If Dr. King were alive today, there is a good chance the 83-year-old civil rights icon would be standing side-by-side with the African American Harry Holt family in Dickson County, Tennessee, located just 160 miles east of Memphis, whose 150-acre farmland and well were poisoned with the deadly trichloroethylene (TCE) chemical from the leaky Dickson County Landfill.  The landfill is located just 54 feet from the Holt family’s property line.

In 2003, the Holt family and the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund (LDF) sued the city and county of Dickson, the state of Tennessee, and the company that dumped the TCE. And in 2008, the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), Sheila Holt Orsted and her mother Beatrice Holt filed a lawsuit against Dickson City and County governments seeking cleanup of alleged water contamination.  And after more than eight years of litigation, on December 7, 2011, a settlement agreement was finally worked out with the Dickson City and County governments. The county spent more than $3 million and the city almost $1.9 million fighting the black family.  However, the family’s legal battle did not end in December since the state of Tennessee, a defendant in the Holts’ civil rights case, did not settle. The case is scheduled to go to trial later this year.

Here are five reasons why on this MLK Day we should demand eco-justice for the black landowners in Tennessee.

The treatment of the Holt family is a clear civil rights violation of equal protection under the law. The discriminatory and differential treatment of the Holts at the hands of the state of Tennessee is a violation of their civil rights guaranteed under the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. Clearly, the U.S. is not yet in a post-racial era. Race still matters.

The right to clean water is a basic human right.  The poisoning of the Holt family’s well water and the failure of the Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation (TDEC) to protect them from environmental harm are clear human rights violations. On July 28, 2010, the United Nations, through Resolution 64/292, recognized the human right to water and sanitation and acknowledged that clean water and sanitation are essential to the realization of all human rights.

The Holts’ toxic nightmare on Eno Road is the “poster child” for environmental racism. The United Church of Christ 2007 Toxic Wastes and Race at Twenty report describes the poisoning of the Holts’ well and the government response as the “poster child” for environmental racism.  The Dickson case conforms to the national trend in which African Americans and other people of color make up the majority (56%) of the residents living in neighborhoods within two miles of the nation’s commercial hazardous waste facilities, nearly double the percentage in areas beyond two miles (30%).  They also make up more than two-thirds (69%) of the residents in neighborhoods with two or more clustered facilities. Nationally, African Americans are 79 percent more likely than whites to live in neighborhoods where industrial pollution is suspected of posing the greatest health danger.

Toxic racism steals black health.  Harry Holt died of cancer in January 2007.  His daughter, Sheila Holt Orsted is recovering from breast cancer. According to the American Cancer Society, even though Caucasian women are slightly more likely to develop breast cancer than African-Americans, African-American women are more likely to die of the disease. The industrial solvent TCE is widely known to be harmful to humans. A 2011 EPA study found that TCE is even more dangerous to people’s health than previously thought—causing kidney and liver cancer, lymphoma and other health problems. This new EPA study lays the groundwork to re-evaluate the federal drinking-water standard for TCE:  5 parts per billion in water, and 1 microgram per cubic meter in air.

Toxic racism robs black wealth.  Poisoning of black land with toxic chemicals robs blacks of their wealth and widens the wealth gap between blacks and whites. Today, the typical white family has 20 times the wealth of the typical black family. That’s the largest gap in 25 years. This theft has robbed African American landowners of wealth that would normally be passed down to their offspring. This phenomenon is not unique to Tennessee. The world learned of this stolen legacy in the discriminatory treatment of black farmers at the hands of the USDA and their long wait for justice. And in December 2010, President Barack Obama signed a bill authorizing $1.25 billion dollars in appropriations for the Pigford II lawsuit after Congress approved the legislation in November 2010. According to the Federation of Southern Cooperatives, from emancipation to 1910, blacks amassed 15 million acres of land of which 218,000 black farmers are full or part owners.  A steady decline of black land ownership began after 1910 through theft, intimidation, discrimination, back taxes, and economic loss.

Finally, in the spirit of Dr. King, it is fitting that we lift up the Dickson, Tennessee case, a struggle that epitomizes the civil rights leader’s final campaign in Memphis involving garbage and human rights.

The movement to renewable energy is the preferred strategy to clean energy future for our nation.  Clean energy market is growing. More than $243 billion in new investments were made in clean energy in 2010. Yet, in 2009, renewable energy’s market share reached just 8 percent of the total U.S. energy consumption. It is worth noting that biomass energy generation made up 50 percent of the renewable energy in 2009.

Biomass incineration is now being promoted as green and clean energy and a strategy to combat climate change.  However, burning biomass to generate electricity is toxic, and is neither “green” nor “clean.”  Generally, biomass facilities emit more carbon dioxide per megawatt hour than burning fossil fuels, as well as NOx, particulates and other hazardous air and water pollutants that threaten human health and the environment.  Biomass facilities include a range of operations from the burning of municipal solid waste (trash), tires, construction/demolition wood waste, crop and animal wastes, energy crops, trees, gas from digestion of sewage sludge or animal wastes, and landfill gas. Biomass can include any non-fossil fuel that is arguably “organic.”

Unfortunately, “green” biomass (like energy crops) is often used as a foot in the door to bring in more toxic waste streams.  The American Lung Association of New England (ALANE) outlined major environmental concerns in a Biomass Position Statement:

Biomass emissions contain fine particulate matter, sulfur oxides, carbon monoxide, volatile organic compounds, and various irritant gases such as nitrogen oxides that can scar the lungs. Like cigarettes, biomass emissions also contain chemicals that are known or suspected to be carcinogens, such as polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) and dioxin.

The ALANE believes that as a nation “we cannot afford to trade our health to meet our energy needs.

Many “clean wood chips” burning biomass plants can easily turn to burning more contaminated fuels (which may be cheaper or even free), or get paid to take really dirty wastes like trash or tires. Public opposition to biomass facilities has driven siting that follows the “path of least resistance,” which often translates to states where environmental regulations are lax and companies are given huge tax incentives to build these kinds of incinerators, and investors count on the local residents being uninformed and apathetic. Environmental justice siting concerns often get buried in the excitement and notion of “green energy.”

Zoning laws are often legal weapons deployed in facilitating energy apartheid.  Local land-use and zoning policies are the root enabling cause of disproportionate environmental and health burdens borne by low income and people of color in the United States. Zoning Boards have the power to rezone land in favor of locally unwanted land uses or LULUs, even over the objections of local residents.  A 2003 National Academy of Public Administration (NAPA) report, “Addressing Community Concerns: How Environmental Justice Relates to Land Use Planning and Zoning“, found that most planning and zoning boards members are men; more than nine out of 10 members are white; most members are 40-years-old or older; and boards contain mostly professionals and few, if any, nonprofessional or community representatives.

More often than not, a disproportionate share of low-income neighborhoods are deemed compatible with industrial use and thus get shortchanged in the neighborhood protection game.  No amount of zoning has insulated the most vulnerable African American communities from the negative health impacts of industrial pollution.  The struggle to dismantle energy apartheid—and gain equal access to clean and green energy—has become yet another quest for environmental justice and end the politics of pollution.

Anyone who knows anything about Black History in the U.S knows too well that African Americans have never been the first to get the “best of the best.”  Clean energy and green jobs are no exception.  The de facto energy apartheid policy of “talking green” and “acting dirty” hits African Americans and other people of color especially hard.

It should not be a surprise to anyone who has studied the environmental justice and noxious facility siting in the U.S. to learn that the first biomass energy facility in Texas, Aspen Power Plant, is not slated for Houston’s affluent River Oaks community but is being built in a mostly black and poor community in Lufkin. The plant is being built on Lufkin’s north side which has a long history as a “dumping ground” for polluting facilities. More than 77.4 percent of the residents who live within a one-mile radius of the biomass plant are African Americans; and 58.3 percent of the residents found within a two-mile radius of the plant are African Americans. These findings are consistent with a 2005 Associated Press study showing that African Americans are 79 percent more likely than whites to live in neighborhoods that are suspected of posing the greatest health danger.

Lufkin’s African American residents bear the greatest burden for the city hosting the biomass plant since blacks make up just 26.6 percent of the city’s population.  African Americans comprise 14.8 percent of Angelina County population and 12 percent of Texas population.  In 2007, the city’s Planning and Zoning Commission proposed to allow the facility to be located next door to the black community.  City officials failed to notify its North Lufkin residents about this plan.  However, the Lufkin City Council passed a zoning change in August 2007 to allow the plant to be built in the north side community.

Lukfin’s Aspen Plant was financed with both public and private funds.  It received $750,000 from the state of Texas for roads, parking, engineering and administrative services.  Akeida Capital Management (ACM), an environmental asset management firm focused on investing in renewable energy infrastructure, provided a $14.1 million junior loan to Aspen Power to complete construction of the plant which began in late 2008.  Angelina Fuels, Aspen Power’s sister company, will provide the plant with approximately 1,500 tons of biomass per day from timber harvesting, sawmill and municipal cleanup activities in and around Lufkin.  The Aspen Power facility is expected to create approximately 50 new jobs. Public opposition and legal battles to the plant forced Aspen Power to spend an additional $10 million on air pollution controls.

Georgia is another state where biomass incineration has been welcomed.  According to the Energy Justice Network, Georgia has 12 operating biomass facilities, 4 under construction, and 5 proposed facilities.   The Census places the 2009 Georgia African American population at 30.2 percent.  Biomass plants tend to be located in Georgia counties where African Americans are overrepresented in the population.  For example, 7 of the 12 (58.3%) operating biomass plants are located in counties whose black population exceeds the percent black in the state—ranging from 40.0 percent to 58.5 percent; 3 of the 4 (75.0%) wood biomass incinerators that are under construction are in majority black counties ranging from 53.7 percent black to 65.3 percent black; 3 of the 5 proposed plants (60%) are located in counties where the percent black exceeds the state average; a majority of the proposed and under construction biomass plants—5 of the 9 or 55.6 percent—are located in counties where the black population is 50 percent or higher; and 13 of 21 (61.9%) biomass plants that are either operating, under construction, or proposed in Georgia are located in counties whose percent black population exceeds the state average, ranging  from 33.5 percent to 65.3 percent.

Residents in Valdosta, Georgia are fighting to block a 40 megawatt biomass incinerator slated for construction on a 22-acre site in their community. The community is already overburdened with polluting industries and heavy truck traffic. The Valdosta Wiregrass biomass plant is slated to be built next to a sewer treatment plant and within 2 miles of an incinerator, two predominantly black elementary and one predominantly white elementary schools, and a Head Start program serves over 165 children ages 3-5.  Eight out of every ten residents (82.0%) who live within a mile of the proposed biomass plant are black; more than three-fourths (79.0 %) of the residents who live within a two-mile radius of the proposed plant are African American.

The Valdosta-Lowndes NAACP branch and their supporters claim the plant siting is environmental racism. They raised their claim with the newly appointed EPA Region 4 administrator, Gwen Keyes Fleming—the first African American to hold the post—at a summit held in Atlanta in November 2010.  The NAACP along with more than 40 other groups representing “poisoned communities” in EPA Region 4 delivered a Call to Action to EPA demanding an end to environmental injustice perpetrated on people of color and low-income communities.

The Georgia Environmental Protection Division (EPD) held public hearings in May 2010 where residents asked it to consider “cumulative health impacts” in the permitting facilities rather than its traditional “smokestack by smokestack” evaluation. The biomass incinerator is being marketed as a “clean energy” project. However, many Valdosta and Lowndes County residents disagree, views held by a growing number of anti-biomass and incineration and forest protection campaigns.  The facility is far from clean.  It will burn more than 640,000 tons of wood every year and emit 87-89 tons per year of tiny particulate matter smaller than 10 microns in size (PM10), dangerous particulate pollution because it lodges permanently in people’s lungs.  More than 50 diesel trucks per day will travel to and from the incinerator 24-hours a day, 365 days a year.

Residents in Lithonia, Georgia, a suburban city located just outside Atlanta, successfully blocked a 20-acre biomass facility from locating in their community. Lithonia is 80 percent African American. The plant is a joint venture between a minority-owned firm called Green Energy Partners, Inc. and AECOM, the largest design-build firm in the world with clients in more than 100 countries.

The $50 million facility was first killed by the Lithonia City Council. It was later resurrected by an alternate site just outside the city limits—falling under the jurisdiction of the DeKalb County Board of Commissioners, who approved the plant in a 6-1 vote in July 2010.  Construction on the plant is scheduled this month.  The DeKalb County plant will operate around the clock and is projected to burn more than 100,000 tons of yard waste – wood chips from trees and leaves – to generate 10 megawatts of electricity to power 7,000 homes. It plans to sell the electricity to the Georgia Power Co.

The biomass plant is projected to generate about $220,000 a year for DeKalb in revenues for DeKalb County government for the next 20 years.  It is promoted as an economic development project since it will create 100 jobs during construction and 25 permanent positions, and add $50 million to the tax digest.  However, Lithonia residents question whether 25 permanent jobs—that may or may not go to nearby residents—will be worth the health, environmental, and economic risks (impact on property values).  They fear the 24-hour plant operation will bring harmful emissions, noise and unwanted truck traffic and diesel emissions to their community.

Residents who live near power plants must not only contend with potential exposure from the facilities but also face environmental health threats from truck traffic and vehicle emissions, especially diesel emissions from trucks.  Diesel traffic emissions also impact indoor exposures. Long-term exposure to high levels of diesel exhausts (generally at the level of occupational exposure) increase risk of developing lung cancer. Diesel engine emissions contribute to serious public health problems, including premature mortality, aggravation of existing asthma, acute respiratory symptoms, chronic bronchitis, and decreased lung function. Diesel engine emissions have also been linked to increased incidences of various cancers in more than 30 health studies. Diesel particulate matter alone contributes to 125,000 cancers in the United States each year.

