Background

In the early 1980s, several studies were published illustrating the disproportionate and adverse health effects felt in economically disadvantaged areas and by communities of color. These environmental health risks have various causes, including high concentrations of industry and waste facilities. Since affected communities were experiencing no legislative recognition even though they were under toxic assault, many took matters into their own hands. A well-known example is that of Warren County, North Carolina. In 1982, a landfill was created there to dispose of PCB-contaminated soil from 14 counties throughout the state. Civil rights and environmental activists staged numerous demonstrations in opposition to the landfill, and more than 500 people were arrested. These actions set a precedent others followed to protest the toxins in or near their communities.

The Warren County protests also led to a 1983 investigation by the U.S. General Accounting Office (GAO), report RCED-83-168, which found that three of the four major hazardous waste landfills in the South were located in communities of color (predominantly African-American) and low-income areas. Following this report was another by the National Law Journal. It found that the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) took 20% longer to place abandoned sites in communities of color on a national priority list than it took to prioritize sites in white communities. It also noted that polluters paid 54% lower fines for damage to communities of color relative to white neighborhoods. In 1987, the United Church of Christ’s Commission for Racial Justice and Public Data Access, Inc., published landmark research entitled, “Toxic Wastes and Race in the United States: A National Report of the Racial and Socio-Economic Characteristics of Communities with Hazardous Waste Sites.” This work exposed social and racial biases in natural resource use, giving rise to the terms “environmental racism” and “environmental justice.”(1)

The EPA defines environmental justice (EJ) as “the fair treatment and meaningful involvement of all people regardless of race, color, national origin, or income with respect to the development, implementation, and enforcement of environmental laws, regulations, and policies. Fair treatment means that no group of people, including a racial, ethnic, or socioeconomic group, should bear a disproportionate share of the negative environmental consequences resulting from industrial, municipal, and commercial operations or the execution of federal, state, local, and tribal programs and policies.”

While the EPA has an Environmental Justice program, it certainly cannot address all the issues, nor will Superfund money work fast enough to save embattled communities from further harm. Therefore, it is important for states to provide the means for these communities to receive the necessary protection and aid to become healthy, as is every community and person’s right. States such as California, New York, Florida, and Maryland have passed environmental justice legislation. Please see SERC’s State Activity Page for a summary of relevant state action.

SERC’s two sample bills, Legislation for a State Interagency Task Force and a Governor’s Environmental Justice Advisory Council and Legislation for Environmental Justice Considerations for Permit Applicants, provide the initial framework for states to address environmental injustice.

For more environmental justice background, please see the U.S. General Services Administration National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) fact sheet on Environmental Justice.

Please see the principles of environmental justice from the First National People of Color Environmental Leadership Summit.

Components of Environmental Justice Policy

In our sample bills, we attempt to address some fundamental issues to strengthen future efforts for environmental equity. The following are equally urgent underlying issues that are integral to creating policy for environmental justice. Links to other state bills on these issues are located at the end of each section as well as on the State Activity Page.

Toxic Chemical Facilities

Health risks from chemical or waste facility pollution are a common environmental justice problem. While many advisory councils have researched how to improve zoning and permitting processes, there has been little definitive legislative action addressing these often vague regulations. For instance, many permit applications and environmental impact assessments do not take into consideration the combined, or synergistic, effects of various chemicals and pollutants present in heavily industrialized areas. Please see California SB 1542 (passed 2002), Texas HB 801 (passed 1999).

Air Pollution

The pollutants may seem invisible, but the problems they cause are very real. As communities of color suffer disproportionately from asthma and other respiratory diseases, there is an increasing need to pay more attention to local air quality. Just as toxic chemicals mix in soils and water so do they in air, and these chemical levels and reactions need to be monitored and addressed. Please see SERC’s package on Clean Power.

Water Pollution

Water contamination, be it from fertilizers, mercury, or chemical waste, is a common and serious problem as the pollutants percolate through the soil and reach groundwater reservoirs. Please see SERC’s issues package on Mercury Reduction, Banning Cyanide Use in Mining, and Cleaning Up Brownfields.

Health Tracking System

Continually collecting information on the types and patterns of health problems that arise in communities allows the creation of a database to detect areas of high environmental impact. Please see Florida H 945 (passed 1998), and New York AB 17 (introduced 2003) for more information. Also, read SERC’s State Activity Page on health tracking.

Health Services

In addition to preventative and environmental clean-up measures, states could also provide expanded health services to lower-income areas and communities of color that, along with facing the deleterious effects of toxic exposure, also often have limited health care access.

Brownfields Redevelopment

Trailing buzzwords like “urban renewal” and “smart growth,” brownfields restoration has already surfaced as an issue almost separate from environmental concerns; however, brownfields redevelopment can play a key role in the rehabilitation of deteriorating neighborhoods. Brownfields redevelopment projects also have the benefit of being concrete and lasting ways to address sometimes abstract issues. Please see SERC’s issues package, Cleaning Up Brownfields.

Literature for Further Reading

• “Environmental justice and the law.” Race, Poverty and the Environment. Special Legal Issue, 5.2/3 (Fall/Winter 1995).
• Barlow, Chuck D., et al. “The Law of Environmental Justice: Theories and Procedures to Address Disproportionate Risk.” Ed. Michael B. Gerrard. Chicago, IL: American Bar Association Publishing, 1999.
• Bullard, Robert. “Overcoming Racism in Environmental Decisionmaking.” Environment 36.4 (May1994): 10-20, 39-44.
• Bullard, Robert. “Dumping in Dixie: Race, Class, and Environmental Quality.” 3rd ed. Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 2000.
• Bullard, Robert. “Environmental Justice in the 21st Century.” United Nations Racism and Public Policy Conference, September 3-5, 2001, Durban, South Africa.
• Cole, Luke and Sheila R. Foster. “From the Ground Up: Environmental Racism and the Rise of the Environmental Justice Movement.” New York and London: New York University Press, 2001.
• Goldman, Benjamin A. and Laura J. Fitton. “Toxic Wastes and Race Revisited.” Washington, DC: National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and United Church of Christ Commission for Racial Justice, 1994. 10 pp.
• Mitchell, Carolyn M. “Environmental racism: Race as a primary factor in the selection of hazardous waste sites.” National Black Law Journal 12.3 (Winter 1993): 176-188.
• Radford, Bruce W. “Regulatory justice.” Fortnightly 132.13 (July 1, 1994): 39-40.

Sources:
(1) United Church of Christ, Commission for Racial Justice. “Toxic wastes and race in the United States: A national report on the racial and socio-economic characteristics of communities with hazardous waste sites.” New York, N.Y.: Public Data Access, 1987.