IVAN (Identifying Violations Affecting Neighborhoods) is an environmental monitoring system that connects the community with real people that can help solve local environmental problems.
In November 2007, in California’s Imperial County at the U.S.-Mexico border, a small group of residents and a handful of Department of Toxic Substances Control (DTSC) employees led by Comite Civico del Valle (CCV) piled into a school bus to take a tour of the Imperial Valley region, where the California Environmental Protection Agency (CalEPA) has designated residents at high risk for environmental toxicity. The purpose of this trip was to visit multiple environmental hazard sites located throughout the region, as identified by concerned community members. After the tour, participants attended a workshop to collaborate and develop solutions to address environmental hazards affecting their lives.
Between 2007-2010, a total of eight government-sponsored Toxic Bus Tours and workshops took place in the Imperial Valley, a predominantly Hispanic community with a low employment rate. A direct outcome of these collaborations was the conception of the IVAN model.
The development and implementation of the IVAN model marks a turning point in environmental justice regulation history. The IVAN model is reshaping how vulnerable communities protect, and in the process, reclaim their environment that has been systematically disregarded as a sacrifice zone.
Since 2010, the IVAN model has expanded to seven locations in California, and now, as a statewide tool in Washington State, facilitated by Front and Centered and its member organizations.
This community-based environmental monitoring system is built on the idea that community members are the most knowledgeable about their environment and therefore should have a place at the table with regulation agencies to inform and influence decisions that impact their communities.
This group of dedicated people is made up of community representatives and environmental enforcement agencies that come together regularly to discuss reports submitted to IVAN. The IVAN- Washington lead contact and lead community representative organize these meetings. These meetings provide a platform for constructive dialogue between these different groups to solve environmental problems facing local communities.
Please contact ivan@frontandcentered.org to join the conversation.
IVAN-Washington is managed by Front and Centered, and https://ivan-washington.org/ is co-managed and supported by Comite Civico del Valle (CCV) (https://www.ccvhealth.org/). Front and Centered is a statewide coalition of over seventy community organizations that represent and are staffed by frontline communities in Washington State. Front and Centered advances climate justice through the framework of a Just Transition. (https://frontandcentered.org/) Both Front and Centered and CCV are nonprofit community organizations trying to improve the environmental regulation process in frontline communities, but is not an enforcement agency or part of any other government agency.
This project has been funded in part by the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) under the Environmental Justice Collaborative Problem Solving Grant # EC-02J02401-0 to Front and Centered. The contents of this tool do not necessarily reflect the views and policies of the EPA, nor does the EPA endorse trade names or recommend the use of commercial products mentioned in this document.