The average African American household emits 20 percent fewer greenhouse gases than its white counterparts.  Yet, African Americans are being asked, or rather forced, to bear a disproportionate burden in hosting “dirty” energy plants.  More than 68 percent of African Americans live within 30 miles of a coal-fired power plant, the distance within which the maximum effects of the smokestack plume are expected to occur. In comparison, 56 percent of whites and 39 percent of Latinos live in such proximity to a coal-fired power plant. Over 35 million American children live within 30 miles of a power plant, of which an estimated 2 million are asthmatic. Coal-burning power plants are the major source of mercury pollution, a neurotoxin especially harmful to children and developing fetuses. About 8 percent of U.S. women of childbearing age are at risk from mercury pollution.

While Americans talk about a “green energy future,” the continued siting of “dirty” coal-fired power plants raises some major environmental justice concerns.  Nowhere is this disturbing trend more apparent than in Georgia.  In 2009, African Americans made up 30.2 percent of Georgia’s population.  However, two of the three (75%) proposed coal-fired power plants seeking permits in Georgia are located in majority black counties.  All three of the proposed coal-fired power plants are located in Georgia cities ranging from 49.6 percent black to 60.4 percent black. The proposed Georgia coal-fired plants include: Greenleaf Coal Power Plant in Blakely (60.4% black) in Early County(50.0 % black); Fitzgerald Power Plant near Fitzgerald (49.6% black) in Ben Hill County (32.6 % black); and the Washington County Plant near Sandersville (59.3% black) in Washington County (52.7% black). Clearly, Black Georgians shoulder a disproportionate burden of energy apartheid that’s practiced in the state.

Recent proposals to jump-start the nuclear power industry have sparked debate and environmental justice concerns among African Americans. Georgia’s mostly African American and poor communities are also being targeted for risky nuclear power plants. For example, the first nuclear power plants to be built in decades are being proposed in Georgia with an $8.3 billion federal loan guarantee. The loan guarantee will help the Atlanta-based Southern Company build two more nuclear reactors in the mostly African American Shell Bluff community in Burke County, GA. The county is 51.1 percent black. The two new reactors would each produce 1,000 megawatts, and would work with two existing reactors at a site near Waynesboro, GA (62.5% black).

Much more research is needed on energy apartheid nationally.  More policy analysis is needed to clarify who gets what, when, and why, and where “green” and “clean” energy is headed and where the same old “dirty” energy plants are being proposed and sited across the country.  Talking about “going green” is very different from actually going green.  Talk is cheap. The time is long overdue to put an end to “energy apartheid” in the United States—where “clean energy” is reserved for the more affluent white Americans and “dirty energy” targeted for poor and people of color.

Our Climate Justice Movement demands that clean, green, and renewable energy be made available to all Americans without regard to race, color, national origin, or income.  It is unlikely that we as a nation can achieve sustainability and a green energy future without addressing these equity issues. Too few African American elected officials and leaders from government, business, civil rights, faith-based, academia, and think tank organizations are speaking out against energy apartheid.  We need a national summit that brings together diverse sectors and leaders from the African American community to develop a plan of action. This is the right thing to do.  And this is the right time to do it.  We must speak and do for ourselves and protect our communities if we are to be part of and reap the benefits, and not get left behind or on the sideline of a clean energy future.

In September 2010, EPA administrator, Lisa P. Jackson, and White House Council on Environmental Quality Chair, Nancy Sutley, reconvened the Interagency Working Group on Environmental Justice (EJ IWG), an entity created under Executive Order 12898, in a historic meeting, the first such gathering in more than a decade, held at the White House. The meeting, attended by five cabinet members, highlight the federal government’s dedication to ensuring all Americans have strong federal protection from environmental and health hazards.

The EJ IWG agreed to hold monthly EJ IWG meetings, including assigning senior officials from each Agency to coordinate EJ activities; organize regional listening sessions in early 2011; hold follow-up EJ IWG Principals Meetings in April and September 2011; each Agency will be tasked to develop or update their EJ strategy by September 2011; and plan a White House forum for EJ leaders and stakeholders on Environmental Justice.

The White House EJ Forum is set for Wednesday December 15, 2010.  The compressed time (each speaker has about two minutes) and complexity of issues covered make the one-day Forum’s outcome far from certain.  Nevertheless, the event will bring together several hundred environmental justice community leaders, state, local and tribal government officials, cabinet members, and other senior Federal officials for a discussion on creating a healthy and sustainable environment for all Americans.  The gathering also offers an opportunity — though limited — for environmental justice leaders who are lucky enough to make their way to Washington to speak with officials from Federal departments and agencies who are engaged in environmental justice efforts.  For some grassroots leaders, this will mark the first time in more than a decade this has happened.

Most Impacted Speaking for Themselves

The Environmental Justice Movement has always emphasized prevention and precaution.  Its framework expanded the concept of environment to include “where we live, work, play, and learn as well as the physical and natural world.”  The movement was founded by people of color in response to environmental injustice — largely toxics and environmental health threats in communities of color.  Over the years, the movement expanded to become a multi-ethnic, multi-issue movement — taking on issues ranging from food security, green jobs, smart growth, clean and renewable energy, and climate justice.

A core founding principle of the movement is “people must speak for themselves.” This principle aided the movement to grow new leaders from communities most impacted by pollution and environmental health threats.  The White House Forum on Environmental Justice will no doubt miss some key “voices” from the nation’s most vulnerable communities — leaders who have limited resources and do not have discretionary funds to fly to Washington, DC — even for a high-level meeting at the White House.

Eliminating environmental and health disparities has always been a top priority of the Environmental Justice Movement.  Achieving this goal will make us a much stronger nation as a whole.  As the U.S. becomes more diverse and moves toward becoming a majority people of color nation in coming decades, erasing these disparities is not something that should be ignored or given mere lip service. It will take hard work, dedication, and years of commitment to dismantle the apparatus that reproduces and institutionalizes inequality.

Health Matters
Built Environment and Health

The built environment, infrastructure, and environmental quality all have a direct impact on our health and wellbeing. All built environments are not created equal.  Communities that ensure access to quality services that are designed to promote good physical and psychological well being, and that are protective of the natural and physical environment are essential for health equity. Environmental justice groups are working with planners, policy makers, and other practitioners to reshape the built environment to improve individual and community health outcomes.

Social Determinants of Health and Well Being

Healthy places and healthy people are highly correlated. The poorest of the poor within the United States have the worst health and live in the most degraded environments.  Local and national environmental justice and health equity groups have aligned themselves to challenges factors in the social environment that contribute to, or detract from, the health of individuals and communities. In general, movement leaders have adopted a community health model rather than a medical model of health — with the ultimate goal of creating healthy places and healthy people.

Healthy Environment as an Essential Human Right

Many environmental justice advocates adopt the principle that the right to live in a healthy, safe and clean environment is an essential human right of all Americans. Since environmental and public health threats are not randomly distributed, with low-income and people of color on the frontline of environmental assault, equal enforcement and equal protection have become major civil rights subjects of litigation.

Merger of Green Buildings and Healthy Schools

Over the last decade, we have seen the convergence of the Green Building Movement, which typically focused on energy efficiency and resource conservation, and the Healthy Schools Movement, which seeks high performance school design/construction consistent with children’s needs for healthy environments, greening existing schools, and environmental public health for children who are disproportionately affected by environmental exposures in “sick schools.”

Environmental Justice and Reproductive Justice

Women of color have provided the essential leadership for framing the intersection of environmental justice and reproductive justice through a public health and racial equity lens.  They make up the majority of the leaders in the U.S. grassroots environmental justice organizations that are working to make people, products, communities, and ecosystems healthier. Environmental justice/reproductive justice organizing is timely as new findings link toxic products, chemicals, and pollutants to the health of children — evidence that shows children are exposed to a host of dangerous chemicals while still in their mother’s womb.

Race Matters
Applying a Racial Equity Lens

Race does not cause illness, racism does.  Race still underlies and interpenetrates with other factors in explaining much of the location of environmental degradation and the socio-spatial layout of residential amenities in our cities, suburbs, rural area, and metropolitan regions, including the quality of schools, the location of job centers, housing patterns, streets and highway configuration, and commercial development. More than 100 studies now link racism to worse health.  More than 200 environmental studies have shown race and class disparities.

Creating “Toxic-Free” Neighborhood

A growing number of environmental justice activists and advocates have undertaken initiatives and partnerships, some with government, to create “toxic-free” neighborhoods, improve access to housing, healthy schools, transportation, health care, parks and green space, healthy foods, green jobs, and other services, and dismantle artificial and discriminatory barriers to healthy, livable, and sustainable environments where they “live, work, learn, and play.”  This holistic approach to environmentalism has taken root from coast to coast and is now embraced by a broad cross-section of the American society.

Mapping Vulnerability

Race maps closely with pollution, unequal protection, and vulnerability. Numerous studies show people of color are concentrated in or near communities with abandoned hazardous waste sites and polluting industries which often follow the “path of least resistance,” contributing to many communities becoming environmental “sacrifice zones.” For many polluting industries, it is a “race to the bottom,” where land, labor and lives are cheap. The creation of environmental “sacrifice zones” is viewed as the price of doing business. Vulnerable communities, populations often fall between the regulatory cracks — becoming “invisible” communities.

Differential Treatment and Response

Not only are people of color differentially impacted by toxic contamination, they can expect different treatment from the government.  Generally, it takes longer for sites in communities of color to get listed and cleaned up when compared to sites in white communities.  Polluters also receive stiffer penalties in white communities than in communities of color — contributing to environmental health disparities.

Toxic Wastes and Race

Racial and socio-economic disparities in the location of the nation’s hazardous waste facilities are geographically widespread throughout the country.  People of color in 2007 were more concentrated in areas with commercial hazardous sites than in 1987. Race continues to be a significant independent predictor of commercial hazardous waste facility locations when socio-economic and other non-racial factors are taken into account. People of color make up the majority (56%) of those living in neighborhoods within two miles of the nation’s commercial hazardous waste facilities, nearly double the percentage in areas beyond two miles (30%). People of color make up a much larger (over two-thirds) majority (69%) in neighborhoods with clustered facilities.

Siting disparities are widespread. Nine out of ten EPA regions have racial disparities in the location of hazardous waste sites.  Forty of 44 states (90%) with hazardous waste facilities have disproportionately high percentages of people of color in host neighborhoods, on average about two times greater than the percentages in non-host areas (44% vs. 23%).  Host neighborhoods in an overwhelming majority of the 44 states with hazardous waste sites have disproportionately high percentages of Hispanics (35 states), African Americans (38 states), and Asians/Pacific Islanders (27 states).  Host neighborhoods of 105 of 149 metropolitan areas with hazardous waste sites (70%) have disproportionately high percentages of people of color, and 46 of these metro areas (31%) have majority people of color host neighborhoods.

Poverty and Pollution

Poverty and pollution are intricately linked.  Poverty impacts health because it determines how much resources poor people have and defines the amount of environmental risks they will be exposed to in their immediate environment. Persons of low socio-economic status are disproportionately impacted and are particularly concentrated in low-wealth neighborhoods with the greatest number of health threats, including lead poisoning, hazardous waste facilities, and other polluting facilities.

Place Matters
Wrong Side of the Tracks

Place still matters. One of the most important indicators of an individual’s health is one’s street address or neighborhood. Residents who physically live on the “wrong side of the tracks” are subjected to elevated environmental health threats. Place also limits access to health care.

Land Use Zoning

Local land-use and zoning policies are major culprits in the disproportionate environmental and health burdens borne by low-income and people of color in the United States.  With or without zoning, deed restrictions, or other land-use devices, various groups are unequally able to protect their environmental interests.  More often than not, a disproportionate share of low-income and people residential neighborhoods are “zoned for garbage,” deemed compatible with industrial use, shortchanged in the neighborhood protection game.  No amount of zoning has insulated the most vulnerable communities from the negative health impacts of industrial pollution.

Threats to Fenceline Communities

Serious questions remain whether the current environmental protection framework can protect the health of residents who live fenceline with polluting industries. In reality, polluting facilities do not make good neighbors.  While “fences make good neighbors,” pollution threats do not stop at the fenceline.

Pollution Matters
Living with More Pollution.

People of color and poor people live with more pollution than the rest of the nation. African Americans are 79 percent more likely than whites to live in neighborhoods where industrial pollution is suspected of posing the greatest health danger. African Americans in 19 states, Latinos in 12 states, and Asians in 7 states were more than twice as likely as whites to live in neighborhoods where pollution poses the greatest health danger; residents of the at-risk neighborhoods were generally poorer and less educated, and unemployment rates in those districts were nearly 20 percent higher than the national average.  Middle-income African Americans (households with incomes between $50,000 and $60,000) live in neighborhoods on average that are more polluted than the average neighborhood in which white households with incomes below $1,000 live — suggesting that lower-income whites have greater geographic mobility to escape polluted neighborhoods than higher income African Americans.

Tracking Toxic Pollution from Companies to Communities

In April 2009, a team of environmental justice scholars released a groundbreaking study that tracked pollution from individual companies to specific communities. They introduced a new concept of “corporate environmental justice” performance scorecard, a measure based on the human health impacts from toxic air pollution released by a company and whether people of color and low-income persons bear a larger share in particular states, metropolitan areas, cities, and neighborhoods.  Nationwide, the most polluted places tend to have significantly higher-than-average percentages of people of color.  In examining the top ten companies on the “Toxic 100” list that have the highest share of people of color in their toxic score, people of color bear more than half of the human health impacts from the companies’ toxic air releases.  The scorecard is a new tool that can be used to promote informal regulations and corporate responsibility.

