Thanks to the Fossil Fuel Privilege, everyone pays a Fossil Fuel Tax when we pay the external costs (e.g., health care, quality of life) as corporate welfare for the fossil fuel industry. But poor/minority communities pay far more for a "separate but equal" life of living in areas of the industrial dumping grounds where a number of contaminated sites and industries pollute air, water and land. Society wants the goods and services produced as long as the polluting industries are NIMBY.
Multiple studies document that polluting industries are more likely to be located in minority neighborhoods. For years, our government has acknowledged the disparate treatment with the adverse impacts on health, education and quality of life. Yet, instead of a law to prohibit this racism, our government provides the remedy of an unenforced policy.
Living in the Industrial Dumping Grounds
Racism in the environmental context (pdf file) follows the pattern of racism throughout society. Prejudice is maintained by the intentional or unintentional use of power to isolate, separate, exploit, harm, abuse and disadvantage others based on race. Privilege is conferred on whites in order to sustain, perpetuate and institutionalize racism. Whether conscious or unconscious, this racism is enforced and maintained by the legal, political and environmental institutions to the extent that it is not even accorded a remedy that has the status of law, but merely unenforced policies.
Neighborhoods wake up to horrific odors emanating from industrial plants and the strong smells of raw sewage. Children consider playing outside during recess a punishment due to the odors. Daily life involves "adjusting" to the toxic fumes, dust, odors, noise and the ugliness of air and structures. Trucks barreling down the streets endanger children and pets, drown out conversations and damage foundations of homes. Neighborhoods become the breeding grounds for illness, disease, injuries and death.
One example is the New River, the most polluted waterway in North America and composed of 70% of waste material and raw sewage that host deadly diseases of turberulosis, typhoid, and polio. As shown in the photo, the river flows through communities where houses line the banks. Families suffer the stench of cooked sewage while children must play indoors. The water-quality standard
for the river is 260 because anything higher constitutes a threat to public health, but this river measures at 100,000-16 million.
Martin Luther King Jr. set the stage for environmental justice back in 1968 with a Memphis strike after two black sanitation workers were crushed to death when a mechanism on a trash truck was accidentally triggered. This job safety strike highlighted that the impact of wastes from all of society were imposed mostly in minority communities:
Only African-Americans worked in sanitation in the city; the exposure to injury and disease associated with the work fell exclusively on the African-American community despite the entire metropolitan area contributing to the wastes that had to be managed.
Environmental justice advocate Robert Bullard explains how racism is not limited to corporations but rather institutionalized in local and federal governments:
I started connecting the dots in terms of housing, residential patterns, patterns of land use, where highways go, where transportation routes go, and how economic-development decisions are made. It was very clear that people who were making decisions -- county commissioners or industrial boards or city councils -- were not the same people who were "hosting" these facilities in their communities.
Without a doubt, it was a form of apartheid where whites were making decisions and black people and brown people and people of color, including Native Americans on reservations, had no seat at the table.
Government Knowledge of the Environmental Racism
Our government has known for decades that poor and minority communities have been targeted with disproportionate impacts of a multitude of harmful environmental effects. In 1970, the "United States Public Health Services (USPHS) acknowledged that lead poisoning was disproportionately impacting African Americans and Hispanic children." In 1971, the "Presidents’ Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ) annual report acknowledge[d]" that "racial discrimination adversely affects urban poor and quality of their environment." A 1983 GAO (Government Accountability Office) study of 4 landfill sites found that "Blacks comprised the majority of the population in three of the four communities studied" and thus bear the burden with the distribution of environmental risks.
In 1987, the United Church of Christ Commission for Racial Justice published a national report (pdf file) on the racial and socio-economic characteristics of communities with hazardous waste sites. It concluded that "race was the single best predictor of where toxic waste facilities were located nation-wide" thus removing the possibility that it was merely chance that explained the pattern of locating hazardous waste facilities in minority communities. On this map, the "dark areas represent counties where the Black and/or Hispanic percentage of the population is greater than their respective national percentages and where five or more uncontrolled toxic waste sites are located."
A 1990 report by Bush's EPA confirmed the findings of the 1983 GAO report and the 1987 Racial Justice report that "members of minority populations have 'disproportionately greater 'observed and potential exposure' to environmental pollutants,' and this disproportionality could not be explained by income alone."
