Environmental Justice in the U.S.: Policies, Beliefs & Key Players

Introduction

During the course of my college career, my interests and passions have gradually evolved into an intensified mix of everything my Interdisciplinary Studies major encompasses. I began seeking a Mass Communication degree, a course of study focused primarily on community organization and mobilization. After feeling the harsh reality of advertising and public relations, I decided that Social Work was my calling — I felt a deep need to help others in situations where, with only some assistance, their lives could be changed for the better. However, after taking an Introduction to Environmental Issues course, I felt strongly that a change of direction was necessary. I began to formulate a study plan that included all of my previous interests and integrated a new section: policy and law.

I was particularly interested in the politics of environmental issues and in how government and society view the environment and handle problems that arise. When my senior project topic was due, the obvious choice was to research environmental justice within the United States. The Environmental Justice Movement has elements of my formulated major — communication, sociology, and political science — and in every local and national issue there are social concerns, communication breakthroughs and barriers, and a very political atmosphere when dealing with policies and the environment. Throughout this paper I draw on the knowledge I gained during my college career, aiming to develop awareness of environmental justice issues through a holistic, integrated perspective — a view that allows me not only to understand the root of the problem, but also to foresee some viable political solutions.

According to the Environmental Protection Agency, Environmental Justice (or environmental racism — the terms are used synonymously in this paper) is defined as the fair treatment and meaningful involvement of all people regardless of race, color, national origin, or income with respect to the development, implementation, and enforcement of environmental laws, regulations, and policies. The essential piece of the complex environmental justice movement is the assurance that every group of people, regardless of race, ethnicity, or socioeconomic background, will bear a proportionate share of negative environmental consequences.

This movement, which began as scattered protests against perceived environmental injustice, had coalesced into "one of the strongest new forces for environmental reform to emerge in many years" (Adams, 1994) since finding federal backing in the civil rights legislation of 1964. Beginning in the early 1980s, environmental advocates have been publicizing and protesting the fact that environmental hazards at the workplace, in the home, and in the community are often disproportionately visited upon poor people and people of color (Blank). The issues of urban blight and the tendency of factories to proliferate in limited geographic regions exposed residents of those regions to the effects of factory presence — such as decreased forestation, increased amounts of paved land, and the presence of environmental toxins that the factories produce.

Definitions, Beliefs, and Concerns

Beginning in the 1980s, ten years of grassroots efforts to move the agenda forward met with only limited progress. When President Clinton signed an executive order aimed at promoting environmental equity, he signaled that the movement's concerns had begun to reach the political mainstream (Exec. Order No. 12,898, 1994). Legally, however, the campaign to promote environmental justice — an effort which has been marketed as one on the "cutting edge of a new civil rights struggle" (Lavelle and Coyle, 1995) — is still very much in its developmental stages.

The environmental movement transformed into the environmental justice movement with the help of a creative reading of Title VI of the 1964 Civil Rights Act. A number of legal claims have been directed toward improving environmental quality in the name of those struggling against environmental racism under Title VI, which prohibits discrimination based on race or national origin in federally funded programs and activities. The basic argument is as follows: the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency provides large amounts of federal funds to state environmental agencies. These state agencies, in turn, are the governmental bodies responsible for much of the nation's environmental policy — the enforcement of pollution standards, the permitting of waste treatment and disposal facilities and industrial polluters, and the siting of those facilities. If the actions of those federally funded state agencies create a racially discriminatory distribution of pollution, then a violation of Title VI has occurred and a civil rights lawsuit is warranted (Fisher, 1995).

The consequences of the new federally empowered environmental rights movement include stronger governmental involvement through environmental policies that will protect "disadvantaged groups of people from suffering from industrial, municipal, and commercial operations" (Fisher, 1995). Federal, state, and local environmental programs and policies have been reviewed, challenged, modified, and created in order to address the issue of equity in environmental problems.

In response to public concerns, the EPA created the Office of Environmental Justice in 1992 and implemented a new organizational infrastructure to integrate environmental justice into the EPA's policies, programs, and activities. Within this sector, the National Environmental Justice Advisory Council was initiated to provide direction on strategic planning and to ensure that policy input, program development, and implementation of environmental justice are incorporated throughout all of the agency's operations as a top priority.

Perhaps the EPA does prioritize environmental justice, but when did this rise in salience occur? Are environmental justice issues and policies on the national agenda? Furthermore, one must question whether the American public has truly gained awareness of the unequal distribution of environmental hazards, or whether only those most directly and intimately affected have taken notice. At the heart of the environmental justice movement is the belief that minorities and the poor have historically borne a disproportionate share of environmental hazards, risks, and the effects of pollution derived from industrial and waste facilities. Environmental justice advocates contend that minority communities are victims of discriminatory siting and permitting of these facilities, as well as discriminatory application of environmental regulations and remediation procedures (Lambert, 1996).

Because there is such a deeply held belief that poor communities of color are targeted by industries while affluent white communities are not, environmental advocates developed the term "environmental racism," which connected pollution to race. While racism may be the central component in many discriminatory incidents, the term "environmental injustice" encompasses both the racial and the class aspects of the political economy at work in communities that face toxic assault (Cole and Foster, 2001).