Toxic Neighborhoods

Millions of Americans living in nearly 600 neighborhoods across the United States are breathing concentrations of toxic air pollutants that put them at a much greater risk of contracting cancer.

Toxic Housing for the Poor

Over 870,000 of the 1.9 million (46 percent) housing units for poor families and children, inhabited by people of color, sit within about a mile of factories that reported toxic emissions to the EPA.

Toxics Near Schools

In 2008, air quality at 435 schools in 34 states appears to pose a health threat. Only three percent of the 127,800 public, private, and parochial schools are within a mile of a long-term monitor set up to detect hazardous air pollutants.

Sick School Buildings

Poor air quality in schools has been linked to higher absenteeism and increased respiratory ailments, lower teacher and staff productivity, lower student motivation, slower learning, lower test scores, increased medical costs, and lowered lifelong achievement and earnings. Poor children in poor schools face the highest health risk from “sick schools.” People of color comprise about one-third of the nation’s population. However, students of color make up about 45 percent of children attending “sick schools.”  Up to one-half of the nation’s 125,000 schools have problems with indoor environmental air quality.

Rising Asthma Rates

Asthma is one of the nation’s most common and costly diseases. An estimated 20 million Americans suffer from asthma (1 in 15 Americans).  Asthma cost Americans nearly $18 billion each year. Asthma is slightly more prevalent among African Americans than whites. However, African Americans are three times more likely to be hospitalized from, and die from, asthma. African American Women asthma mortality is more than 2.5 times higher than white women. Racial and ethnic differences in asthma prevalence, morbidity and mortality are highly correlated with poverty, urban air quality, indoor allergens, and lack of patient education and inadequate medical care. 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, and 15 million outpatient visits each year.  Asthma is the number leading cause of school absenteeism among children accounting for more than 14 million total missed days of school.

Dirty Power Plants

More than 68 percent of African Americans live within 30 miles of a coal-fired power plant, the distance within which the maximum effects of the smokestack plume are expected to occur.  In comparison, 56 percent of Whites and 39 percent of Latinos live in such proximity to a coal-fired power plant.   Over 35 million American children live within 30 miles of a power plant, of which an estimated two million are asthmatic.  Coal-burning power plants are the major source of mercury pollution, a neurotoxin especially harmful to children and developing fetuses.  About 8 percent of U.S. women of childbearing age are at risk from mercury pollution.  More than 23,600 U.S. deaths occur each year from dirty power plants.

Power plants are responsible for about 40 percent of all man-made CO2 (carbon dioxide) emissions, the most significant greenhouse gas, emitted from burning fossil fuels in the United States — placing power plants at the center of the debate on climate change and climate justice. SO2 (sulfur dioxide) emissions from power plants significantly harm the cardiovascular and respiratory health of people who live near the plants.

Even with talk about the nation going green, “green jobs,” and the “green economy,” dirty industries still follow the “path of least resistance,” allowing low-income and people of color communities to become environmental “sacrifice zones” and the “dumping grounds” for all kinds of health-threatening operations, including landfills, incinerators, dirty coal-fired power plants, oil refineries, petrochemical plants, and mountain-top removal mining of coal — often called “strip mining on steroids.”  Mountain-top mining in the southern Appalachians has turned more than 400,000 acres of forested mountains into lunar landscapes.

Geography of Air Pollution

More than 57 percent of whites, 65 percent of African Americans, and 80 percent of Hispanics live in 437 counties with substandard air quality; over 61.3 percent of African American 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 50.8 percent of white children live in such areas. One of every four American child lives in areas that regularly exceed the U.S. EPA’s ozone standards. And half the pediatric asthma population, two million children live in these areas.

Health Benefits of Clean Air

Americans are living longer because the air they breathe is getting cleaner.  The average drop in pollution seen across 51 metropolitan areas between 1980 and 2000 appears to have added nearly five more months to people’s lives. Researchers calculate that reductions in air pollution accounted for as much as 15 percent of the increase in life expectancy.  Residents of cities that did the best job cleaning up air pollution showed the biggest gains in life span.

Transportation Pollution

Reduction in motor vehicle emissions can have marked health improvements.  Emissions from cars, trucks, and buses cause 60-90 percent of air pollution in cities. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports that when the Atlanta Olympic Games in 1996 brought about a reduction in auto use by 22.5 percent, asthma admissions to emergency rooms (ERs) and hospitals also decreased by 41.6 percent. Diesel engine emissions contribute to serious public health problems including: premature mortality, aggravation of existing asthma, acute respiratory symptoms, chronic bronchitis, and decreased lung function. Long-term exposure to high levels of diesel exhausts (generally at the level of occupational exposure) increase risk of developing lung cancer. These emissions have also been linked to increased incidences of various cancers in more than 30 health studies.  Diesel particulate matter alone contributes to 125,000 cancers in the United States.

Global Warming, Climate Justice, and Public Health

Global warming is a public health issue.  It will increase the number of “bad air days” by as much as 155 percent in some cities. Researchers project that by the mid-century people living in 50 cities in the eastern U.S. will see a 68 percent (5.5 days) increase in the average number of days exceeding the health-based 8-hour ozone standard set by the EPA. Over 43 percent of African Americans live in these urban “heat islands,” compared to only 20 percent of whites. African Americans and Latinos consistently experience higher rates of heat-related mortality during heat waves. Ozone pollution is responsible for 10 to 20 percent, and nearly 50 percent on bad days, of all hospital admissions for respiratory conditions.  Ground level ozone sends an estimated 53,000 persons to the hospital, 159,000 to the emergency room and triggers 6.2 million asthma attacks each summer in the eastern half of the United States.

Finally, environmental justice leaders are eager to assist the Obama administration, states, and local governments with designing and building intergenerational support for transformational change — change and improvements that usher in a new day of equal protection, equal enforcement, equal opportunity, and equal access to healthy and sustainable schools, housing, parks, jobs, transportation, energy, and neighborhoods. The nation’s “invisible communities” have suffered and waited for decades for the government to get it right.

Clearly, healthy places and healthy people are highly correlated, with the poorest of the poor within the region having the worst health and the most degraded environments. Race and class map closely with vulnerability. One of the best indicators of an individual’s health is one’s street address, Zip Code, or neighborhood. More than 100 studies now link racism to worse health. More than 200 environmental studies have shown race and class disparities.  It is no accident that six of Forbes’ “Top 10 Unhealthiest States” in 2009 were found in Region 4. Mississippi was ranked the 50th unhealthiest state in 2009.  Above Mississippi were Oklahoma (49th), Alabama (48th), Louisiana (47th), and South Carolina (46th), Nevada (45th), Tennessee (44th), Georgia (43rd), West Virginia (42nd), and Kentucky (41st).

A 2005 Associated Press investigative study found that people of color and poor people live with more pollution than the rest of the nation. African Americans are 79 percent more likely than whites to live in neighborhoods where industrial pollution is suspected of posing the greatest health danger. African Americans in 19 states are more than twice as likely as whites to live in neighborhoods with high pollution, and a similar pattern was discovered for Hispanics in 12 states and Asians in 7 states.

A 2008 study, “Race, Income, and Environmental Inequality in the United States” found that blacks experience such high pollution burden that black households with incomes between $50,000 and $60,000 live in neighborhoods that are, on average, more polluted than the average neighborhood in which white households with incomes below $10,000 live.

Americans are paying a high price for air pollution.  Air pollution accounts for over three-quarters of the total pollution-related public health costs and could be as high as $182 billion annually. Asthma alone costs Americans nearly $18 billion each year. Asthma hospitalization rate for African Americans and Latinos is 3 to 4 times the rate for whites.  According to the Asthma and Allergy Foundation of America, 13 cities in the top 25 of this year’s rankings of  “Asthma Capitals” are located in the south.  Five of the top 10 asthma capitals are located in Region 4:   Richmond, VA (1st), St. Louis, MO (2nd), Chattanooga, TN (3rd), Knoxville, TN (4th), Milwaukee, WI (5th), Memphis, TN (6th),  Tulsa, OK (7th), Philadelphia, PA (8th), Augusta, GA (9th), and Atlanta, GA (10th).

Nearly four decades of EPA Region 4 harmful and discriminatory decisions have turned too many low-income and people of color communities into the dumping grounds for the most dangerous toxic chemicals, lowering nearby residents’ property values, stealing their wealth, and exposing them to unnecessary environmental health risks. Landfill sitings have turned vulnerable low-income communities and communities of color into Sacrifice Zones and toxic wastelands.

As early as 1983, the U.S. General Accounting Office (GAO) report, “Siting of Hazardous Waste Landfills and Their Correlation with Race and Economic Status of Surrounding Communities”, documented the disparate hazardous waste siting pattern in EPA Region 4.  The GAO found that three-fourths of the hazardous waste facilities in the region are located in majority African American communities even though African Americans made up only one-fifth of the region’s population.

The GAO report was requested by District of Columbia Congressman, Walter E. Fauntroy, after 1982 protests and arrests over the siting of a PCB landfill in predominately black and poor Warren County, North Carolina. The events set in motion the national environmental justice movement and put environmental racism on the map.  In 1982, more than 60,000 tons of soil contaminated with PCBs were cleaned up along 210 miles of North Carolina roadside shoulders and later disposed in a state-owned landfill in Warren County.

In 1987, the United Church of Christ (UCC) Commission for Racial Justice published “Toxic Wastes and Race in the United States” and the 1994 updated “Toxic Wastes and Race Revisited” report found race was the most potent factor in predicting the location of  commercial hazardous waste facilities — more powerful than poverty, land and property values, and home ownership.  The 1994 report found that people of color were 47 percent more likely to live near a hazardous waste facility than white Americans.

In 1990, “Dumping in Dixie”, the first environmental justice book, graphically illustrated that all communities in the South are not created equal. The book clearly illustrated that to be poor, working-class, or a person of color in the United States often means bearing a disproportionate share of the country’s environmental problems. It also chronicled the efforts of five African American communities, empowered by the civil rights movement, to link environmentalism with issues of social justice.

The 2007 United Church of Christ “Toxic Wastes and Race at Twenty” report found race continues to be the most important independent predictor of the location of commercial hazardous waste facility locations when socio-economic and other non-racial factors are taken into account. People of color make up the majority (56%) of those living in neighborhoods within two miles of the nation’s commercial hazardous waste facilities, nearly double the percentage in areas beyond two miles (30%). People of color make up a much larger (over two-thirds) majority (69%) in neighborhoods with clustered facilities. People of color in 2007 are more concentrated in areas with commercial hazardous sites than in 1987.

The 2007 UCC report also found that commercial hazardous waste facilities in EPA Region 4 states have been disproportionately located within two miles or less of communities of color: Alabama (66.3%), Florida (52.7%), Georgia (55.6%), Kentucky (51.5%), Mississippi (50.6%), North Carolina (55.9%), South Carolina (43.9%), and Tennessee (53.8%). People of color comprise 28.5 percent of EPA Region 4 population.

African Americans are also more likely than whites to live near dirty coal fired power plants.  The Clean Air Task 2002 “Air of Injustice: African Americans and Power Plant Pollution” report found more than 68 percent of African Americans live within 30 miles of a dirty coal-fired power plant compared with just 56 percent of whites. In 2007, the Environmental Integrity Project identified the “Dirty Dozen”, twelve states with the heaviest concentrations of the dirtiest power plants—in terms of total tons of carbon dioxide emitted.  They include:  Texas (five, including two of the top 10 dirtiest plants); Pennsylvania (four); Indiana (four, including two of the top 10 dirtiest plants); Alabama (three); Georgia (three, including two of the top three dirtiest plants); North Carolina (three); Ohio (three); West Virginia (three); Wyoming (two); Florida (two); Kentucky (two); and New Mexico (two). Five of the “Dirty Dozen” are located in Region 4.

While movement to clean and renewable energy sources is viewed as the preferred energy strategy and is touted as the wave of our nation’s green energy future, Georgia appears to moving in the opposite direction.  For example, three coal-fired power plants are seeking permits in Georgia. All three of these coal-fired power plants are proposed in environmental justice communities. The plants include: Greenleaf Coal Power Plant in Early County, GA (50.2 % black); Fitzgerald Power Plant in Ben Hill County (32.6 % black) near Fitzgerald, GA (49.5% black in 2000); and the Washington County Plant (53.2% black).

Recent proposals to jump-start the nuclear power industry have sparked debate and environmental justice concerns among African Americans. Georgia’s mostly African American and poor communities are also being targeted for risky nuclear power plants. For example, the first nuclear power plants to be built in decades are being proposed in Region 4 with an $8.3 billion federal loan guarantee. The loan guarantee will help the Atlanta-based Southern Company build two more nuclear reactors in the mostly African American Shell Bluff community in Burke County, GA. The county is 51.1 percent black. The two new reactors would each produce 1,000 megawatts, and would work with two existing reactors at a site near Waynesboro, GA (62.5% black). The next three nuclear power plants in the queue are projects in southern Maryland, San Antonio, and Fairfield County, South Carolina.

Two recent high profile manmade disasters raise environmental justice concern and call into question EPA’s semi-autonomous region decision-making apparatus.  For examples, the 2008 Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) toxic coal ash spill waste disposal and the 2010 British Petroleum (BP) oil spill waste disposal sent toxic wastes to environmental justice communities.

