3:1 Episode transcript- Returning to the riverside and fighting for clean water with Xavier Boatright

[Pre-roll] At Outside Voices, we are changing the narrative around who belongs outside. That’s why we’re proud to partner with Conservation Voters of South Carolina, or CVSC. CVSC fights to build a just and equitable political landscape, defends against the impacts of climate change, and champions policies that will provide access to clean air, clean water, and safe outdoor spaces to recreate. Learn more at cvsc.org/support 

Opening quote “The passion has gone through the roof and off the charts. And that's where I think it gets into a spiritual kind of practice as far as standing up, speaking up, and making changes for public health and for the environment, not just for wildlife, but for people.”

[Narration]

You’re listening to Outside Voices Podcast. We’re using our Outside Voices to redefine what it means to spend time outside and connect to nature. I’m your host, Sarah Shimazaki. Let’s get started.

Hey everyone, just popping in for a quick welcome back to a new season of Outside Voices, before I pass the mic over to my colleague Aly and our special guest, Xavier. As you may have noticed in our last season, we’re building our team and including new hosts and co-producers. Meaning, you won’t always be hearing from me. It’s all a part of our vision to grow Outside Voices and our mission to tell stories for us, and by us. So, without further ado, once again, let’s get started.

[Narration: Episode and Aly intro]

Hello hello! Happy belated New Year, and welcome back to a new season of Outside Voices. If you’re starting to wonder why Sarah’s voice sounds funny, it’s because — surprise! — this isn’t Sarah. My name is Aly, I use she/her pronouns. I’m recording out of Chochenyo Ohlone territory, also known as Oakland, CA, and I work with Sarah at Resource Media, the nonprofit social change communications firm that produces Outside Voices. 

A little about me: I’m a runner and I recently did a 10-mile race around San Francisco; I have a Border Collie-mix named Forrest; pre-pandemic me liked to go to improv classes and stand-up comedy shows; and I’m biracial, half-Latine and-half white.

When I’m not working with Sarah on Outside Voices or on other Resource Media projects, I’m working with our clean energy team. So I’m especially excited to be co-hosting and co-producing today’s episode of Outside Voices, which is all about an environmental justice success story. But more on that in a bit. I think it’s about time we hear more from the star of today’s episode, Xavier, who’s gone from being a farmer to being an NFL player to having his own Erin Brockovich story.

Intro from Xavier

“I'm Xavier Boatright. I'm from Manning, South Carolina, and I've been an avid supporter, an advocate in the trenches, and lead technical expert and community liaison for environmental justice and social justice issues and the intersections between the two.”

[Narration]

Wow! Xavier truly does a lot for his communities, especially in North Carolina (or Santee territory) where he currently lives. 

We’re excited to do a deeper dive into environmental justice this season! So, what exactly does environmental justice have to do with Outside Voices, anyway? Well, not to be a downer, but climate change and the climate crisis pose a threat to our beautiful outdoor spaces and our livelihoods — this includes the air we breathe and the water we drink.

For a lot of people, myself included, the pandemic made us realize just how important being outside is for our physical and mental health. For me personally, walking through my neighborhood and spending time in parks with my pup, Forrest, was an escape from the stress that came with living through a global pandemic. And for those of us living in an apartment or someplace with no private yard or outdoor areas, we really depended on public outdoor spaces. Sadly, though, not everyone had equitable access to these public spaces.

Black, Indigenous, communities of color and people of various marginalized and historically disenfranchised identities are disproportionately affected by both a lack of access to public outdoor spaces as well as different forms of pollution. Enter the concepts of environmental racism and environmental justice — the main themes of our episode today.

But there’s hope! With clean energy solutions, community-led organizing, and holding those businesses and corporations that knowingly cause harm accountable (I’m looking at you gas companies), we can make a real difference in combating climate change and protecting this pale blue dot in the galaxy we call home. Cue that Sesame Street song, “We Are All Earthlings.”

So, with all that said, let’s get into this episode.

As a Black man, Xavier’s connection with environmental justice is a personal one. 

