It was immediately obvious when Hurricane Harvey hit Houston: many of the areas that suffered the most from flooding were also communities of color. That’s because in an area where status is measured in feet of elevation, the poorest families are those most subject to flooding, most likely to be positioned where they can’t get flood insurance, and most likely to be made homeless following a disaster.
The environmental impacts of poverty aren’t restricted to the aftereffects of hurricanes and floods. In areas where chemical plants and oil refineries mingle with residential neighborhoods, those neighborhoods are very likely to be less desirable than those sited near “clean” businesses. And when the average white family has seven times as much wealth as the average African-American family, that means black families are often forced to live in places that not only have poorer school systems or higher rates of crime, but where they are environmentally threatened.
The NAACP civil rights group and the Clean Air Task Force report indicated that African-Americans are disproportionately more likely to experience health problems because of pollution, noting that more than half a million African-Americans live within half a mile of these industries and over 6.7 million have a refinery in their county.
It’s not just income disparity that created this issue. Redlining and other efforts to limit where people of color could live often forced communities to crowd into areas next to undesirable industry. Such relationships contribute to the higher rates of asthma, asthma-related deaths, and other diseases among African Americans.
Which means that every time Trump and his bizarro-EPA chief Scott Pruitt cut back on the regulations that safeguard clean air and clean water, communities of color receive the worst of the impact.
“Defending the safeguards finalized during the Obama administration and pushing for additional protections against pollution from the oil and gas industry will help improve the health of many African American communities,” the NAACP-CATF report argued.