On December 22, 2008, a wall holding back 80 acres of sludge from the TVA Kingston Fossil Fuel power plant broke, spilling more than 525 million gallons of toxic coal ash over a dozen homes and up to 400 acres of the surrounding landscape, endangering aquatic life and the water supply for more than 25,000 residents. EPA Region 4 approved the TVA decision to ship 5.4 million cubic yards of toxic coal ash sludge 300 miles south by rail car from the mostly white east Tennessee Roane County to a landfill located in Perry County (69 percent African-American with more than 32 percent of its residents living in poverty).

The mostly African American residents of Uniontown questioned TVA and EPA officials why spilled coal ash was too toxic to stay in East Tennessee but was approved for dumping in their Alabama “Black Belt” community. EPA is currently considering regulating coal ash as hazardous material. Alabama is one of the states with no regulations for coal ash.  The state also has a poor track record in enforcing clean water standards.

This legacy of neglect and lax enforcement prompted a coalition of fourteen Alabama environmental groups in January 2010 to petition the EPA to withdraw the state’s authority over Alabama’s water pollution permitting program because it does not meet the minimum requirements of the Clean Water Act. The coalition contends that the water pollution permitting program administered by the Alabama Department of Environmental Management (ADEM) is fundamentally broken and does not meet minimum federal standards and the failures of the current system leave the citizens and environment of Alabama unprotected.  EPA has threatened to take over enforcing part of the Clean Water Act if ADEM doesn’t force cities to comply with higher standards for keeping waterways clean.  EPA intervention is long overdue.

A September 2010 report from Physicians for Social Responsibility and Earthjustice, “Coal Ash: The Toxic Threat to Our Health and Environment”, found coal ash “linked to cancer and other maladies.”  This report follows a study issued in August 2010 by Earthjustice and other environmental groups, “In Harms Way:  Lack of Federal Coal Ash Regulations Endangers Americans and Their Environment“, that revealed 39 contaminated coal ash sites in 21 states where toxic coal waste has contaminated ground water or surface water with toxic metals and other contaminants. Currently, more than 137 cases of coal ash contamination have been found in 34 states.  This total is a threefold increase in the number of damage cases EPA identified in its 2000 Regulatory Determination on the Wastes from the Combustion of Fossil Fuels.

Damage cases are disproportionately located in environmental justice communities. Several environmental agencies in Alabama, Mississippi, and Tennessee in Region 4 require no monitoring of waters near toxic coal ash sites.  The report found that nearly 70 percent of the toxic coal ash generated nationwide is dumped in states that don’t require monitoring to see if toxic contamination is leaking from coal ash sites.

A 2009 EPA report, “Regulatory Impact Analysis for EPA’s Proposed RCRA Regulation of Coal Combustion Residues Generated by the Electric Utility Industry”, found that throughout EPA Region 4, coal-fired utility plants are sited in areas with disproportionately high poverty and minority populations, particularly when compared to national averages, but also when compared to state averages. Vulnerable populations are therefore unfairly impacted by the production and storage of toxic coal ash.

This environmental justice trend for coal ash presents itself nationally to some degree, but is magnified in Region 4. For example, Mississippi and Alabama are the two states in the nation with the worst disproportionate impact for populations living below the poverty line and Tennessee is among the top 5 with the worst disproportionate impact to minorities.

The greatest disparity in Region 4 as compared to the nation as a whole is in regards to minority populations. Nationally, at 21.7 percent the minority population surrounding coal-fired utility plants is 13 percent lower than the national average percent minority population of 24.9 percent. In EPA Region 4, the minority population near coal plants, 30.0 percent, is 21 percent higher than the national average. The minority populations near coal plants in Region 4 also cumulatively exceed their respective state averages by 19 percent. In a few particular states, this metric soars far higher than 19 percent. In Alabama, the minority population near coal plants is 46 percent higher than in the state as a whole; in Mississippi it is 34 percent higher; and in Tennessee there is nearly twice as high a share of non-white individuals living near coal plants as would be expected given the state average (an 89%  exceedance).

The burden of coal ash storage and, ultimately, the threat of contamination, is also borne unequally by poverty populations nationwide, with a more dramatic disproportionate impact in Region 4. The national average percent poverty population is 11.9 percent.  Near coal plants nationwide, the poverty rate is 12.9 percent, or 8 percent higher than the national average.

In Region 4, the poverty rate near coal plants is 14.9 percent, a figure which exceeds the national average by 25 percent. As with the minority population, the poverty population is particularly concentrated near coal plants in Alabama, Mississippi, and Tennessee. In Alabama and Mississippi, the poverty rate near coal plants is more than twice the national average. At 24.5 percent near coal plants in Alabama, the poverty rate is 106 percent higher than the national average; at 26.5 percent in Mississippi, it is 115% higher than the national average. The poverty rate near coal plants in Tennessee exceeds the national average by 41 percent. Federal regulation of coal ash is necessary in part because, under the path-work of current state regulations, minority and low-income populations face unfair exposure to the risks of coal ash.

The April 20, 2010 BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill disaster killed eleven workers and leaked more than 200 million gallons of crude into the Gulf of Mexico over 87 days — making it the worst offshore oil disaster in U.S. history.  While much media attention was devoted to covering the BP oil gusher and attempts to halt the oil flow, not much attention has been given to which communities were selected as the final resting place for BP’s oil-spill garbage. It was not until communities of color raised the charge of environmental racism and environmental injustice that government officials began to pay attention to BP’s Recovered Oil/Waste Management Plan and it equity implications.

Although people of color make up 26 percent of the coastal counties in AL, FL, LA, and MS, six of the nine (80 percent) EPA approved landfills are located in areas where the percentage of people of color is larger than the people of color percent in the corresponding county. At the end of August, 55.4 percent of the BP oil spill waste was disposed in landfills located in people of color communities.  More than 80 percent of the oil waste was disposed in communities where the percent people of color exceeded the percent in the county.

As of August 29, 2010, more than 55,319 million tons of BP oil spill solid waste had been disposed in nine Subtitle D landfills in Alabama, Florida, Louisiana, and Mississippi. Of this total, more than 20,760 tons of BP wastes (38%) went to one lone landfill — the Spring Hill Regional Landfill in Campbellton, FL (Jackson County). More than 76 percent of the residents who live within a one-mile radius of the Spring Hill Landfill are people of color. People of color make up 29.8 percent of Jackson County.

As of November 7, 2010, the approved landfills had received a total of 82,589 tons of waste from the BP oil spill. Landfills in areas where people of color make up a majority of the population received 33,259 tons or 40.3 percent of the waste from the BP spill.  Landfills in areas where the percent people of color was larger than the county’s people of color population received 62,017 tons or 75.1 percent of the waste from the BP oil disaster.

It appears that community leaders’ raising the environmental justice red flag is paying off.  The proportion of BP oil spill waste disposed in environmental justice communities declined from a high of 55.4 percent in August to 40.3 percent in November.  Nevertheless, people of color continue to be over-represented in communities receiving BP oil waste. More than 75 percent of the waste went to environmental justice communities in November, down from 80 percent in August. Tracking BP oil waste disposal has now become a long-term environmental justice partnership project between impacted communities, academics, and civil rights leaders.

In tracking pollution from individual companies to specific communities, researchers at the University of Massachusetts developed the Toxic 100 Air Polluters index. The index relies heavily on EPA toxic release inventory (TRI) the Risk Screening Environmental Indicators (RSEI) data which assesses the chronic human health risk from industrial toxic releases. The 2010 “Top 100” index included Environmental Justice Report Cards — information on the disproportionate risk burden from industrial air toxics for people of color and low-income communities.  The Environmental Justice Report Cards reveal that the most polluted places tend to have significantly higher-than-average percentages of people of color. Of the “Top 10” companies on the “Toxic 100” list, people of color bear more than half of the human health impacts from the companies’ toxic air releases.

A year earlier, a 2009 UMass report, “Justice in the Air: Tracking Pollution from America’s Industries and Companies to Our States, Cities, and Neighborhoods”, found that pollution from Fortune 500 and other industrial companies are not equal opportunity polluters and that people of color and poor people generally live on the “wrong side of the environmental tracks.” Pollution is unevenly distributed within states, as well as between states.  Some of the most dramatic differences between the share of people of color in the total human health risk from industrial air toxics and their share in the state’s population are found in the South.  Tennessee, for example, has the highest disparities in exposure where the people of color share of the health risk is 43 percent, while the people of color share of the state’s population is 21 percent.  Other Region 4 states with larger than average disparities included Alabama and South Carolina.

Large discrepancies exist between the share of people of color in the health risk from industrial pollution and their share in the population in U.S. metropolitan areas. For example, Birmingham, Alabama tops the list of the Top Ten Metropolitan Areas with the greatest disproportionate impact on people of color. People color in the Birmingham metro area account for 65 percent of the health risk as compared to 34 percent of the population, a discrepancy of 31 percentage points.  Other metropolitan areas in Region 4 states that made the Top Ten list include Memphis, Tennessee (people of color account for 70 percent of the health risks as compared to 48.1 percent of the population, a discrepancy of 22.5 percentage points) and Louisville, Kentucky (people of color account for 36.5 percent of the health risk as compared to 18.0 percent of the population, a discrepancy of 18.8 percentage points).

Finally, as detailed in the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law 2010 report, “Now is the Time: Environmental Injustice in the U.S. and Recommendation for Eliminating Disparities”, current circumstances amount to a slow-moving disaster and necessitate immediate attention to environmental health threats to low-income and people of color communities.  The report was presented to the Obama Administration and its various agencies, including the EPA and the Department of Justice and outlines recommendations on how the Administration can effectively utilize existing law to eliminate disparities in environmental protection and the agencies can fulfill their responsibilities under Executive Order 12898, “Federal Actions To Address Environmental Justice In Minority Populations and Low-Income Populations,” signed some 16 years ago.

In January 2010, EPA administrator, Lisa P. Jackson, released a memorandum announcing “working for environmental justice” as one of the “Seven Priorities for EPA’s Future.”  Nine months later, in September 2010, administrator Jackson and White House Council on Environmental Quality Chair, Nancy Sutley, reconvened the Interagency Working Group on Environmental Justice (EJ IWG) in a historic meeting, the first such gathering in more than a decade, held at the White House. The meeting, attended by five cabinet members, highlight the federal government’s dedication to ensuring all Americans have strong federal protection from environmental and health hazards.

The EJ IWG agreed to hold monthly EJ IWG meetings, including assigning senior officials from each Agency to coordinate EJ activities; organize regional listening sessions in early 2011; hold follow-up EJ IWG Principals Meetings in April and September 2011; each Agency will be tasked to develop or update their EJ strategy by September 2011; and plan a White House forum for EJ leaders and stakeholders on Environmental Justice.

The White House EJ Forum is set for December 15, 2010 at 10:00 am until 4:00 pm in the South Court Auditorium of the Eisenhower Executive Office Building.  The event will bring together environmental justice community leaders, state, local and tribal government officials, Cabinet members, and other senior Federal officials for a discussion on creating a healthy and sustainable environment for all Americans.  The Forum also will offer an opportunity for the environmental justice community to speak with officials from Federal departments and agencies who are engaged in this effort. While these federal EJ initiatives emanate from Washington, it is unclear how they will be implemented in EPA Region 4 and the other nine EPA regions.

As part of the larger push to jump-start EJ in the region with the new region administrator, 40 leaders from poisoned communities, environmental justice, civil rights, faith, and community based organizations delivered a “Call to Action” for Region 4 reform that demanded fundamental change, a new culture, and a new enforcement framework at EPA—one that actually protects the environment and public health; equal protection and equal enforcement of  environmental laws, something that has been lacking in the southern states for decades; end to the collusion between EPA Region 4, state environmental agencies, and polluting industry;  halt to the “look-the-other-way” approach that has been a trademark of Region 4 which has led to higher health costs and degraded environments; and bold leadership and an uncompromising dedication to equal protection, environmental justice, and public health as top priorities in the region.

Given the dire circumstances many environmental justice communities find themselves in today, the leaders called for transparency, accountability, and trust building in the new administration. Working together with this shared vision and with impacted communities, the leaders are hopeful that the new region administrator can make environmental justice a top priority. The major elements of their “Call to Action” include the following:

1.  Reverse the deadly impact of environmental racism and establish accountability by implementing a “polluter pays” policy. Environmental hazards in low-income and people of color communities must be made a Region 4 priority. EPA Region 4 has been working from a flawed protection model that appears to value good relations with state environmental regulators over enforcing the laws — allowing polluters to walk away in many cases unpunished.  A polluter-pays policy should be enacted and communicated clearly to industries in Region

2.  Establish leadership roles for people who prioritize health and environmental justice.  Many people currently in senior level management in the Region made decisions in the past 10 years that have directly harmed communities in our states.  EJ residents in Region 4 who live on the frontline of environmental and health assaults are demanding fundamental and significant change at the senior level management.  To signify an intentional shift toward greater accountability toward these communities, we urge you to hire and gather the best and the brightest for your Reform Team.  An EJ “litmus test” for us in this area is the level of replacement of those senior EPA staff persons who have consistently made and or collaborated in decisions that have exacerbated health and environmental problems in low-income and people of color communities.

We urge EPA to deploy thoughtful leaders on chemical exposure and environmental health, scientific and common sense solutions to the toxic chemical contamination problem, progress in business and industry with Green Chemistry development, and other innovative thinkers to advise your administration on toxic chemical exposure as a variable in all policy as well as on new appointments. Set a public interest research agenda that coordinates green chemistry with green energy and green engineering technologies and green job programs being developed.

Regulators in Region 4 should be free from ties to the chemical industry or other entities that would attempt to influence their decisions or impact the integrity of community protections. The preferred “stakeholders” in this process must be the people of the United States, not the chemical corporations.

