Environmental Justice

This week I was struck by the article on environmental justice in the Wheeler book. As the article by Robert Bullard points out, this is one aspect of the environmental movement that is often overlooked. Environmentalism tends to be seen as a homogeneous movement dominated by well-off white people, and to a large extent, that seems to be true. But the environmental justice movement deals with the instances in which disadvantaged, disenfranchised people find their communities and local environment harmed because they are and/or minorities, and they don't have the power to stop it.

One of the things that struck me about the article was its mention of an incident in North Carolina that is recognized as the beginning of the environmental justice movement. Having lived in NC for a little over six years before moving to Bloomington, I had heard about the incident, but didn't know much about it, so tonight I went looking for information. Duke University (boo Blue Devils) has a good site here that takes a look at the beginnings of the environmental justice movement, as well as some other controversies in the Triangle area. In a nutshell, the residents of a poor, largely African American county in northeast North Carolina, Warren County, became the site in 1972 of a huge PCB dump. Eventually these toxic substances leaked into the county's water supplies. It took over thirty years, but the state finally began destroying these substances in 2003. Who knows what kind of damage was wrought in the meantime.

Similar events hit a little closer to home for me. In the years before I moved, Orange County (home of Chapel Hill, where I lived...trust me, it's nothing like the O.C. you saw on TV) was trying to figure out what to do with its trash. The local landfill was filling up fast and was scheduled to close soon. The county had decided to construct a waste transfer station that would serve as a way station for garbage before it was hauled elsewhere for final disposal. The question was, where should the transfer station be located? There was some talk of building it at the location of the current landfill, which is where the environmental justice aspect comes into play.

The location of the current landfill is on the north side of town. It's not far from where I used to live; in fact, I used to go running and biking up in this area often. Chapel Hill has a reputation for being a bit of a well-to-do town, and to some extent this is accurate. But it also has some areas that aren't so rich, and the area surrounding the landfill is one of those. The residents of the Rogers-Eubanks neighborhood are predominantly African American and not well-off. To the best of my knowledge, electricity and running water are still at a premium in the neighborhood; despite promises from city and county officials, basic services have yet to reach everyone. It's surprising to find neighborhoods in a large-ish city (located in a big metro area) that still don't have such basic services, but there it is.

This site, also hosted by Duke (boo Blue Devils) has the details of the landfill's construction. The landfill was built in 1972, with the promise that it would be closed within ten years, and that the area would be turned into a community center. Instead, ten years later the landfill was expanded and is still in use today (though it's very close to capacity). In the meantime, the basic services the residents were promised have not been provided.

From what I hear, the waste transfer station issue has been put on hold; the county is shipping its garbage to Durham while the county commissioners sort out this mess. One good piece of news is that it appears the landfill site is off the table as a location for the transfer station, which is a victory for the area's residents. But this is a good illustration of one thing Bullard mentions: it's much harder to get rid of a facility after it's been built than to prevent it from being built in the first place. I think that's the battle residents of Rogers-Eubanks have been fighting for years.

If you're interested, you can find an article about the waste transfer station from the Triangle's weekly independent paper here. The article mentions the fact that benzene has been found in the groundwater near the landfill.

Finally, this week NPR is running a series of stories on the EPA and air pollution. This evening, there was a report on NPR about a town in northern Oklahoma where rural residents (including a number of Native Americans working low-paying jobs) spent thirteen years fighting a local chemical plant that was polluting the town. This is another example of an environmental injustice perpetrated against the disenfranchised. It's striking to me that the company would run a comparatively "clean" factory in Taiwan, but was not shy about spreading its toxic pollution among the farmers and small-town residents in Oklahoma. The article can be found here.

Happy reading.

P.S. Go Tar Heels.