St. Croix’s Terra II Project Expands Air, Water, and Soil Testing

On Tuesday, the executive director for the St. Croix Environmental Association Jennifer Valiulis provided an update on Terra II, an environmental justice project funded with grant money from the Environmental Protection Agency. “Terra II…collects unbiased community source data on St. Croix’s air, water, and soil quality,” Ms. Valiulis explained. However, it goes beyond merely a monitoring and testing project. “We are also very much about giving information to the community and talking about what monitoring is and what it means and what the data means,” she clarified. “A lot of it is about fostering better understanding of what monitoring is and how we can use it for advocacy,” Ms. Valiulis continued. Developing this understanding is important because “between climate change and the pollutants we are seeing increasing risks to our health because of potentially diminished quality of air, water and soil,” Ms. Valiulis said. “The overall goal is to build a network of citizen scientists…t...