EPA should convene a “hot spot task force” to identify priority communities for targeted enforcement and corrective action. Engaging in this investigation and reform necessitates targeted enforcement in documented environmental justice “hot spots” areas. These include places where multiple petrochemical plants, manufacturing facilities, incinerators or other dumps are sited but also areas where workers and communities are routinely contaminated disproportionately by agricultural chemicals; pollution from coal mining or other fossil fuels extraction; where illness rates are undeniably higher than the state or national averages; or where certain types of rare illnesses appear to be linked to specific contaminants or a “toxic cocktail” of chemicals, or where there are populations more vulnerable to exposures. Better enforcement is not only an issue of accountability and trust, but also of morality and basic human right to clean air, clean water, uncontaminated food and good health.

3.  Investigate and reform unjust Region 4 policies on waste facility permitting hazardous waste cleanup and disposal, and property assessments and relocation. The policy of allowing low-income and people of color communities to become the “dumping grounds” of hazardous waste facilities must not be allowed to continue, and immediate steps must be taken to implement protections for communities in these areas. Corporations, polluting industries, and potentially responsible parties (PRPs) causing harm must be held accountable.

For example, it is clear that waste disposal decisions following TVA’s coal ash spill in Tennessee and the BP oil disaster in the Gulf, made jointly between the EPA, the states, and private industry placed environmental justice communities in the direct path of toxic waste dumping.  EPA Region 4 must ensure that the dumping of millions of tons of toxic coal ash sludge in the Arrowhead landfill in Uniontown, Alabama poses no present or future threat to the health or environment of the people of Perry County.

4.     EPA approved the removal of 3.5 million cubic yards of hazardous coal ash sludge from the mostly white Roane County, Tennessee in east Tennessee to the Arrowhead Landfill (a/k/a Perry County Associates Landfill) located in the heart of the Alabama’s “Black Belt” in Perry County, Alabama. EPA should use all of its enforcement powers and legal authority to abate offensive odors, fugitive dust, and water pollution emanating from the landfill.

Offensive odors. Many residents living near the Arrowhead Landfill have complained about suffering nausea, vomiting, headaches, and respiratory irritation as a result of offensive odors emanating from the Landfill. As discussed in the October 5, 2010 letter from attorney David A. Ludder, EPA Region 4 has the authority to enforce the EPA-approved State Implementation Plan for Alabama via the Clean Air Act. We request that EPA file its own lawsuit or intervene in the pending lawsuit, Abrahams v. Phill-Con Services, LLC, No. 2:10-cv-00326 (S.D. Ala. filed June 25, 2010), to ensure that the residents obtain relief from the real injuries they are suffering because of the air pollution emanating from the Arrowhead Landfill.

Fugitive Dust. Many residents living near the Arrowhead Landfill have complained about fugitive dust being blown off the Landfill site. They are justifiably concerned that this dust may contain hazardous constituents such as arsenic. The EPA-approved State Implementation Plan for Alabama provides that “[n]o person shall cause or permit the discharge of visible fugitive dust emissions beyond the lot line of the property on which the emissions originate.” 40 C.F.R §§ 52.50 and 52.53 (incorporating Ala. Admin. Code. r. 335-3-4-.02).

The Alabama Supreme Court declared this provision unconstitutionally restrictive and overbroad. Ross Neely Express, Inc. v. Alabama Dep’t of Envtl. Mgmt., 437 So.2d 82 (Ala. 1983). However, Ala. Admin. Code r. 335-3-4-.02 remains a part of the EPA-approved “applicable implementation plan” and remains enforceable by EPA. See General Motors Corp. v. United States, 496 U.S. 530, 540-541 (1990); Safe Air for Everyone v. U.S. Envtl. Protection Agency, 488 F.3d 1088, 1097 (9th Cir. 2007); Envtl. Defense Fund v. Envtl. Protection Agency, 467 F. 3d 1329, 1337 (D.C. Cir. 2006); Duquesne Light Co. v. Envtl. Protection Agency, 698 F.2d 456, 470-471 (D.C. Cir. 1983). [EPA also has the authority to disapprove the State Implementation Plan for Alabama and to promulgate a federal rule to control fugitive emissions. 42 U.S.C. § 7410(c)]. We request that EPA issue a Notice of Violation of the fugitive dust provision of the applicable State Implementation Plan to the Arrowhead Landfill and subsequently issue a compliance order and penalty order for such violation.

Water Pollution. Multiple complaints have been filed with EPA concerning storm water management and pollution of waters near the Landfill. Following a February 22-23, 2010 inspection of the Landfill by EPA, on July 14, 2010 EPA issued a “Letter of Concern” to Phill-Con Services concerning storm water management at the Landfill. The findings of the inspection and “Letter of Concern” indicate numerous violations of NPDES Permit Nos. ALG160167 & ALG140902. Considering the hazardous nature of the wastes being disposed at the Landfill, a lower threshold for formal enforcement action (including penalties) should apply. We request that EPA issue an administrative compliance order and penalty order to the Arrowhead Landfill under the Clean Water Act.

5.   Protect our young people and their educators in the places where they learn and teach.  Work with community-based environmental justice groups to monitor air quality near local schools and possible migration pathways to inside schools and develop a plan to address, reduce, or eliminate toxic air contaminants. Such plans should, in addition to parent and school administration, involve local industry and local, state, and federal governments.  Where possible, outdoor air monitors should be located near schools.  EPA Region 4 should analyze and report the results regularly to communities on current ambient air toxic monitoring.  EPA Region 4 should also fully fund the Healthy School Environments program.

6.   Require environmental justice analysis in disaster response decisions to avoid, minimize, or mitigate disproportionately high and adverse human health or environmental effects, including social and economic effects, on minority and low-income populations; to ensure the full and fair participation by all potentially affected communities in the transportation decision-making process; and to prevent the denial of, reduction in, or significant delay in the receipt of benefits by minority and low- income populations. Make environmental justice reporting and analysis public via posting on EPA Region 4 website.

7.   Instill better right-to-know practices and implement the Precautionary Principle so that Region 4 policies are consistent with modern global chemical policies.

A gross lack of knowledge currently exists about the potential hazards of chemical substances produced, imported, exported, and used in the U.S. This serious data deficiency demands utmost priority for chemicals that are suspected of being mutagens, carcinogens, reproductive or neuro-developmental toxicants, endocrine disruptors, and persistent bioaccumulative toxic (PBT) chemicals. The general public’s body burden of these chemicals is already too high considering the chronic illnesses linked to exposure and that is reason enough to act.  The disproportionate impacts on low-income communities and communities of color also requires a precautionary approach.

In order to fully implement the Precautionary Principle, resources must be immediately directed toward environmental monitoring of air, water, and soil where chemical exposure is suspected in order to prevent, not just manage, exposure to workers and communities.  When toxic chemical exposure is identified, immediate action and resources must be available to halt the exposure and protect communities, especially children.

8.   Design an action plan to protect Region 4 communities from chemical security threats and vulnerabilities.  Derailments of trains with hazardous cargo, explosions of refineries and chemical facilities, or leaks of chemicals at water treatment plants or other similar facilities can be prevented – often with savings to industry – with review and implementation of safer substitutions or technologies.

Assessment of toxic chemical exposures must be an immediate mandated component of all relief efforts for communities in times of disaster, with protection mitigations in place to prevent additional and new exposures (e.g., rampant exposure to formaldehyde in FEMA trailers following Hurricane Katrina and the levee collapse in New Orleans) compounding existing tragedy.  Region 4 should increase the use of the Supplemental Environmental Projects (SEPs) mechanism to address pollution prevention and environmental justice issues.

9.   Establish a climate of access, transparency and direct input on regulatory decisions.  The people of Region 4 need to have access and the ability to participate in the decision making process for remediation and resolve, which requires resources for capacity building and access to expertise to represent their interests.

We ask that you make available new research findings, information on chemical and other harmful emissions sources, company non-compliances and permit information available on its website and in publicly accessible locations throughout the Region.  EPA administrators should at minimum make themselves available to meet with community members on request.  Information should be made available in multiple languages (e.g., Spanish) to further break down the language and cultural barriers that can otherwise contribute to disproportionate health impacts.

In addition, you should also commit to quarterly meeting with environmental health justice leaders, who are connected directly to local health and environmental problems, can work collectively with government agencies to identify and build support for tangible solutions, and build trust among community members and EPA leaders willing and interested in earning that trust.

10. Require assessments of multiple, cumulative and, where possible, synergistic exposures, unique exposure pathways, and impacts to sensitive populations when considering environmental permits and regulations.   This should apply to the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act, the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act, the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide and Rodenticide Act and other applicable federal laws. Similar assessment should be made in establishing site-specific clean-up standards under Superfund and Brownfields Programs, in the restoring or reclaiming of natural coastline, wetland, mountain or forest areas and the like.    These assessments will better gauge the full impacts of exposure to toxic chemicals or destructive practices on the general population as well as determine disproportionate impact or harm.

11. Develop a specific timeline for implementing important environmental justice priorities designed for a speedy repair of the long broken EPA Region 4 system.  It has taken decades for the toxic contamination through our region to reach this critical level but we cannot wait decades more for relief.  We realize that comprehensive reform of the broken regulatory system will take some time to do well.  But that should not prevent Region 4 from taking practical steps, starting now, to reduce the burden of illness from toxic contaminants and to prevent our young people and future generations from this fate.

Finally, environmental justice leaders are eager to assist the new Region 4 administrator with designing and building support for transformational change in the region— change and improvements that will stop the illness and harm that disproportionately plague low-income and people of color communities.

Many of the EJ leaders’ recommendations to EPA Region 4 administrator are aligned with the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law 2010 report, Now is the Time: Environmental Injustice in the U.S. and Recommendations for Eliminating Disparities, a report presented to the Obama Administration and its various agencies, including the EPA and the Department of Justice. The report outlines recommendations on how the Administration can effectively utilize existing law to eliminate disparities in environmental protection and the agencies can fulfill their responsibilities under Executive Order 12898, “Federal Actions To Address Environmental Justice In Minority Populations and Low-Income Populations,” signed by President Bill Clinton more than sixteen years ago. The time is right and it’s the right thing to do.

A large segment of the African American community was skeptical of BP, the oil and gas industry, and the government long before the disastrous Gulf oil disaster, since black communities too often have been on the receiving end of polluting industries without the benefit of jobs and have been used as a repository for other people’s rubbish. 

Given the sad history of waste disposal in the southern United States, it should be no surprise to anyone that the BP waste disposal plan looks a lot like “Dumping in Dixie,” and has become a core environmental justice concern, especially among low-income and people of color communities in the Gulf Coast — communities whose residents have historically borne more than their fair share of solid waste landfills and hazardous waste facilities before and after natural and man-made disasters. 

For decades, African American and Latino communities in the South became the dumping grounds for all kind of wastes — making them “sacrifice zones.” Nowhere is this scenario more apparent than in Louisiana’s “Cancer Alley,” the 85-mile stretch along the Mississippi from Baton Rough to New Orleans. Gulf Coast residents, who have for decades lived on the fenceline with landfills and waste sites, are asking why their communities are being asked again to shoulder the waste disposal burden for the giant BP oil spill. They are demanding answers from BP and the EPA in Washington, DC and the EPA Region 4 office in Atlanta and EPA Region 6 office in Dallas — two EPA regions that have a legacy of unequal protection, racial discrimination, and bad decisions that have exacerbated environmental and health disparities. 

Today we are seeing a disturbing pattern re-emerge in the disposal of the BP oil-spill waste.  Because of the haphazard handling and disposal of the wastes from the busted well, the U.S Coast Guard and the U.S. EPA leaned on BP and increased their oversight of the company’s waste management plan.  BP’s waste plan, “Recovered Oil/Waste Management Plan Houma Incident Command,” was approved on June 13, 2010.

BP hired private contractors to cart away and dispose of thousands of tons of polluted sand, crude-coated boom and refuse that washed ashore.  The nine approved Gulf Coast solid waste landfills, amount of waste disposed, and the percent minority residents living within a one-mile radius of the facilities are listed below:

Alabama 

Chastang Landfill, Mount Vernon, AL, 6008 tons (56.2%) Magnolia Landfill, Summerdale, AL, 5,966 tons (11.5%)

Florida

Springhill Regional Landfill, Campbellton, FL, 14,228 ton (76.0%)

Louisiana

Colonial Landfill, Ascension Parish, LA, 7,729 (34.7%) Jefferson Parish Sanitary Landfill, Avondale, LA, 225 tons (51.7%) Jefferson Davis Parish Landfill, Welsh, LA, 182 tons (19.2%) River Birch Landfill, Avondale, LA, 1,406 (53.2%) Tide Water Landfill, Venice, LA, 2,204 tons (93.6%)

Mississippi

Pecan Grove Landfill, Harrison, MS, 1,509 tons (12.5%)

According to BP’s Oil Spill Waste Summary, as of of July 15, more than 39,448 tons of oil garbage had been disposed at nine approved landfills in Alabama, Florida, Louisiana, and Mississippi. More than half (five out of nine) of the landfills receiving BP oil-spill solid waste are located in communities where people of color comprise a majority of residents living within near the waste facilities. 

In addition, a significantly large share of the BP oil-spill waste, 24,071 tons out of 39,448 tons (61 percent), is dumped in people of color communities.  This is not a small point since African Americans make up just 22 percent of the coastal counties in Alabama, Florida, Mississippi, and Louisiana, while people of color comprise about 26 percent of the population in coastal counties. 

