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.