About VaHEP
The Virginia Health & Environment Project (VaHEP) is working to make Virginia the healthiest state in the United States. Virginia, with its rich heritage, awesome landscapes and diverse communities, deserves to be protected from toxic contamination.

VaHEP is the only statewide organization tackling issues that lie at the intersection of health and the environment. A primary area of concern is pesticide use and its effects on human health and the environment.

Origins
VaHEP is dedicated to working directly with people where they live. With strong roots in grassroots organizing, VaHEP evolved from a community effort in Montebello, Virginia. Here, several families, many of whom practice organic farming, discovered that their local electric utility planned to use herbicides on the power line easements that crossed their private land. Together they formed The Montebello Clean Mountain Coalition (MCMC). After nearly 2 years of a focused effort, MCMC succeeded in getting the utility company to recognize their rights not to have easements sprayed against their will.

MCMC was excited by their victory. Their effort brought neighbors together and as they got more involved they learned more about the health effects of pesticides on humans and on their local ecology. Their awareness efforts drew the attention of many other concerned citizens across the state. They soon realized that although their local utility had promised them the right to refuse spraying, other citizens around the state did not have this same privilege. This group of passionate citizens from Montebello decided to take their work statewide and created the Virginia Health and Environment Project in January of 2002.

VaHEP is working not only to protect Montebello’s success and extend it to other localities; it is also deeply concerned with a multitude of other environmental health issues relating to chemical exposure facing Virginia communities today. The unnecessary exposure of children to pesticides in schools across the state is of paramount concern. Housing developments and schools built on land contaminated by pesticide residue is a growing problem as fallow farmland is developed by expanding communities. VaHEP exists to assist Virginians in finding solutions to these and many other chemical exposure problems while working to establish laws that will protect all Virginians and provide them with full disclosure of chemical use. It is each citizen’s right to know.

VaHep is dedicated to building a strong statewide organization that can bring a health perspective to environmental issues, and an environmental perspective to health issues to better protect all of our communities.