Clearly, the flow of BP oil-spill waste to Gulf Coast communities is not random.  The mix of waste and race was the impetus behind the Environmental Justice Movement in Warren County, North Carolina more than twenty-five years ago. In 1982, toxic PCBs were cleaned up from North Carolina roadways and later dumped in a landfill in mostly black and poor Warren County. We also saw the pattern in 2009 when 3.9 million tons of toxic coal ash from the massive Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) power plant spill in East Tennessee was cleaned up and shipped more than 300 miles south by train and disposed in a landfill in rural and mostly black Perry County, Alabama.  

The largest amount of BP oil-spill solid waste (14,228 tons) was sent to a landfill in a Florida community where three-fourths of the nearby residents are people of color.  Although African Americans make up about 32 percent of Louisiana’s population, three of the five approved landfills (60 percent) in the state that  received BP oil-spill waste are located in mostly black communities.  African American communities in Louisiana’s Gulf Coast were hardest hit by Hurricane Katrina and have experienced the toughest challenge to rebuild and recover after five years.  Dumping more disaster waste on them is not a pathway to recovery and long-term sustainability. 

Clearly, Environmental Justice Executive Order 12898, “Federal Actions to Address Environmental Justice in Minority Populations and Low-Income Populations,” signed by President William J. Clinton in 1994, requires the EPA and the U.S. Coast Guard to do a better job monitoring where BP oil-spill waste ends up to ensure that minority and low-income populations do not bear an adverse and disproportionate share of the burdens and negative impacts associated with the disastrous BP oil spill. Allowing BP, Gulf Coast states, and the private disposal industry to select where the oil-spill waste is dumped only adds to the legacy of environmental racism and unequal protection.

Fundamental change is needed in Region 4, a region which has a legacy of slavery, Jim Crow segregation, and resistance to civil rights and equal environmental protection. It is not an accident that the modern civil rights movement and environmental justice movement were born in the South. Nearly four decades of Region 4 harmful and discriminatory decisions have turned too many black communities into the dumping grounds, lowering nearby residents’ property values, stealing their wealth, and exposing them to unnecessary environmental health risks.

There is a clear need for an EPA Office of Inspector General (OIG) investigation of Region 4 enforcement, waste facility permitting, hazardous waste cleanup and disposal, and property assessments and relocation pre- and post the Environmental Justice Executive Order 12898, with specific emphasis on the treatment of African Americans in the region. Unequal protection threatens the health and safety of millions of African Americans in the region.

A 1992 National Law Journal special report uncovered glaring inequities in the way the EPA enforces its Superfund laws placing communities of color at special risk—with White communities seeing faster action, better results and stiffer penalties than communities where blacks, Hispanics and other people of color live and with unequal protection often occurring whether the community is wealthy or poor.

The 2007 Toxic Wastes and Race at Twenty report found people of color make up about one third of the nation’s population and more than 56 percent of the residents living in neighborhoods within two miles of commercial hazardous waste facilities and 69 percent of the residents in neighborhoods with clustered facilities. Although African Americans and other people of color comprise 28.5 percent of EPA Region 4 population, they are overrepresented among residents living within two miles of commercial hazardous waste facilities in EPA Region 4 states: Alabama (66.3%), Florida (52.7%), Georgia (55.6%), Kentucky (51.5%), Mississippi (50.6%), North Carolina (55.9%), South Carolina (43.9), and Tennessee (53.8%).

African Americans make up 21 percent of the population in Region 4. Except for Florida, African Americans comprise the largest ethnic minority in the region. Hispanics make up 20.1 percent of Florida’s population compared to 15.3 percent African Americans. African Americans comprise 26.3 percent in Alabama, 29.6 percent in Georgia, 7.6 percent in Kentucky, 37.1 percent in Mississippi, 21.3 percent in North Carolina, 28.6 percent in South Carolina, and 16.6 percent in Tennessee.

Many of the bad Region 4 EPA waste facility permitting and disposal decisions flow directly from backroom deals and compromises made with state and local government officials, often at the expense of African Americans and other people of color communities. Communities on the fenceline with polluting facilities have suffered the brunt of these bad decisions.

Sumter County, Alabama (1974)

In 1974, EPA nominated Sumter County, Alabama as a possible hazardous waste landfill site. The county, located in the heart of Alabama’s Black Belt, is 71.8 percent is black. Over 35.9 percent of the county’s population is below poverty. In 1977, Resource Industries Inc. purchased a 300-acre tract of land just outside of Emelle, Ala. where over 90 percent of the residents are black. The permit for the facility was approved by the Alabama Department of Environmental Management (ADEM) and EPA Region 4 over opposition of local residents who thought they were getting a brick factory. In 1978, Chemical Waste Management, a subsidiary of Waste Management Inc. bought the permit from Resource Industries Inc. and opened the nation’s largest hazardous was landfill, often tagged the Cadillac of Dumps.

Sumter County has a legacy of farming and cotton production dating back to the plantation system of slavery and the sharecropper tenant farming system that followed. The hazardous waste facility was lured to the predominately black county during a period when the residuals of Jim Crow segregation still ruled the day. No blacks had held public office or sat on governing bodies from the predominately county, including the state legislature, county commission, or industrial development board from the county.

Warren County, North Carolina (1979)

Between June 1978 and August 1978, over 30,000 gallons of waste transformer oil contaminated with polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) were illegally discharged on roadsides in fourteen North Carolina counties. The PCBs resulted in the U.S. EPA designating the roadsides as a superfund site to protect public health. North Carolina needed a place to dispose of the PCB-contaminated soil that was scraped up from 210 miles of roadside shoulders. In 1979, North Carolina Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) along with EPA Region 4 selected rural, poor, and mostly black Warren County as the site for the PCB landfill.

In 1982, the local National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) filed suit in district court to block the landfill. The residents lost their case in court despite the fact that the Warren County PCB Landfill site was not scientifically the most suitable because the water table at the landfill is very shallow, only 5-10 feet below the surface and where the residents of the community get all of their drinking water from local wells. William Sanjour, head of the EPA’s hazardous waste implementation branch, questioned the Warren County landfill siting decision. The first truckload of contaminated soil that arrived at the landfill in September 1982 was met protesters. More than 500 demonstrators were jailed protesting landfill, sparking the national Environmental Justice Movement.

Warren County which was 54.5 percent black in 1980 is one of six counties in North Carolina’s “Black Belt.” The other North Carolina counties where African Americans comprise a majority of the population include Bertie County (62.3%), Hertford (59.6%), Northhampton (59.4), Edgecombe (57.5%), Warren (54.5%), and Halifax (52.6%). Eastern North Carolina is also significantly poorer than the rest of the state.

Region 4 and North Carolina officials insisted the PCB landfill was safe and would not leak. They were dead wrong. Warren County resident Dolly Burwell and her fellow protesters were right. The landfill was suspected of leaking as early as 1993. It took more than two decades for Warren County residents to get the leaky landfill site detoxified by the state and federal government. In all, a private contractor was paid $18 million to dig up and burn more than 81,500 tons of contaminated soil in a kiln on site.

Dickson County, Tennessee (1988)

The collaborations between EPA Region 4, the State of Tennessee, and the City and County of Dickson failed to protect the health and the environment of a black family who lives in Dickson’s Eno Road community. EPA Region 4 records indicate that trichloroethylene or TCE, a “reasonably anticipated to be a human carcinogen,” was found in the Harry Holt family’s wells as early as 1988, the same year the Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation (TDEC) issued a permit to Dickson County for operation of a sanitary landfill in Dickson’s mostly black Eno Road community.

A 1991 EPA Site Inspection Report completed by Haliburton documents several state and federal approved contamination cleanups (i.e., wastes from on-site industrial dumps, plant contamination, soil containing TCE, benzene, toluene, ethylbenzene, xylenes and petroleum hydrocarbons from underground storage tank cleanups, and wastes from a train derailment) from mostly white areas in Dickson County were trucked to the landfill on Eno Road.

A Region 4 chronology shows that in December 1988, TDEC sent letters to the Harry Holt family informing them of the test results and the finding of contaminants in their wells. The letter states: “Your water is of good quality for the parameters tested. It is felt that the low levels of methylene or trichloroethene may be due to either lab or sampling error.” On December 3, 1991, EPA Region 4 sent the Harry Holt family a letter informing him of three tests performed on his well and deemed it safe. The letter states: “Use of your well water should not result in any adverse health effects.”

A December 17, 1991 TDEC internal memorandum expressed some concern about the level of TCE contamination found in the Holt’s well and recommended the well continue to be sampled. However, no government tests were performed on the Holts wells between January 1, 1992 and October 8, 2000, an eight year and nine-month gap in testing, even though government tests were conducted nearly each year on private wells and springs located within a one and two-mile radius of the leaky landfill. In 1995, government tests were performed on nearby private wells and springs, duck ponds, and even a well at the Humane Society of Dickson County (410 Eno Road), located across the street from the Holt’s homestead (340 Eno Road). In April 1997, TCE was detected in water from a production well (DK-21) operated by the City of Dickson and located northeast of the landfill. The city well was later closed. The Holt family’s well lies between the landfill and the DK-21 well.

Tests were finally conducted on the Harry Holt well on October 9, 2000—where results registered 120 ppb TCE and a second test on October 25, 2000 registered 145 ppb—24 times and 29 times, respectively, higher than the maximum contaminant level (MCL). The Holts were placed on the city water system on October 20, 2000—twelve years after the first government test found TCE in their well in 1988.

Escambia County, Florida (1991)

Margaret Williams, a 73 year old retired Pensacola, Florida school teacher, led a five-year campaign against EPA Region 4 to get her entire community relocated from environmental and health hazards posed by the 26-acre Escambia Treating Company (ETC) contamination, the nation’s third largest Superfund site. In 1991, EPA inspectors found leaking drums had contaminated the site with dioxin, one of the most dangerous compounds ever made, nine years after it was abandoned by the owner.

The ETC site was dubbed “Mount Dioxin” because of the 60-feet high, 1000 feet long, and 40 feet wide mound of contaminated soil an EPA contractor dug up from the neighborhood and covered with plastic tarp. Some residents described EPA’s plastic cover as a “Ban-Aid on a cancer.” By January 1993, the L-shaped mound held more than 255,000 cubic yards of soil contaminated. In December 1994, the ETC site was placed on the Superfund National Priorities List (NPL).

Because of the reckless digging. bulldozing, and faulty containment of the dust and runoff from the site, Margaret Williams help start Citizens Against Toxic Exposure or CATE. During excavation in 1992, residents living in nearby Rosewood Terrace, Oak Park, Goulding, and Clarinda Triangle communities constantly complained to Region 4 officials about acute respiratory problems, headaches, nausea, skin rashes, and other ailments.

CATE also questioned the fairness of EPA’s site plan. Region 4 officials first proposed to move only 66 households most affected by the Superfund site. After prodding from CATE, EPA then added 35 more households for a total cost of $7.54 million. The original Region 4 plan left behind 257 households or nearly three-quarter of the households in the impacted area, including an apartment complex.

CATE refused to accept any relocation plan unless everyone was moved. The partial relocation was tantamount to partial justice. CATE took its campaign on the road to EPA’s National Environmental Justice Advisory Council or NEJAC. In May 1996, the group was successful in getting EPA’s NEJAC Waste Subcommittee to hold a Superfund Relocation Roundtable in Pensacola. At this meeting, CATE’s total neighborhood relocation plan won the backing of more than 100 grassroots organizations. EPA nominated the Escambia Wood Treating Superfund site as the country’s first pilot program to help the agency develop a nationally consistent relocation policy that would consider not only toxic levels but welfare issues such as property values, quality of life, health and safety.

On October 3, 1996, EPA officials agreed to move all 358 households from the site at an estimated cost of $18 million. EPA officials deemed the mass relocation as “cost efficient” after city planners decided to redevelop the area for light industry rather than clean the site to residential standards. After more than a dozen neighborhood relocations across the nation, the Escambia County decision marked the first time that an African American community had been relocated under EPA’s Superfund program and was hailed as a landmark victory for environmental justice.

On July 8, 2009, the last shovel last shovel of soil from the ETC stockpile was excavated and permanently interred along with approximately 500,000 cubic yards of contaminated soil in an 18-acre on-site containment cell. The formerly cleaned up site will provide nearly 100-acres of real estate for redevelopment into the Palafox Midtown Commerce Park.

Relocation was only a partial victory for the residents since they still faced discrimination in their property assessments. Many residents received artificially “low” assessment and were not “made whole” as promised by the government. The first wave of property appraisals ranged from $20,000 to $27,000—far less than comparable homes sold in the area valued at $134,900 to $135,000. The racism did not stop with the property appraisals. It also extended to the Region 4 buyout plan—with Pensacola residents paying a “hidden cost” of being black.

A March 1998, EPA Office of Inspector General (OIG) report indicates that white homeowners in Pennsylvania, Region 3, were given a better deal for their loss than the black residents in Florida, Region 4. Forty homeowners from an all-white neighborhood were relocated from the contaminated Austin Avenue Radiation Site in Delaware County, Pa. Region 3 took extra steps and expense to make the white homeowners whole. For example, 18 of the 40 homes were decontaminated at a cost of $24 million while the residents were placed in temporary housing. The Pensacola residents had to suffer through and endure the cleanup while still in their homes. The other 22 Delaware County homeowners were given the option either to relocate or have new homes built under a program that an additional $31 million.

Region 4 offered to buy Pensacola, Fla. African American homeowners existing homes in their price range. On the contrary, Region 3 offered the Delaware County, Pa. white homeowners brand new homes that cost an average of $651,700 each. These types of glaring inequities should not exist if there is one EPA and one set of rules that apply equally to all Americans, regardless of region or race.