And his connection to the outdoors and love for the environment started at a very young age.

Xavier: “I grew up on a small farm in rural Manning, South Carolina, way out in the county line, surrounded by a bunch of trees but on a small farm there, that's where I grew up.”

“I would say at the earliest ages that I could remember, maybe around five, a little earlier than that. But I'd say for sure, around five, six years old, always had, like a deep fascination with life and life on the farm. My farm was very unique where my father was one of the first ostrich farmers in the state of South Carolina, as well as several other bird species that we had, from pheasants to different types of chickens, peafoul, and a lot of various other things. I think we had turkeys, also. So growing up on that kind of farm with that type of diversity and stuff, you learn a lot at an early age.”

“There was always something to do on the farm with farm life. So there was always someone who needs water or needs more feed or maybe a sick animal. So you learn a lot about systems and how the environment correlates with life and everything around that and how everything is connected, from environment to health and life.”

Xavier: “We cooked and we lived off the land, and it was kind of an amazing thing now that I think back on it, you take a lot of that for granted. When you're a child, you're kind of like the fish in water. It's the norm. Whatever environment you grew up in, that's just the norm, whatever it is. So I always had access to vegetables and things that were grown on the farm and that relatives would grow different things. Sometimes folks would have, like a really good Okra crop one year. And so you've got this person with all this extra Okra that they give it away. And we would trade and barter with each other, with other relatives and family members, family friends. And then we would grow our own stuff on our own farm. And so you would always have a balanced diet. We also have a lot of fruit trees on the property, pears, plums. And so you always had access to different things that were just growing on the farm and amongst other friends and family. And just that nutritional the natural nutritional value and the whole understanding that we farm and we grow this stuff because in turn, it feeds us. And then I would also say fishing, fishing and care for, like, our aquatic life was also a big thing. We had a pond on our farm that my father, they would stock and then some fish, I think, just kind of naturally came there. That can happen over time, but we would fish there on the property as well as we are near the Santee River and Lake Marion. I think it is the largest lake in the state of South Carolina. And so we would also travel across the county to Lake Marion and do a lot of fishing there and even going to the South Carolina Coast doing a lot of subsistence fishing like crabbing and shrimping. I mean, all of that providing those food sources and having that diet. I couldn't say as a child that I lived a life where I didn't have access to adequate amount of food, but it was because there was always this kind of symbiotic relationship with the nature and farming and our agricultural practices to where there was kind of always something to eat

[Narration] For Xavier and his family, taking care of the farm helped the farm to take care of them — creating a symbiotic relationship with nature, like he said. He was able to follow his interests in farming and caring for the Earth to college. And as if growing up on a farm with ostriches wasn’t cool enough, Xavier got the opportunity to do something not a lot of people get to do: play football in the NFL. 

Xavier: “I had the opportunity to go from high school to go to Presbyterian College on a football scholarship and played there. I was redshirted, so I spent five years there, and that's also where I studied (28:10) But on my senior year, I had 28 out of the 32 NFL teams come to Presbyterian College to watch me practice. So that was pretty exciting. So I had a hunch that I may go to the NFL. And then following my senior year in 2013, after the draft, I was picked up by the Washington football team out of Washington, DC, and then later went on to spend time with the Detroit Lions out of Detroit, Michigan, and really had wonderful experiences with both NFL teams, but had a really short lived career. In 2013, due to a career-ending injury to my left Achilles tendon, I had a complete tear in my Achilles tendon, and that was kind of my football career, but worked really hard and was glad.(29:09) It's always a blessing to be able to say that I made it that far in athletic because really I was hearing about my childhood, I was more of kind of the nerdy, outdoors, kind of life sciences, biology kid. I was that first, and then I became the football player later.”

[Narration]

As someone who’s had an intense knee injury that required surgeries, I can only imagine how devastating Xavier’s injury was on him — for both his physical and mental health. At the same time that Xavier was healing from a torn Achilles tendon, the late Kobe Bryant was dealing with the same injury. As Kobe decided to retire, Xavier decided to retire, too. 

