Читать книгу Lessons in Environmental Justice - Группа авторов - Страница 14

The national environmental justice movement in the United States was born in mostly African American, rural, and poor Warren County, North Carolina, in the early 1980s after the state government decided to dispose of 30,000 cubic yards of soil contaminated with polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) in the tiny town of Afton—more than 84 percent of the community was black in 1982 (Bullard, 2000). Protests ensued, resulting in more than 500 arrests. The landfill later became the most recognized symbol in the county, and Warren County became a symbol of the environmental justice movement. By 1993, the facility was failing with 13 feet of water trapped inside it (Exchange Project 2006). For a decade, community leaders pressed the state to clean up the leaky landfill. Although the PCB landfill has been cleaned up, the county is still economically worse off than the state as a whole. More than 24.4 percent of Warren County residents in 2008–2012 were below the poverty line, compared with North Carolina’s 16.8 percent poverty rate—a 7.6 percentage point gap. The 2008–2012 median household income for Warren County residents was only $34,803, compared with $46,450 for the state, or roughly 75 percent of the state median (U.S. Census Bureau, 2018). These data reveal the cumulative burdens that impact toxic communities.

The Warren County protests provided the impetus for a 1983 U.S. General Accounting Office (GAO) study, Siting of Hazardous Waste Landfills and Their Correlation with Racial and Economic Status of Surrounding Communities (U.S. General Accounting Office, 1983). The GAO study found that three out of four of the off-site, commercial hazardous waste landfills in Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Region 4 (Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Tennessee) were located in predominantly African American communities, although African Americans made up only 20 percent of the region’s population. The protesters put “environmental racism” on the map.

The disturbing findings from the GAO report led Benjamin Chavis of the United Church of Christ Commission for Racial Justice to produce the first national study on race and waste in 1987. The study report, Toxic Wastes and Race in the United States, found race to be the most significant variable in predicting where these waste facilities were located—more powerful than household income, the value of homes, and the estimated amount of hazardous waste generated by industry (Commission for Racial Justice, United Church of Christ, 1987). In other words, race was a more powerful predictor than class of where toxic waste facilities are located in the United States. The Toxic Wastes and Race study was revisited in 1994 using 1990 census data, in which it was found that people of color were 47 percent more likely than white Americans to live near a hazardous waste facility (Goldman & Fitton, 1994).