Perry County, Alabama (2009)

In December 2008, a wall holding back 80 acres of sludge from the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) Kingston Fossil Plant broke spilling more than 500 million gallons of toxic coal ash over a dozen homes and up to 400 acres of the surrounding landscape, endangering aquatic life and the water supply for more than 25,000 residents. Six months after this tragedy in July 2009, a major environmental injustice was perpetrated by EPA Region 4 approval of TVA’s decision to ship 5.4 million cubic yards of toxic coal ash by railcar from the mostly white east Tennessee Roane County to a landfill located in the heart of the Alabama Black Belt, Perry County (69% African-American with more than 32% of its residents living in poverty) and to rural Taylor County, Georgia (41% of the population is African-American and more than 24% of residents live in poverty).

Region 4 justifies the Perry County decision in its “Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) by declaring the Arrowhead Landfill to be located in “an isolated area, surrounded by large tracts of property, farms and ranches.” However, “isolated” is not defined. There are black home owners and black cattle farmers who live across from the landfill. The agency goes on to state that the “nearest residence is approximately 250 to 300 feet away from the site.” It failed to report how many homes and households line Cahaba Road (County Road 1) and Whitehill Road—two major roads that buttress the landfill property.

An established black community exists on two sides of the landfill with a population large enough to support at least three churches (Star Bethel Church, Living Hope Baptist Church, and Shady Grove Church). An old cemetery is found near the entrance of the landfill on County Road 1 and another cemetery was found during the construction of the landfill, which provides further support for the historic nature of the community that borders the landfill.

The FAQs also failed to report how many families in the adjacent community are on well water. Nowhere in FAQs does the term “environmental justice” appear. No report has been made public to date indicating that Region 4 conducted an environmental justice analysis on its Perry County decision as called for under the 1994 Executive Order 12898, Federal Actions to Address Environmental Justice in Minority Populations and Low-Income Populations, which seeks “to ensure that no segment of the population, regardless of race, color, national origin, income, or net worth bears disproportionately high and adverse human health and environmental impacts as a result of EPA’s policies, programs and activities.” Under this Order, each Federal agency must make achieving environmental justice part of its mission by identifying and addressing, as appropriate, disproportionately high and adverse human health and environmental effects of its programs, policies, and activities on minorities and low-income populations.

EPA Region 4 had enough time to conduct a comprehensive environmental justice analysis between December 22, 2008 and July 2, 2009, a full five months, to answer these and other related equity questions about the potential adverse and disproportionate impact of its decision on low-income and minority populations.

Perry County is not the only Alabama black belt county targeted for waste dumping. In 2000, national civil right and environmental justice groups successfully blocked landfills from being built in Macon County (86.4% black) near Tuskegee University and in Lowndes County (75.7% black) off U.S. 80 Highway, designated in 1996 the Selma to Montgomery National Historic Trail. Some waste companies and government agencies see nothing wrong with “trashing” Black History or black communities. Six years later, in 2006, Perry County’s Uniontown residents fought the Arrowhead Landfill. However, without national support, Perry County residents were not able to stop the landfill from being built and permitted.

It is time for this toxic Dumping in Dixie madness in Region 4 to end. It is time for bold leadership and real change in the region.

The national leaders will travel to Dickson and participate in the “Take Back Black Health Toxics Tour” and see for themselves a slam-dunk case of environmental racism. The tour is sponsored by the National Black Environmental Justice Network (NBEJN), Environmental Justice Resource Center at Clark Atlanta University (EJRC), Race Relation Institute at Fisk University (RRI), Deep South Center for Environmental Justice at Dillard University (DSCEJ), Detroiters Working for Environmental Justice (DWEJ), and WE ACT for Environmental Justice, Inc. (WEACT). Tour organizers hope to educate and pressure Congress and other elected officials to make the elimination of environmental hazards in low-income and people of color communities a national priority.

The tour will highlight the devastating impact of toxic contamination of the Harry Holt family whose wells were poisoned with the deadly chemical trichloroethylene or TCE by the nearby Dickson County Landfill. The Dickson case has been featured in numerous national media outlets, including CNN, New York Times, Washington Post, People, Essence, and Crisis. The Holts’ story was also profiled in a recent United Church of Christ Toxic Wastes and Race at Twenty study released in March. The study authors tagged the Dickson case as the “poster child” of environmental racism.

Generations of Holts and their relative in the Eno Road community survived the horrors of post-slavery racism and “Jim Crow” segregation, but may not survive the toxic assault and contamination from the Dickson County Landfill. Toxic chemicals from the county-owned landfill are slowly killing the Holt family who has owned their 150-acre homestead for four generations. Harry “Highway” Holt, founding member of the Nashville gospel group the Dynamic Dixie Travelers, died on January 9, 2007 after a long bout with cancer. He was 66. He is buried in the old Worley Furnace Baptist Church Cemetery, located on a hill just above the old dump, alongside dozens of his relatives. Some grave markers in the cemetery date back more than a century. His daughter, Sheila Holt Orsted, is recovering from breast cancer surgery performed just last month.

The leaders will tour the historically black Eno Road community, a community built during the “Jim Crow” era. They will stand at the Dickson County Landfill fenceline, located just 54 feet from the Holt’s property line. Drums of toxic wastes were dumped at the landfill in 1968, the same year Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was killed in Memphis. Government officials first learned of the TCE contamination in the Holt family wells as far back as 1988—but assured the family their wells were safe. TCE is a probable human carcinogen.

The tour will give national leaders an opportunity to see with their own eyes how toxic racism has not only destroyed a hard-working African American family’s health but will also see how toxic contamination of their land by a government facility has diminished the family’s transformative and intergenerational wealth (loss of their land values). The toxic assault continues. Dickson County solid waste department currently operates a recycling center, garbage transfer station and a Class IV construction and demolition landfill at the Eno Road site, where 20-25 heavy-duty diesel trucks enter the sites each day, leaving behind noxious fumes, dangerous particulates, household garbage, recyclables and demolition debris from around Middle Tennessee. The garbage transfer station alon e handles approximately 35,000 tons annually.

In 2003, the Holt family sued the city and county of Dickson, the State of Tennessee, and the company that dumped the TCE. The family is represented by the New York-based NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund, Inc. (LDF). The case is still pending.

Dickson County covers more than 490 square miles, an equivalent of 313,600 acres. Yet, the only cluster of solid waste landfills in the county is located in the small Eno Road community. African Americans make up less than five percent of the county’s population and occupy less than one percent of the county’s land mass.

Numerous studies reveal that Dickson is not an isolated occurrence. Unfortunately, Dickson epitomizes differential exposure and unequal protection facing African Americans and other people of color across this land. Nationally, African Americans are 79 percent more likely than whites to live in neighborhoods where industrial pollution is suspected of posing the greatest health danger. African Americans and other people of color make up the majority (56%) of those living in neighborhoods within two miles of the hazardous waste facilities and over two-thirds (69%) in neighborhoods with clustered facilities. This unequal burden problem was the subject of two congressional hearings this year.

TAKE BACK BLACK HEALTH TOXICS TOUR SCHEDULE

Thursday, November 29
· Press Briefing — Staging areas at Fisk University Race Relations Institute (1604 Jackson Street, Nashville, TN) — 12:00pm-12:45pm

· Tour Bus leaves for Dickson at 1:00pm

· Tour of Holt family homestead, Dickson’s Eno Road community landmarks, and Dickson County Landfill — 1:45pm-3:45pm

· Tour ends; bus leaves for Nashville, Fisk University Race Relations Institute (1604 Jackson Street, Nashville, TN) — 3:45pm

Tougher Standards Needed to Protect the Most Vulnerable

EPA is proposing a reduction to between 0.070 and 0.075 parts per million. However, the agency’s own Clean Air Scientific Advisory Committee (CASAC), an independent body ozone scientists chartered under the Clean Air Act, concluded that the current ozone standard is not adequate to protect human health and unanimously recommended EPA set a new tougher standard in the range of .060 to .070 per million. Epidemiological and clinical studies reveal that breathing ozone at concentrations at the current standard of 0.080 ppm, decreases lung function, increases respiratory symptoms, inflammation, and increases susceptibility to respiratory infection. Ozone has adverse lung function and cardiovascular effects and can kill even at 0.06 ppm.

A slew of industry representatives along with a high-ranking official from the National Conference of Black Mayors urged EPA to keep its current standard. Industry leaders and NCBM claim tougher standard will hurt economic growth. “Cleaner air is important to our communities, but it is not the only thing that affects the health of our people. The health and welfare of our communities is also dependent on having good jobs, economic growth and the quality of life that goes with it,” said Vanessa Williams, NCBM executive director, speaking on behalf of NCBM president Mayor George L. Grace.

NCBM president Grace is the mayor of St. Gabriel, Louisiana, a mostly black (72 percent) town of 5,500 residents that’s located in Iberville Parish (49.7 percent black). St. Gabriel is situated in the heart of Louisiana’s petrochemical corridor, also known as “Cancer Alley,” an 85-mile stretch that runs along the Mississippi River from Baton Rouge to New Orleans. The Baton Rouge Metropolitan area, includes the parishes of East Baton Rouge, West Baton Rouge, Ascension, Livingston, and Iberville, is on this list. The Baton Rouge area is classified as a serious non-attainment area.

According to EPA’s 2005 Toxic Release Inventory (TRI), industrial facilities in tiny St. Gabriel emitted 743,071 pounds of chemical releases and 4.1 million pounds of waste from various stationary sources. While St. Gabriel makes up just 16 percent of the Iberville Parish population, nearly 22 percent of the chemical releases and just under half (46 percent) of the total waste generation is found there.

Burying Myths, Not People

The “stigma of being designated non-attainment,” according to Williams “would have a disparate impact on those communities undertaking economic revitalization efforts and rebuilding, like those in the Gulf Coast in the Aftermath of Katrina. Such impacts manifest themselves in the form of increased costs to industry, permitting delays, restrictions on industrial expansion within an area, impacts on transportation planning, increased costs to consumers and for commercial and consumer products.”

The idea that nonattainment will hurt economic growth is just not true. EPA’s Myths & Facts about Nonattainment fact sheet makes this point. According to EPA, “nonattainment emissions controls are designed to help areas improve air quality even as they grow. Counties surrounding Atlanta, for example, have grown as much as 123 percent over the past decade while, the number of exceedances (of the existing 1-hour standard) have dropped more than 85 percent. Areas are able to improve their air quality without inhibiting economic growth.”

The position taken by the polluting industry and by NCBM is not supported by the facts. Given the severity of air pollution problems in cities with black mayors and other locales with large concentrations of African American, one would hope the NCBM and other black organization leaders would be calling for stronger standards and cleaner air. “The National Conference of Black Mayors evidently is not speaking for the people they represent,” stated Beverly Wright, director of the Dillard University’s Deep South Center for Environmental Justice in New Orleans. Wright, a well-known expert on Louisiana’s chemical corridor and Hurricane Katrina survivor, recommended EPA set the standard at 0.060 to protect the most vulnerable population in our society. “I heard the NCBM speaker talk about the ‘stigma of nonattainment. The only stigma we’re concerned about is that African Americans are at the highest risk for getting sick and even dying from ozone pollution. When I get back to New Orleans, I am going to ask my mayor what is his position on EPA ozone standards.”

Opponents also argue tougher ozone standards will hurt the economy with few associated health benefits. Again, EPA shattered this myth. According to the agency, improved air quality means people live longer, healthier, more productive lives – and this builds a stronger economy. EPA analyses, based on recent monitoring data, show that meeting the ozone standard can prevent – every year, hundreds of emergency room visits for asthma; thousands of hospital admissions for asthma and other lung diseases – and about half of these hospital admissions are in young children; hundreds of thousands of school absences; and more than a million days when people have to reduce their activity – and their productivity – because they are suffering from reduced lung function and other ozone-related respiratory symptoms.

It’s About Public Health Stupid

Opponents of more stringent ozone standards are bent on using faulty economic arguments to make their point. The courts solidly rejected industry arguments that the health benefits of cleaner air must be balanced against the costs of compliance. The Clean Air Act requires that the EPA set the standard to protect public health “with an adequate margin of safety,” to protect sensitive populations that respond at lower concentrations than healthy adults. In 2002, the Supreme Court unanimously ruled that protecting health was the only basis for the standard–not compromise, economic tradeoffs, or balancing acts that subject millions of Americans to unnecessary environmental health threats—in this case dangerous ozone.

Air pollution threatens the health of millions of Americans, especially those who live in urban areas. More than half of U.S. population lives in counties with unsafe air. In 2002, 71 percent of African Americans lived in counties that violated federal air pollution standards, compared to 58 percent of the white population.

Ground-level ozone or smog affects more than 158 million Americans in ten of the eleven most populous states (California, Georgia, Illinois, Michigan, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Texas). Children are hit especially hard by ozone pollution. More than 61.3 percent of African American children, 69.2 percent of Hispanic children and 67.7 percent of Asian-American children live in areas that exceed the 0.080 ppm ozone standard, while 50.8 percent of white children live in such areas. Air pollution claims 70,000 lives a year, nearly twice the number killed in traffic accidents.

Public health costs due to air pollution account for over three-quarters of the total pollution-related public health costs and could be as high as $182 billion annually. An estimated 50,000 to 120,000 premature deaths are associated with exposure to air pollutants. People with asthma experience more than 100 million days of restrictive activity annually, costing $4 billion a year. Getting sick is even more problematic for people of color who are more likely than whites to be uninsured. One-third of Hispanics and one-fifth of blacks were uninsured in 2006, compared with just over ten percent of whites. The Hispanic uninsured rate rose to 34.1 percent in 2006 from 32.3 percent in 2005, and the black uninsured rate rose to 20.3 percent in 2006 from 18.7 percent in 2005. The number of uninsured, as well as the rate without health insurance, remained statistically unchanged in 2006 for whites.

