Volume 22, Issue 1, 1997 March/April 1997

Environmental Justice Movement Raises Questions of Fairness

by Jack Welsch

The environmental justice movement has been traced as far back as a group of predominantly

African American students protesting a garbage dump in Houston, Texas in 1967. Since that time it has grown to national importance. Although there is broad diversity within the movement, it is fundamentally focused on redressing the fact that poor and minority communities are being disproportionately impacted by environmental degradation.

These disproportionate impacts have been fairly well documented. A 1988 report by the U.S. Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry found that the percentage of African American children with elevated lead content in their blood was nearly twice that of white children in the same income bracket.

In 1983 the U.S. General Accounting Office studied the siting of hazardous waste landfills in the U.S. Environmental Protection Agencys Region IV in the southwest states. The study found that three of four off-site hazardous waste landfills in the region were located in communities where African Americans made up the majority of the population, even though African Americans made up only about one fifth of the regions total population.

One of the first nationwide studies of the topic, Toxic Wastes and Race in the United States, was conducted by the United Church of Christ Commission for Racial Justice. That study found that 60 percent of African Americans live in communities with one or more abandoned toxic waste sites. The study found that race was the most significant factor in the location of abandoned toxic waste sites. An update of this study in 1994 found that the situation had not improved in the intervening years.

A 1990 Greenpeace report stated that the minority portion of the population in communities with hazardous waste incinerators was 89 percent higher than the national average. Another 1990 study found that minorities were more likely to live in areas with degraded ambient air quality. That study found that 33 percent of whites lived in areas where two or more pollutants exceeded EPA ambient air standards, compared to 50 percent of African Americans and 80 percent of Hispanics.

There has also been docmentation that environmental laws have not been as vigorously enforced in minority communities. A 1992 study published in the National Law Journal concluded that, "There is a racial divide in the way the U.S. government cleans up toxic waste sites and punishes polluters. White communities see faster action, better results and stiffer penalties than communities where blacks, Hispanics and other minorities live. This unequal protection often occurs whether the community is wealthy or poor."

There are many factors which cause these inequities. In some cases minority residential communities were originally the homes of whites who worked in the facilities that generate toxic emissions. The whites moved to cleaner areas as their socioeconomic status improved and the minorities succeeded them. In other cases poor and minority communities were built in the vicinity of existing industrial operations because the land was cheap.

Also sources of toxic pollution are sometimes placed in existing minority communities because community resistance is low. Minority communities may not have the political power to block new sources, or they may not be in an economic situation to refuse a job creating facility. The siting problem can also be somewhat self-perpetuating since new sources tend to locate where they are compatible with preexisting uses in an area. Minorities are often also under-represented in the decision-making processes which affect their environment.

In addition to increased exposure to pollutants, poor and minority communities can be more likely to actually experience harm from these exposures due to compounding factors such as poor nutrition and inadequate health care, which often occur in those communities.

In response to these inequities, U.S. President Bill Clinton signed Executive Order 12898 in February 1994. According to a companion memorandum that was issued concurrently by the President, the executive order has three general purposes:

• To focus attention of federal agencies on the human health and environmental conditions in minority communities and low-income communities with the goal of achieving environmental justice
• To foster nondiscrimination in federal programs that substantially affect human health and the environment
• To give minority communities and low-income communities greater opportunities for public participation in, and access to information on matters relating to human health and the environment.

A number of U.S. federal agencies have developed environmental justice strategies to achieve the purposes of the executive order and its substantive provisions. Although the executive order does not apply to the International Joint Commission, it is a response to a pressing environmental issue that clearly exists in areas where the Commission is involved. Possible responses might include:

• Making an affirmative effort to involve minority and low-income communities in public consultation processes
• Investigating to ensure that regulation of levels and flows does not have any disproportionate impacts on minority or low-income communities
• Including efforts to address environmental equity as a criterion of evaluation instatus assessments of Areas of Concern
• Using environmental justice concerns to generate further remedial activity in Areas of Concern where it appears minorities are receiving more than their share of environmental harms
• Influencing human health research to include diverse segments of the population, including those at high risk from environmental hazards
• Sponsoring workshops to facilitate exchange of environmental justice concerns and solutions.

In addressing environmental issues along the Canada-U.S. boundary, numerous opportunities exist for the Commission and governmental agencies to make a positive contribution by focusing on concerns related to environmental justice.

Jack Welsch is a student at Vermont Law School in South Royalton who will receive a doctor of jurisprudence degree this spring. He completed research on environmental justice and other issues for the International Joint Commission during a fall 1996 internship at its U.S. Section.

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Le mouvement de justice environnementale remonte à 1967, quand un groupe formé majoritairement détudiants afro-américains a protesté dans un dépotoir à Houston, au Texas. Depuis lors, ce mouvement a pris une importance nationale. Ce groupe, bien quhétérogène, vise avant tout à dénoncer le fait que les communautés ethniques et défavorisées subissent beaucoup plus que les autres les effets de la dégradation de lenvironnement.

Réagissant à ces injustices, le président des États-Unis, Bill Clinton, a signé le décret 12898 en février 1994. Un certain nombre dorganismes gouvernementaux américains ont mis au point des stratégies environnementales pour réaliser les objectifs du décret et de ses dispositions fondamentales. Ce décret ne vise pas la Commission mixte internationale, mais il vient tout de même répondre à une question environnementale urgente qui, sans nul doute, intéresse les travaux de la CMI. En sattaquant à des problèmes environnementaux le long de la frontière canado-américaine, la CMI et dautres organismes gouvernementaux ont de nombreuses occasions dapporter une contribution positive, en axant leurs efforts sur les préoccupations relatives à la justice environnementale.

Revised: April 14, 1997
Maintained by Kevin McGunagle, mcgunaglek@ijc.wincom.net