Benjamin Chavis is credited with first using the term "environmental racism." In March of 1993, he gave this definition to a congressional committee investigating the phenomenon:

"Environmental racism is defined as racial discrimination in environmental policy making and the unequal enforcement of environmental laws and regulations. It is the deliberate targeting of people of color communities for toxic waste facilities and the official sanctioning of life-threatening presence of poisons and pollutants in people of color communities." (Chavis, 1993)

Professor Robert Bullard, a sociologist and widely published commentator on the subject, describes environmental racism as: "[A]ny policy, practice, or directive that, intentionally or unintentionally, differentially impacts or disadvantages individuals, groups, or communities based on race or color, [as well as the] exclusionary and restrictive practices that limit participation by people of color in decision-making boards, commissions, and staffs." (Brown, 1993)

These statements contain two standards used for gauging whether certain actions amount to environmental racism. Chavis's use of the terms "discrimination" and "unequal enforcement" indicates a results-based approach to the problem, while his condemnation of "deliberate targeting" implies that discriminatory intent is the defining characteristic of environmental racism. In contrast, Bullard denies the importance of intentional discrimination and makes unequal results the determinant.

This working definition, in a democratic and free society, gives the movement a significant amount of power, since from one neighborhood to another and from one city to another, conditions regarding environmental cleanliness are bound to differ. A highly industrialized city will have a different conception of environmentally acceptable conditions than a small city in the rural Midwest. As the movement seeks to gain power and influence, it is this exceedingly broad interpretation of "equal outcome" that is creating much of the political difficulty.

EPA Administrator Browner has also expressed concern about reinterpreting Title VI in terms of environmental policy and has issued statements that she will work with major industrial corporations to draft a policy that addresses their concerns. Browner insists that a Title VI disparate-impact standard must play a role in the process of issuing permits for new facilities, but many state environmental officials find even this approach unworkable.

In a letter to Browner, auto companies hindered from building new plants demanded that her agency withdraw its position, arguing that the EPA "cannot lawfully issue a policy" extending Title VI civil rights law to pollution without congressional action. Under current law, the letter continued, neither state nor federal agencies have the authority to "deny permits based on the racial makeup of the area surrounding the facility." Furthermore, "the California Supreme Court has determined that hazardous waste laws do not preempt local land use authority" (Payne, 1998).

The California EPA concluded that, without congressional action, the administration's unilateral reinterpretation of Title VI would give the EPA "unfettered discretion to apply statistical data in any way it chooses, create risk assessments without peer-reviewed standards, determine that all discharges create measurable disparate impacts by their very existence, and treat people differently based on racial or ethnic grounds" (Payne, 1998).

Historical Accounts

However, those on the EJ side of the issue have begun to build a significant body of case history. While the themes of environmental justice and environmental racism strike an emotional chord with the American public and the movement has found legal backing in civil rights legislation, the consequences of several decisions based on EJ influence have negatively affected the very groups which the movement claims to support and protect. Sample cases are covered at the conclusion of this paper.

Looking back at the history of the environmental justice movement, there appears to be no single catalytic event that brought EJ issues into the public spotlight. Instead, each local initiative, mass protest, community meeting, and incremental lawsuit has helped nurture this movement, creating a bond among thousands of people engaged in local struggles. As recorded by an anonymous staffer of the Bush Sr. administration in 1992: "Long-simmering resentment in the minority and Native American communities about environmental fairness could soon be one of the most politically explosive environmental issues yet to emerge" (Lavelle and Coyle, 1992).

There are, however, certain monumental events and a longstanding quiet social pressure that can be traced as having an enormous effect on community members, industry officials, legislators, and the overall movement. In the summer of 1978, the media began to saturate the American public with startling stories of health hazards inflicted upon families in Niagara Falls due to a leaking toxic waste dump at Love Canal in New York. The cover of Time magazine highlighted the issue of toxic chemicals that had leached into the water system, and how residents were being poisoned and demanded evacuation and relocation. Accounts of cancer, miscarriages, and birth defects now had a definite source to blame. Love Canal is seen by many as the start of the environmental justice movement in that it focused national attention on the problem of environmental pollution. The subject continued to gain social and public momentum through the work of environmentally conscious public figures, and received another boost in the 1990s with the film Erin Brockovich.

When the movement discovered it could attach its agenda to federally mandated equal protection under civil rights legislation, federal backing became the lifeblood that revived a struggling social consciousness. On a national and international level, pollution and environmental quality is an issue affecting all citizens. But without federal laws to enforce the issue, environmental policy was simply a matter of a preferential pendulum that swung in the direction of whichever group had the strongest lobby. Until the formal EJ movement coalesced around civil rights legislation, the loudest voice was most often that of business and industrial organizations, which shaped public policy in their own favor.

At the present time, there are no national organizations that claim to be at the forefront of the EJ movement. The EJ issue is fought at the local level, and these organizations typically come into existence over a particular issue, plan, or local situation that they feel needs to be addressed. The leaders, therefore, are not national in scale. However, a number of local organizations have positively affected the EJ agenda in their areas, and with each success these organizations gain power and public profile.

Conclusion

Whenever a political group gains newfound powers through connection to a well-funded government program, there exists the temptation to take the cause to new and uncharted heights in order to further the careers and influence of those at the head of the organization, rather than to benefit the targeted constituents. Such is the case with the evolving EJ movement. The stated purpose of supporting minority and economically depressed areas in their struggle against increasing environmental toxins is a policy which most Americans and public officials support. However, when the policy is applied with an unbending NIMBY mentality, the effects actually harm those whom the movement is meant to protect.