Vulnerable populations such as children are at special risk from ozone. One of every four American child lives in areas that regularly exceed the U.S. EPA’s ozone standards. Over 27 million children under age 13 live in areas with ozone levels above the EPA standard. And half the pediatric asthma population, two million children, live in these areas.

Geography of Pollution

High ozone levels cause more than 50,000 emergency room visits each year and result in 15,000 hospitalizations for respiratory illnesses. Ozone pollution is responsible for 10 percent to 20 percent, and nearly 50 percent on bad days, of all hospital admissions for respiratory conditions. Moreover, ground level ozone sends an estimated 53,000 persons to the hospital, 159,000 to the emergency room and triggers 6,200,000 asthma attacks each summer in the eastern half of the United States—where the bulk of the black mayors and the black population reside.

There are 19 cities with populations over 100,000 that have majority (over 50%) African-American populations. These majority (over 50%) African-American cities are located in the 14 states: Alabama, Indiana, Louisiana, Maryland, Michigan, Mississippi, Missouri, New Jersey, Ohio, Tennessee, Virginia, District of Columbia, California, Georgia. All of these states, except California, are either adjacent to or are east of the Mississippi River.

There are 27 states and the District of Columbia that have African American mayors. The ten largest cities with black mayors include, Philadelphia, PA, Detroit, MI, Columbus, OH, Memphis, TN, Baltimore, MD, Washington, DC, New Orleans, LA, Cleveland, OH, Atlanta, GA, and Oakland, CA. All of these cities have major ozone pollution and asthma problems. The asthma epidemic hits African Americans especially hard.

Asthma attacks send African Americans to the emergency room at three times the rate (174.3 visits per 10,000 population) of whites (59.4 visits per 10,000 population).
African Americans are hospitalized for asthma at more than three times the rate of whites (35.6 admissions per 10,000 population vs. 10.6 admissions per 10,000 population).
The death rate from asthma for African Americans is twice that of whites (38.7 deaths per million population vs. 14.2 deaths per million population.
In 2004, an estimated 3.5 million African Americans had asthma. African Americans have the highest asthma prevalence of any racial/ethic group; the asthma prevalence rate among Blacks was 36 percent higher than that for whites.
African Americans make up about 12 percent of the U.S. population but account for 25 percent of the 4,099 deaths attributed to asthma in 2003.
Transportation and Air Pollution

The EPA reports that motor vehicles are responsible for nearly one half of smog-forming volatile organic compounds (VOCs), more than half of the nitrogen oxide (NOx) emissions, and about half of the toxic air pollutant emissions in the United States. They now account for 75 percent of carbon monoxide emissions nationwide. Atlanta, dubbed the “Black Mecca,” has a serious ozone problem. Nearly half (48.6 percent) of the region’s air pollution is from cars and heavy-duty vehicles, which each year spew over 1.5 million tons of pollutants. More cars translate into more traffic gridlock, more air pollution, and more illnesses. Transportation-related air pollution sources exact a major financial toll on the Atlanta region, with public health costs estimated to be as high as $637 million.

Efforts to reduce downtown traffic congestion in Atlanta during the 1996 Olympic Games resulted in decreased traffic density resulted in a reduction in ozone pollution and significantly lower rates of childhood asthma events. The number of asthma acute care events decreased 41.6% (4.23 vs 2.47 daily events) in the Georgia Medicaid claims file, 44.1% (1.36 vs 0.76 daily events) in a health maintenance organization database, 11.1% (4.77 vs 4.24 daily events) in 2 pediatric emergency departments, and 19.1% (2.04 vs 1.65 daily hospitalizations) in the Georgia Hospital Discharge Database.

In 2007 (between May 1 and September 13), metro Atlanta experienced forty-seven smog alerts—34 “orange” days and 13 “red” days for ozone, particulate matter, or both. This year, Atlanta was named the top Asthma Capital in the Asthma and Allergy Foundation of America’s annual ranking of the 100 most challenging places to live with asthma.

While car owners may occasionally choose not to drive, those without cars really do not have a choice of not breathing the air. Nearly 35 percent of Atlanta’s African Americans do not own a car. They use public transit. When the Metropolitan Atlanta Rapid Transit Authority (MARTA) was conceived and created in the 1960s, many whites jokingly referred to it as “Moving African Rapidly Through Atlanta.” The system was originally conceived to cover five counties (Fulton, DeKalb, Cobb, Clayton, and Gwinnett). Only Fulton and DeKalb residents voted to join MARTA and pay the one-cent sales tax.

Suburban counties surrounding Atlanta (Cobb, Gwinnett, and Clayton), instead of joining MARTA, later created their own “separate and unequal” bus systems, ushering in a form of transportation apartheid that for decades has contributed to more car dependency, more traffic gridlock, dirtier air, more respiratory illnesses, less mobility, and widening economic and racial disparities in the region. Enforcing stronger federal ozone standards and providing more alternatives to automobile travel will go a long way in improving air quality, public health and livability of the entire Atlanta metro region, a region that led all others in its black population gains during the 1990s and the 2000-2004 time period. The region added more than 183,000 blacks during this period.

It’s a matter of growing smarter and growing healthier. The right to breathe clean air is a basic human right that should be protected for Americans, whether we live in cities, suburbs, or rural areas.

Political Science, Not Rocket Science

Selecting a landfill site is not rocket science. The Warren County PCB landfill site was not scientifically the most suitable because the water table at the landfill is very shallow, only 5-10 feet below the surface and where the residents of the community get all of their drinking water from local wells. Even William Sanjour, head of the EPA’s hazardous waste implementation branch, questioned the siting decision. The decision made more political sense than environmental sense. In the end, the siting decision was less about the science of toxicology or hydrology and more about political science.

In 1982, Warren County was vulnerable to a quadruple whammy of being mostly black, poor, rural, and politically powerless. It is still vulnerable. The toxic-waste dump was forced on the tiny Afton community, more than 84 percent of the community was black in 1982, helping trigger the national environmental justice movement. The PCB landfill later became the most recognized symbol in the county. Despite the stigma, Warren County became a symbol of the environmental justice movement. Local county residents organized themselves into a fighting force that was later joined by national civil rights leaders, church leaders, black elected officials, environmental activists, labor leaders, and youth. The state began hauling more than 6,000 truckloads of the PCB-contaminated soil to the landfill in mid-September of 1982. Just two weeks later, 414 protesters had been arrested. In the end, more than 500 protesters were arrested.

Although the protests did not stop the trucks from rolling in and dumping their toxic loads, the marches, demonstrations, and jailings focused the national media spotlight on Warren County. The protests prompted the Congressional Black Caucus in 1983 to request the U.S. General Accounting Office (GAO) to investigate hazardous waste landfill siting and the racial composition of the host communities. The Warren County struggle was also the impetus behind the United Church of Christ Commission for Racial Justice landmark 1987 Toxic Wastes and Race report.

After waiting two decades, victory finally came to the residents of the predominately black county when detoxification work began on the 142-acre toxic waste dump in June 2001 and the last clean-up work ended the latter part of 2003. State and federal sources spent $18 million to detoxify or neutralize contaminated soil stored at the Warren County PCB landfill. In October 2006, the Warren County government began plans for the “Justice Park” on the site of the old landfill.

Surviving Environmental “Sacrifice Zones” in America

Over the past twenty-five years, too many African American and people of color communities have become environmental “sacrifice zones” where polluting industries expose residents who live on the fenceline to dangerous emissions and releases into the air, water, and ground. African Americans are 79 percent more likely than whites to live in neighborhoods where industrial pollution is suspected of posing the greatest health danger. In 2007, as documented in United Church of Christ Toxic Wastes and Race at Twenty report, African Americans and other people of color are more concentrated near hazardous wastes facilities today than two decades ago. People of color now make up 56 percent of the residents living in neighborhoods within two miles of the nation’s commercial hazardous waste facilities; they comprise a whopping 69 percent in neighborhoods with clustered waste facilities.

Residents in Anniston, Alabama (Sweet Valley/Cobbtown and Henderson Hills neighborhoods) were forever changed by PCB-contamination from a nearby chemical manufacturing plant. From the 1930s to the 1970s, the chemical-giant Monsanto Co. discharged contaminated wastewater into streams, ditches, and landfills in the mostly black west end of town. Pollution from the plant and decades of government inaction turned the black homeowners’ American Dream into a toxic nightmare.

Many black communities are still on the frontline of industrial accidents. And because of their close proximity to industrial corridors and transportation routes, they are exposed to elevated health risks from accidents, leaks, spills, explosions, and derailments. In 2004, more than half of the nation’s 60,000 pressurized rail tank cars did not meet industry standards, and they raised questions about the safety of the rest of the fleet as well. Every day, deadly “time bombs” haul their toxic loads through populated areas exposing millions of Americans to potential threats, both accidental and deliberate.

The January 2005 train wreck in Graniteville, South Carolina highlights the risks to communities through which the railroad passes. When accidents and derailments occur, it is no surprise who is most often left behind or who is the last to be evacuated in natural and man-made disasters. Black families still must wait longer for protection. They must wait longer for protection even when the government causes the contamination problem, as in Warren County twenty-five years ago.

The Holt family wells and drinking water in Dickson, Tennessee were poisoned with trichloroethylene or TCE from a county-owned landfill. A battery of governments tests were performed on duck ponds and wells where dogs were waiting to be euthanized. However, a black family’s well that lies just 54 feet from the leaky Dickson County Landfill was not tested for nine years, 1992-2001. It appears that government officials cared more about ducks and dogs than protecting the health and safety of law-abiding black homeowners and tax payers.

The Roberson family wells in DeBerry, Texas were poisoned with arsenic, benzene, lead, and mercury from a deep injection well for saltwater wastes from drilling operations in the East Texas oilfields. Both the Holts and Robersons learned the hard way that waiting for the government can be dangerous to their health and the health of their community.

Even when the government has the facts about contamination and health impacts there is no guarantee that it will act. For example, a 1999 U.S. Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry (ATSDR) study found dioxin in the Mossville, Louisiana residents to be two to three times the average. Mossville is an unincorporated community, founded by African Americans in the 1800′s on the outskirts of Lake Charles, Louisiana, home to four vinyl production facilities. Vinyl chloride was documented to be present in the local air at levels 120 times higher than the ambient air standard.

Wrong Complexion for Protection

Over the past several decades, childhood lead poisoning has declined dramatically in the United States due to bans on lead in gasoline, paint, food cans, and other consumer products. Childhood lead poisoning is a preventable disease. Yet, it is still an important health problem, affecting an estimated 310,000 (1.6 percent) children ages 1-5, according to analysis of data from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Surveys (NHANES), released by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. As the numbers of lead-poisoned children have declined, the disparities of the disease have become more pronounced, falling disproportionately on low-income families and families of color living in older, poorly maintained housing. For example, African-American children are at two times greater risk than whites, according to the most recent data available on the disparities of the disease.

In the real world, some people and some neighborhoods have the wrong complexion for protection. Government officials are even willing to leave lead, arsenic, and other toxic contamination in the ground in some New Orleans neighborhoods after the devastation of Hurricane Katrina, at the same time giving the city a “clean bill of health,” while pledging to monitor a handful of toxic “hot spots.” The Federal EPA concluded that Katrina did not cause any appreciable contamination that was not already there.

Although government tests confirmed widespread lead in the soil — a pre-storm problem in 40 percent of New Orleans — government officials dismissed residents’ calls to address this problem as outside of the EPA’s mission. Nevertheless, residents are urged to “keep children from playing in bare dirt.” Homeowners are also instructed to “cover bare dirt with grass, bushes, or 4-6 inches of lead-free wood chips, mulch, soil, or sand.”

On the other hand, Church Hill Downs, Inc., the owners of New Orleans’ Fair Grounds, felt the tainted soil was not safe for their expensive thoroughbred horses to race on. The race track owners cleaned up and hauled off soil tainted by Hurricane Katrina’s floodwaters and replaced it with clean soil. Certainly, if tainted soil is not safe for horses, surely it not safe for people, especially children who play and dig in the dirt. Some black New Orleans residents are not waiting for the government to respond. They are taking action and cleaning up contaminations block by block using their own voluntary grassroots Safeway Back Home program.

Black neighborhoods have even become the dumping grounds where dangerous military VX waste is burned. The current incineration of the caustic nerve agent VX wastewater in Port Arthur, Texas typifies the environmental justice challenges facing African Americans. About 60 percent of Port Arthur is African American. An Illinois-based company won a $49 million contract from the U.S. Army to incinerate 1.8 million gallons of caustic VX hydrolysate waste water near Port Arthur’s Carver Terrace housing project where residents already breathe contaminated air from nearby refineries and chemical plants. Army and city officials did not announce the project until the deal was sealed. Residents in New Jersey and Ohio fought off plans to incinerate the waste there. It is ironic that the first batch of VX hydrolysate was incinerated in Port Arthur on April 22, 2007 — Earth Day.

Finally, in commemorating the twenty-fifth anniversary of the Warren County protests, it is clear that we can not celebrate too long because the “NIMBY” (not in my backyard) practice continues to be replaced with the “PIBBY” (place in blacks’ backyards) principle. The effect is a society divided, literally and psychologically, by freeways, railroad tracks, landfills, and hazardous-waste dumps. Failure to act effectively and fairly to address these glaring racial disparities leaves gaping holes in homeland security. Our homeland will not be secure until all Americans, including people of color who now top some 100 million or just under one third of the U.S. population, enjoy equal protection and equal enforcement of all of our laws and regulations. No community, rich or poor, black, white, yellow, red or brown, should be forced to become a “throw away” community.