisk away the port’s bounty, leaving industrial and transportation-generating pollution in their wake. Residents face multiple critical service gaps, including broadband access, lack of health insurance, housing burden, and many census tracts are considered food deserts by the USDA. Lowcountry Alliance for Model Communities (LAMC) was founded in 2005 by, and for, these underserved and overburdened residents. Its mission is to build healthy families by addressing four cornerstone issues: affordable housing, economic development, education, and environmental justice. They work to promote a sense of ownership, empowering residents to actively participate in initiatives to improve their quality of life. A few projects that LAMC is currently working on include improving fresh food accessibility, resiliency building and planning, brownfields redevelopment, and helping to expand DHEC’s EJ STRONG program. Within a year of their formation, LAMC joined other community leaders in winning a landmark legal case using the National Environmental Policy Act.

Members of LAMC, including former executive director Omar Muhammad (center) calling on lawmakers at the South Carolina State House to support environmental justice.

North Charleston has poverty rates double that of Charleston, with at least one in three residents below the federal poverty level. Fortunately, LAMC is striving to change that, working in low-wealth communities to transform and empower residents. With the Mitigation Agreement Commission, LAMC secured $4.08 million and created a community plan for the City of North Charleston to fund community, neighborhood, and economic development projects focusing on grassroots solutions to environmental justice issues and pollution. The Environmental Protection Agency honored this work with an Environmental Justice Achievement Award. In 2022, the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation awarded LAMC $300,000 to develop a flood-resiliency plan to protect its vulnerable communities. In collaboration with Charleston County, Fernleaf and Adaapta, LAMC received the Climate Smart Communities Initiative grant, enabling them to develop two strategies: scaling up and sustaining flood mitigation investments and catalyzing community-driven and climate-resilient brownfields redevelopment. The focus is on the neighborhoods disproportionately burdened by environmental contamination and the unique vulnerabilities of historic African American communities and low-income households in the region.

Breaking the Cycles of Poverty. Photo: Lowcountry Alliance for Model Communities

Contact
Inka Bogdanski, Environmental Justice Director
Website
Climate impacts
Air Pollution, Flooding, Water Contamination
Strategies
Community farm/gardens, Nature-Based Solutions, Renewable Energy
Environmental Justice Concerns
Flooding, Pollution
501c3 Tax Deductible
Yes
Accepting Donation
Yes