Environment:

Environmental Justice

Too often, communities can be disrupted, even destroyed, by some of the more environmentally hazardous features of modern society: toxic dumps, chemical factories, waste incinerators, power plants. Unfortunately, private industry and public planners too often choose to locate such facilities in places where most residents are poor or are minorities. Until recently, federal agencies responsible for enforcing the nation's civil rights laws completely overlooked this form of discrimination.

Beginning in the 1980s, often in response to proposals to site environmentally hazardous facilities in predominately minority and low-income neighborhoods, communities around the country organized themselves to respond to threats to their environments. They sought to raise awareness of, and concern about, the disproportionate health burdens and risks borne by some populations due, in significant part, to the unequal implementation and enforcement of environmental protection laws. These local efforts have created what is now generally known as the environmental justice movement.

Environmental justice means the fair treatment of all people with respect to the development, implementation, and enforcement of environmental laws and policies. Fair treatment in turn means that no specific group (whether defined by race, color, national origin or income-level) should bear a disproportionate share of negative environmental consequences from industrial, municipal, or commercial operations, and that all environmental policy decisions should be made in an open and non-discriminatory way. Environmental justice stands for the principle that all people and communities are entitled to equal treatment under our environmental, public health, and civil rights laws.

A disproportionate environmental burden is imposed on many minority communities, people of color and other marginalized communities for a variety of reasons, but the main reason is the perceived powerlessness of the people who live there. The fact that minority communities often live closest to polluting industries, dumps, and major transportation hubs means they often get the worst quality air, low water quality, and a reduced quality of life.

Like many civil rights issues, the reasons for this disproportionate treatment may be intentional or unintentional; either way, the injustice is real, and must be addressed. There is a distinct racial component involved in environmental injustice that goes beyond the targeting of low-income communities. Under our nationâs civil rights law, proof of conscious prejudice, although it certainly exists in many cases, is not required. Simple disregard for the race of affected communities and their history that results in disproportionate treatment is also a form of racism.

Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 prohibits recipients of federal financial assistance (such as state environmental departments) from discriminating on the basis of race, color, or national origin in their programs or activities. Environmental Justice advocates had begun using Title VI as a tool to address specific instances of environmental racism in federally funded programs.

We support the following steps to address past and present environmental injustice:

The backlog of environmental justice complaints must be addressed expeditiously and fairly, and all future complaints must be investigated and vigorously pursued in accordance with Title VI and EPAâs implementing regulations.

Environmental Justice complaints must be treated as seriously and under the same legal standards as other types of civil rights complaints. Targets of environmental racism must not be forced to meet scientific burdens of proof that do not apply in cases of discrimination in housing, or employment, or other federal programs in order to seek redress.

Public participation in environmental decision-making processes is essential, and this must not be confined to a comment period at the end after vital decisions have been made. Instead, the affected citizens and communities must be involved in the planning, with meetings in their vicinity during hours they can attend.

When hearings are held in distant locations, funding should be provided for transportation, to ensure that all interested groups have a chance to be heard - not only those who can afford to travel to Washington or hire lobbyists to represent them.

Considerations of disproportionate impact must address cumulative impacts. Currently, all challenges must go chemical by chemical, exposure route by route, facility by facility, although exposed people often have multiple exposures to many hazards. The overall geographic distribution of environmental burdens need to be weighed, and the precautionary principle should be applied to assure prompt, appropriate action.

The principle of reverse onus should apply so that the companies who make or use these chemicals is preferable to the current model, where communities need to prove individual chemicals are unsafe. Instead, companies producing novel chemicals or using novel processes should have to prove that they are safe within known parameters.

Risk analysis must not be used to provide cover for a harmful project ("an acceptable number of deaths or injuries will occur as the cost of doing business"), but instead should have to examine competing alternatives to the polluting process proposed.

Pollution credits trading must end. Nobody has the right to pollute, and all too often we see a general good (like getting low mileage cars off the road) traded for a specific evil (like allowing an outdated and dangerous refinery to continue operations). And all too often it is poor people or people of color who live in the sacrifice zone.

Citizens harmed by environmental injustice should receive full compensation, punitive damages where appropriate, and high-quality medical care, in addition to remedies to end the disproportionate environmental impact. The government must also consider the proper care and compensation for victims made chemically sensitive due to chronic or acute exposures.

Indigenous tribal communities, with sovereign governments whose environmental policy structures have been kept underfunded since federal work began in the 1970s, face a tougher challenge than even those with some state framework. This happened despite the fact that the original treaties that set up the native reservations often contained provisions about air and water quality, as well as wildlife and other environmental allowances. Adequate funding and support must be made available to tribal governments through the federal system.

Finally, a long-range goal of environmental justice is pollution prevention÷clean, sustainable industrial processes, without any toxic pollution to damage our health and shorten our lives. On the long road to this goal, however, we must make sure that we do not conveniently dump a disproportionate share of our problems on those who receive the least benefit from our economy, and have the smallest voice in our political system.