Xavier: “So when going into it, I expected to have this long career, retire, make millions and millions of dollars, and then you get hurt. it was such an intense injury that for at least eleven months I was in the wheelchair with no pressure on it after the surgery. So during that time in the wheelchair, I'd never been down like that before. So it really took me to a dark place and also found myself even spending nights in my car because my living situation had gotten rough.

during my eleven months being down in the wheelchair, I did experience some ADA compliance issues where there were certain establishments that were not compliant for me to enter their establishments for whatever. And I ended up organizing with some folks because I immediately thought like, hey, some folks are permanently disabled. Like one day I should walk again. But what about the folks who are like this permanently? And how can this be? And it's not until you get in that situation for an extended period of time that you even begin to realize someone else's reality, their permanent reality in that way. So I organized with a few folks in Georgia to make some changes to where certain organizations, gift shops, novelty stores would do DEI training, diversity, equity and inclusion training with a specific focus on ADA compliance and disabilities acceptance and accessibility. As a result of some of those experiences in Georgia in the wheelchair.”

[Narration]

After working alongside disabled people in his community, Xavier followed his passion for community organizing and combined it with his love of the outdoors to find his new path… right back to the riverside and his days of being a young boy on a farm. 

Xavier: “I would say in my lowest point, it was the ability to remember who I was before football, the young kid running around the farm and those connections to environmental justice and And that's where after I was able to recover, I was looking for green jobs, sustainability jobs, stuff like that, something related to even farm like green farming, and ended up moving to Asheville, North Carolina. And that was where I kind of got involved with environmental justice and got introduced to environmental justice. When I took a leap of faith and kind of one of my lowest points and went and moved in with some friends that like, hey, come on up to Asheville, we got jobs up here. You probably could find something in your field. So I took that leap of faith and came and got involved in nature and learned about environmental justice. And it's been a brand new frontier for me and very much more rewarding than my football career to achieve some of the things that I've been able to achieve in this kind of new journey in my timeline.”

[Narration] We’ll be right back.

[Mid-roll] Racial justice and equity must play a role in every conservation and environmental policy discussed in South Carolina. That is why Conservation Voters of South Carolina is working to build a movement of conservation voters that reflects South Carolina’s racial, geographical, gender, and income diversity and to hold elected leaders accountable to their duty to protect rural, black, and low wealth communities because they are all disproportionately affected by the impacts of pollution and climate change. If you’re listening today, we hope you’ll join CVSC in their work. To stay up to date on opportunities to get involved, or to make a gift, visit cvsc.org/support.

[Narration] And we’re back!

Ya know, I’ve mentioned environmental justice before, but in case you need a quick refresher, I’ve got you covered. Basically, environmental justice believes that all people and communities have the right to equal environmental protection under the law, and the right to live, work, and play in communities that are safe, healthy, and free of life-threatening conditions. For a longer definition or a history on environmental justice, Columbia University’s urban planning department has a cool site we have linked in the show notes.

OK, now back to Xavier and his move to North Carolina.

Xavier: “Going to the NFL and talking about the big ego and then, you know, but coming from the small town farm mentality, family farm mentality, and then losing all of that athletic ability in this one defining moment and then being able to come back and realize, like, laying all of that down in those streams, doing that water quality work and just being out there, it's just beautiful to see the waterfalls and the clean water coming. And even during the fall, when the leaves would change, we'd go out and do sampling, and that just would take all the mental stuff. That the burdens that I had been through. I could just lay it down by the riverside, as the song says, down by the riverside. If I could just lay down all those burdens and everything that I've been through? And just pick up where I left off with that connection to nature and then actually start looking for jobs and turn it into a career.”

