Pollution Is a Civil Rights Issue

Gulf Families wait for aid

People whose income level limits their access to clean air and water, or puts them at greater risk of illness, death, or unemployment in the event of an environmental disaster are being denied the rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness guaranteed to all Americans by the Constitution. And someone should be held accountable for it. That simple fact has been the foundation of the environmental justice movement for the last few decades. But while the movement has grown, and the swelling ranks of environmental lawyers have managed to try, and win, a few landmark cases, the movement hasn’t necessarily affected lasting legislative change.

That’s mostly to do with politics. During the Clinton Administration, environmental justice advocates developed cozy relationships with politicians and progress, it seemed, was imminent. Unfortunately, few of those changes went through before the Bush Administration came in and promptly shut its doors to the environmental justice movement. Advocates continued to toil, producing reports that were never read.

Now, with the doors at the White House open to them once again, environmental justice advocates are determined to push through changes that stick. With any luck, this could be the year that happens. The movement has two powerful tools on its side: the growing national awareness of the social impact and injustice of environmental pollution, courtesy of BP, and a powerhouse report released in July by The Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, entitled “Now is the Time: Environmental Injustice in the U.S. and Recommendations for Eliminating Disparities.”

Rather than repeating previous reports and simply framing the problem, the Lawyers Committee report provides specific recommendations (134, to be exact) for various branches of government. According to the report’s authors, there are two key problems that need to be addressed: Lax regulations of pollutants, which unfairly impact poor communities, and legislation aimed at improving everything from air quality to energy efficiency to transportation that fails to consider lower-income communities.

Families that earn less than $10,000 a year, for example, pay as much as 16 percent of their incomes on home energy bills, compared to just 2 to 3 percent for middle- and upper-income families, according to the Brookings Institution. Those families should be targeted for energy efficiency upgrades, but while DOE-funded weatherization and home improvement programs do aim to help such communities, many citizens are still left out. On the transportation front, federal, state and local governments have struggled to incorporate equity into their transit planning. According to the Living Cities Foundation, the bulk of new transit projects undertaken in recent years aren’t reaching the neighborhoods where poor people live, limiting their economic opportunities and continuing to subject residents to higher incidences of asthma and other respiratory issues.

The Lawyers Committee report is the result of several years of research focused on the effects of various environmental decisions on low-income and minority communities. And while 134 recommendations doesn’t exactly seem concise, the report and its authors do a good job of summarizing all of the environmental justice movement’s requests for the Obama Administration, ranging from changes to how the Environmental Protection Agency defines non-hazardous solid waste to ensuring that any eventual carbon trading program does not add to the already disproportionate burden of pollution borne by disadvantaged communities. Recommendations touch on coal mining and the impact that mountaintop removal has on communities, not just mountains, as well. And although it was written prior to the Gulf oil disaster, report authors feel the recommendations contained within it are more important now than ever.

“We will need restorative justice in response to the BP spill,” said Leslie Fields, a co-author of the report, and program director for the Sierra Club’s environmental justice and community partnerships program. “There will need to be intense sustainable redevelopment of that area. Just as we were about to celebrate the redevelopment efforts that happened after Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, this disaster happened.”

Some of the report’s recommendations are already being taken to heart, in part backed by the political momentum created by the Gulf spill. The EPA is currently discussing reinstating the superfund tax, a move strongly recommended in the report and one the Committee has been driving for years. Funds raised from the tax would help to remediate superfund sites — around which many of the country’s low-income neighborhoods are built — and make it more expensive for companies to pollute.

“We’re especially pleased to hear that the EPA and Congress are talking about reinstating the superfund tax, especially now with the political pressure of the BP Spill,” co-author Veronica Eady Samira said at a press conference about the report.

Meanwhile, Committee Members have also been working this summer with the EPA on rulemaking, especially around the Clean Air Act, and the definitions of both hazardous and non-hazardous solid waste. That work is particularly important now that climate legislation has once again been scuttled in Congress.

“One of the reason I’m spending time on rule-making is to ensure that these issues and concerns are incorporated into the statutory process so that it doesn’t matter which administration is in place, these communities are being included,” co-author Vernice Miller-Travis said. “No matter what happens with legislation, Clean Air rulemaking could enable the EPA to really drive the reduction of greenhouse gases and co-pollutants,” she added. “And that would protect communities at the local level.”

The Committee is nonetheless still hoping to have some influence on the climate legislation debate.

“It’s important for Congress to be looking at adaptation strategies,” said Fields. “Typically, with environmental groups there has been a lot of work done on ecosystem adaptation, but due to this report there’s starting to be more emphasis on adaptation strategies for people, in terms of infrastructure protection, supported levees, improved transit options and public health action plans. That’s part of what needs to be in a successful energy or climate bill.”

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