In 1993, the Clinton administration agreed --- for the first time--- to investigate whether states were violating civil rights of African Americans by allowing industrial pollution in their neighborhoods. These investigations were based on the 1964 Civil Rights Act and confirmed findings by earlier reports.
In 2005, an Associated Press analysis of EPA research showed that "African Americans are 79 percent more likely than whites to live in neighborhoods where industrial pollution is suspected of posing the greatest health danger." Here are the results from a few of the many reports undertaken over the years that illustrate the impacts on health, life expectancy, and education:
· In 1992, National Argonne Laboratory researchers discovered that 57 percent of whites, 65 percent of African Americans, and 80 percent of Latinos lived in the 437 counties that failed to meet at least one of the EPA ambient air quality standards.
· A 2000 study from the American Lung Association found children of color to be disproportionately represented in areas with high ozone levels. Additionally, 61.3 percent of Black children, 69.2 percent of Hispanic children and 67.7 percent of Asian-American children live in areas that exceed the 0.08 ppm ozone standard, while only 50.8 percent of white children live in such areas.
· Air pollution is related to rising asthma rates. Although African Americans represent 12.7% of the U.S. population, they account for 26% of asthma deaths.
· African American children are five times more likely to die from asthma than white children.
· The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports that asthma accounts for more than 10 million lost school days, 1.2 million emergency room visits, 15 million outpatient visits, and over 500,000 hospitalizations each year. Asthma cost Americans over $14.5 billion in 2000.
The remedy for environmental racism is a policy, not a law
Environmental advocates have been in search of a law to fight environmental racism. In 1998, the EPA stated that when the Civil Rights Act was adopted, "no one fully appreciated" that pollution could also be a means for disparate treatment of some communities. Studies and reports have confirmed each other up the wazoo and still no law. Congress needs to amend Title VI to expressly provide a private right of action to challenge agency decisions that have a disparate impact on minority and low-income neighborhoods.
For years, environmental and civil rights groups advocated the use of the 1964 Civil Rights Act because it is one of the few laws that directly address discriminatory environmental impacts. In 2000, local residents filed a lawsuit to stop construction of a cement manufacturing facility and a judge invalidated the air permits because of its disparate impact on the minority neighborhoods.
A few days later, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in a separate case that there is no private right of action to sue under Title VI to enforce disparate impact regulations. Thus, a private right of action under Title VI was limited to plaintiffs who could prove intentional discrimination by a recipient of federal funds. Similar to equal protection lawsuits, it is difficult to "prove improper intent solely on the basis of racial disparities in environmental impact."
Without a private right of action, citizens must rely on the EPA to enforce its own regulations. Title VI also requires that agencies that distribute federal funds, like the EPA, issue regulations and establish a process for complaints of racial discrimination. In 1973, EPA established regulations that prohibit the recipient of federal funds from using "criteria or methods of administering its program which have the effect of subjecting individuals to discrimination because of their race, color, national origin, or sex." Thus, a plaintiff can avoid the intentional discrimination burden and potentially revoke federal funds except for the little detail of enforcement. EPA adopted the regulations in 1973 but avoided enforcement of the regulations until 1994, when President Clinton issued Executive Order 12898 (EO) to establish environmental justice policy, instructing "all federal agencies to conduct their programs and policies in a manner that achieves environmental justice and promotes non-discrimination against minorities and those with low incomes." However, how is this EO enforced? The EO does not create a private right of action or provide for judicial review of regulatory decisions.
So, the EPA finally created an Office of Civil Rights (OCR) to provide a place where a complaint could be filed, investigate allegations and potentially revoke federal funds to implement this policy. However, during 1993-1998, the complaints were processed slowly, and the EPA found that none violated Title VI. In 2009, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals held that the OCR showed a "systemic refusal to address allegations of discrimination in the use of agency funds." There was a "consistent pattern of delay by the EPA" to ignore complaints filed, failing to respond until after the frustrated citizens filed a lawsuit.
Efforts over the years to enact environmental justice laws to prohibit racism, provide a private right of action, or even to codify into federal law the EO policy have failed.
We have a series at Daily Kos called EcoJustice on Monday nights that essentially documents the continuing evidence of eco racism here and throughout the world. This Monday I will discuss one measure we can support to make things better.