“When I came to Asheville, I got back involved with growing my own food and I would grow tomatoes, squash a lot of different things in a small garden, and ended up going out and doing a lot of hiking in the mountains. Some of the foothills and around the Appalachian Mountains around Asheville, I was able to really get back in touch with nature through a lot of the hiking activities. (42:23) And then I also got involved as a volunteer with the Environmental Quality Institute. And I would say that was one of the biggest mental health supports for me and for destressing is because we would go out in the local streams and rivers here in Western North Carolina and collect aquatic macro invertebrates, which are basically just aquatic bug species. And if you've got a lot of bugs and you got a big diversity of bugs, then that's an indicator of good water quality. And some bugs are very sensitive. So if you find some of those bugs that are very sensitive to pollution, the water has to be clean for them to exist there. (43:07) So it was a good way to get back connected to nature and some of the more fundamental parts of the food chain.”

[Narration]

As someone who cares deeply for the environment and his community, Xavier is driven to act when he learns of injustice. And remember that Erin Brockovich-like story I teased at the beginning? Well, here it is.

Xavier: “I've done a lot of work around coal plants. I'll say that was my introduction to environmental justice. Shortly after moving to Asheville, I worked for UPS as a package handler, driver helper. I was also a first grade teacher, third and fourth grade special education teacher, and ended up getting a cheap apartment within a mile of Duke Energy Asheville Steam Station in Arden, North Carolina. And while there and doing some of my water quality, because, of course, I would do the stream sampling for water quality there and testing for water quality around my community, so around the coal plant. And I would learn that a lot of my neighbors, I was in an apartment complex, so we were hooked to the city water system. But a lot of my neighbors with private wells were receiving bottled water from Duke Energy. And I thought that was very peculiar and interesting. And as I learned more and ended up meeting more people in the community, I ended up helping some of the elderly folks because they would get these big cumbersome cases of bottled water for household use, because they received letters from the state Department of the North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services saying that they could no longer drink their water because of some various contamination. (48:35) But some of them were carcinogens. Some of these were radioactive chemicals like radium, the Erin Brockovich chemical from the Erin Brockovich movie, hexavalent chromium, and even arsenic, toxic levels of arsenic. So various toxins that also had high levels on Duke Energy's monitoring wells on site, the Duke Energy site. And so there's been a lot of discrepancy between the science and does the contamination leave the plant site? And a lot of the community members push back and say, I never heard of smart water that just knows to stop at a compliance boundary that's drawn on a map.”

[Narration]

For anyone who doesn’t know Julia Roberts’ filmography as well as I do, here’s the movie’s quick-and-dirty summary: “Erin Brockovich,” released in 2000, is the Hollywood version of the very real Erin Brockovich. While working as a legal assistant, Erin discovers a cover-up by Pacific Gas and Electric Company (or PG&E), who knowingly contaminated a local community’s water and caused devastating illnesses among residents. Spoiler alert: She takes them to court and wins, getting PG&E to pay millions in settlements to those affected community members.

For many involved in environmental justice, companies like PG&E that use fossil fuels and cause pollution are the real super villains. And communities of color are more often than not disproportionately affected by this pollution. For Xavier, that company was Duke Energy: a giant utilities company whose CEOs and leaders choose to use fossil fuels like coal and oil.

A Duke Energy coal plant had been dumping coal ash into the community’s water. Now, what do we mean when we say coal ash? It’s a catch-all term for multiple kinds of waste left over at power plants that burn coal — but the most important thing to know about coal ash is that it contains multiple substances that are harmful and dangerous to our health.

Xavier: “We all live within a mile of the coal plant facility and just that, in that we lost folks, several advocates who had contaminated water, they had carcinogens in their wells. Some of them we've lost to cancer. Again, I'll say arguably, whether the cancer was caused by something else or caused by the contamination in the water, these folks did have a high levels of carcinogens and public health threats in their water, and that was on record, regardless of how we can pinpoint that, because a lot of times health studies come back inconclusive. And then there are folks who are still fighting, folks who have had illnesses, preexisting conditions that have been worsened for whatever reason, and so these folks are still fighting from a public health standpoint. (51:37) we had a group called The Alliance of Carolinians Together Against Coal Ash. It's called Act Against Coal Ash. We had representatives from nearly each one of the 14 coal plants across the state of North Carolina to join this coalition at various times and do work collaboratively. It was a powerful coalition that really thrived on perseverance. (52:17) Some of those folks had been fighting for coal ash clean up and cleaner communities long before I joined the fight, but I was there for five years, and I'm proud to say that in that five years, we were able to accomplish clean water for all of those North Carolinians who had contaminated wells that were tested within a mile radius of the plants and get those folks on a clean water source that was paid for by Duke Energy.”

“We had folks that were relentless. And you talk about folks living on bottled water every day. Some folks couldn't even bathe in their well water. So having to change your lifestyle like that can really galvanize and drive someone. But the fact that these communities didn't give up, they were in it to win and they had the faith. We had the faith that we would win.”

[Narration]

What Xavier and his community achieved was no easy feat. We all deserve to live a life free of pollution. And being able to hold Duke Energy accountable for the harm they had caused is an incredible win. But Xavier and his community didn’t stop there.

Xavier: “We also helped initiate in a collaborative effort for Duke Energy to clean up all of its coal ash out of its online coal ash pits. And that will be dubbed one of the largest waste cleanups in United States history when it is complete. So some major major wins there for the community and the network that work to make that happen.”

“But in the fight, we just had to keep going and having the faith that we will win and what we stand for is right. We're standing for clean water. Water is life. We've got elderly folks. I've seen veterans living near these coal plants, people who have fought for our country that have had contaminated well water, former police officers, former law enforcement, some of the folks around Duke Energy's Buck Steam Station just north of Charlotte, some folks there are many different walks of life and folks who were impacted. And I would say most disproportionately you find low income whites, Black, Indigenous, and communities of color located around these coal plants. So really a huge feat from an environmental justice standpoint, but also just from an environmental quality and public health standpoint. It really was a powerful thing that we were able to do and accomplish in North Carolina.”

[Narration]

Now that Xavier’s won this David and Goliath battle with Duke Energy, what does he hope for both his community and others moving forward?

Xavier: “I think what we want a community to look like is a community that is free of environmental harm and has equitable and meaningful participation in decisions that affect public health, social issues and social justice related issues, and as well as environmental and environmental justice issues. For folks that have meaningful participation in the decision making is what I would want for my community. And then for folks to also have the resources that they need to combat and protect themselves from not just natural disasters like the pandemic and hurricanes, but also from threats to their viability and their future generations, such as these threats to public health through polluters, be it air contamination, water contamination, or even land rights and property rights, land protection, access to green spaces, making sure that those communities have access to those green spaces and those parks so that they could get those mental health benefits also, because a lot of times the stress is directly correlated with some of the health issues that you see in the community. So I think for my community, I would like to see them be able to have the resources to both educate themselves and equip themselves to give the community the best opportunity for viability and longevity.”

“I think early on in my life and career, the connection to nature was more of a connection of curiosity and kind of being a student of it and wanting to learn more about it and more of a fascination. But now at this point, I feel as though the connection has changed to more of a spiritual connection. And I think that kind of happened when I got involved with some of my community work that I did with community members in North Carolina to where you get involved with, like, a clean water advocacy thing that's that robust, you begin to get into it in a different kind of passion to where it's still a curiosity and a fascination, but it's also kind of an area of love, but also an area of pain. There's pain in there because you're like, why is this, why does this exist? Why do we have contaminated water? So you begin to take more of a spiritual ownership of our natural resources and our Earth and the ecology. And especially once you've done it, say for like a decade now as a career, when you've seen so many scenarios and you've seen so many different facets of this work, you begin to develop a spiritual connection and a deeper passion. You still have that kind of childhood, I still have that childhood fascination and interest, but the passion has gone through the roof and off the charts. And that's where I think it gets into a spiritual kind of practice as far as standing up, speaking up, and making changes for public health and for the environment, not just for wildlife, but for people.”

[Narration]

Since then, Xavier has held summer football camps for children in his community that included an environmental leadership component. Children could get outside and learn about sustainability, growing their own food, and water filtration. Even when the pandemic hit, he switched to mailing out a “camp in a box” with seeds and tools for water filtration so children could still plant food and test their water quality at home.

As I’m sure you know as a listener of Outside Voices, access to outdoor spaces is incredibly important to our physical and mental health. The stories we share on this podcast are all about fostering connections and reconnections to nature, just like the spiritual connection Xavier cultivated as a kid and continues to strengthen through his advocacy work. And the right for everybody to have equal access to clean air, water, and safe outdoor spaces in their community is worth the fight.

Xavier: “And just wanted to also stress the importance when I talk about all that disproportionate disparity in Black and Brown and Indigenous communities, I would say that my reconnection after my injury and everything, that it's a testament to the importance of African Americans and all of those Black and Brown disproportionately impacted communities. And I would even say low income, specifically low income white communities and whatever disparity they're dealing with, getting out into nature and being able to get that mental health benefits of nature could really help propel you to better times and really help galvanize you to deal with the things that you're dealing with on an everyday basis instead of just sitting in them and kind of taking on those tidal waves of life over and over again, just getting out in nature and changing the pace a little bit.”

“What motivates me to fight for my community is the community itself, the people who stick in there for the long haul, the powerful people that I've been able to meet in Georgetown, South Carolina, the many coal plant communities and neighbors all across the state of North Carolina, the disabled people that I was able to organize with in the state of Georgia, and the fact that each time we got these very positive solutions and it may not have been all of the solution that we wanted, but we got a solution. We got a solution out of the advocacy. And sometimes you stay on these things and you just don't know. You don't know if you're going to win or not, but each time we've got wins and we have to celebrate those wins.”

[Narration]

Wow, I just want to give Xavier and his community their flowers for everything they were able to accomplish. Like Xavier said, when we get a win, we have to celebrate. And while we may be wrapping up his story, there are some pretty big wins I want to end this on. As of February 2022, Duke Energy has announced its plan to close the rest of its coal plants by 2035. Duke Energy is also planning to double its use of renewable energy capacity by 2030. Exciting stuff, amiright? 

Another piece of recent news: The White House announced it’s going to address environmental racism with a plan called Justice40, which would use federal investments for environmental cleanup, clean energy, and climate mitigation in disadvantaged communities.

News like this is exciting! It’s all a step in the right direction to a cleaner, greener, more equitable Earth. But there still is sooo much work to be done. On a global, national, and local level. 

So, if you’re like me, and feel even more inspired by Xavier to do your part in the environmental justice space, here are some parting words: If you want to get involved with community organizing, see what groups already exist in your community and see how you can get involved. Xavier recommends taking a listen-first approach. So, listen to the unique lived-experiences of affected communities near you and follow their lead on solutions. 

If you’re into politics, look into and support clean energy policies. Xavier recommends researching ways to ensure a Just Transition from coal to renewable energy that includes job and economic support for impacted communities. And if you’re unsure where to start, maybe watch Erin Brokovich and go from there.

All of this contributes to a better planet for all of us. And with that, I’ll kindly ask the DJ and Sesame Street to play us out with that heartwarming song from earlier.

A million-and-one words of gratitude to Xavier for sharing his story with us and the Outside Voices community. That’s all of you! Thank you for taking some time out of your day to listen in. And I’d like to give a special shout out to Sarah for letting me co-host today’s episode.

Our beautiful logo and cover art was designed by Brooklyn Bell and this lovely music you hear at the beginning and end of every episode was performed by Olivia VanDamme and produced by Jamison Blue Stegmaier.

All credits, links, and resources can be found on our website: outsidevoicespodcast.com.

And you can also follow us on Instagram: @OutsideVoicesPodcast.

Outside Voices Podcast is a project by Resource Media.

I hope you get the chance to get outside today. Until next time.

[Post-roll] Xavier is working hard to ensure the people in his community enjoy equal access to clean air, clean water, and safe spaces to spend time outside. We invite you to be a part of this work at Conservation Voters of South Carolina, which relies heavily on people like you to amplify their collective voice. Everyone has something to bring to the table. To contribute to CVSC’s work and stay up to date on opportunities to get involved, or to make a gift, visit cvsc.org/support.