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).
Environmental Justice Movement Building: 1990s
In 1990, Dumping in Dixie: Race, Class, and Environmental Quality became the first book to chronicle environmental injustice, environmental racism, and the convergence of two major movements—the civil rights and environmental movements—into the environmental justice movement (Bullard, 2000). Dumping in Dixie documented racial dynamics involved in the location of municipal landfills, hazardous waste sites, incinerators, lead smelters, refineries, and chemical plants. The book provided clear examples of “environmental racism 101” and was adopted as a textbook by dozens of U.S. colleges and universities. The southern United States or “Dixie” is different from the rest of the country. The South has a unique legacy of slavery, “Jim Crow” racial segregation, and resistance to equal justice for all its citizens. The South is also the most environmentally degraded region of the country. It is no accident that the modern civil rights and environmental justice movements were born in the South.
A growing grassroots environmental justice movement began to take shape in the late 1980s and early 1990s. The impetus for this growth centered around grassroots activism; the redefinition of environmental rights and civil rights; alliances and coalitions; community-driven research, forums, and conferences; and the First National People of Color Environmental Leadership Summit held in October 1991. The summit was attended by more than 1,000 individuals from every state in the U.S. and at least a half-dozen other countries. Summit delegates adopted the 17 Principles of Environmental Justice. By the time the June 1992 United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (the Rio Earth Summit) started, the Principles of Environmental Justice had been distributed and translated into a half-dozen languages.
Environmental justice leaders embraced the principle that all people and communities are entitled to equal protection of our environmental, health, employment, education, housing, transportation, and civil rights laws (Bullard, 1993a). For decades, hundreds of communities across the nation used a variety of tactics to confront environmental injustice (Agyeman, Bullard, & Evans, 2003; Bullard, 1987, 1993a, 1993b, 1993c, 1994, 2000, 2007; Bullard, Johnson, & Torres, 2011). The federal EPA took action on environmental justice concerns in 1990 only after extensive prodding from grassroots environmental justice activists, educators, and academics who called themselves the Michigan Group, named for environmental justice leaders who were successful in meeting with EPA administrator William Reilly and his senior staff. These meetings resulted in some key first steps in advancing environmental justice at the EPA, including the creation of the Office of Environmental Equity. In 1992, under the George H. W. Bush administration, the EPA produced Environmental Equity: Reducing Risks for All Communities, one of the first federal reports to acknowledge the fact that some populations shouldered greater environmental health risks in some areas than others (U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, 1992).
Thus, environmental justice was not something invented by the EPA. However, in 1992 the EPA arrived at its own definition of environmental justice as “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.” For the EPA, “fair treatment means that no group of people, including racial, ethnic, or socioeconomic groups should bear a disproportionate share of the negative environmental consequences resulting from industrial, municipal, and commercial operations or the execution of federal, state, local, and tribal programs and policies” (U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, 1998, p. 2).
In 1994, President Bill Clinton issued Executive Order 12898, “Federal Actions to Address Environmental Justice in Minority Populations and Low-Income Populations" (Clinton, 1994). This executive order attempted to address environmental injustice within existing federal laws and regulations. It also reinforced the Civil Rights Act of 1964, Title VI, which prohibits discriminatory practices in programs receiving federal funds (see Chapter 10) and put the spotlight back on the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), a law that set policy goals for the protection, maintenance, and enhancement of the environment. NEPA’s goal is to ensure for all Americans a safe, healthful, productive, and aesthetically and culturally pleasing environment. NEPA requires federal agencies to prepare a detailed statement on the environmental effects of proposed federal actions that significantly affect the quality of human health.
Executive Order 12898 called for improved methodologies for assessing and mitigating health effects from multiple and cumulative exposures as well as impacts on subsistence fishers and consumers of wild game, in addition to the collection of data on low-income and minority populations who may be disproportionately at risk. It also encouraged participation of the impacted populations in the various phases of assessing impacts—including scoping, data gathering, considering alternatives, analysis, mitigation, and monitoring.
In 1999, environmental justice leaders were able to get the national Academy of Sciences Institute of Medicine (IOM) to examine environmental justice and health in the United States. The IOM study concluded that government, public health officials, and the medical and scientific communities need to place a higher value on the problems and concerns of environmental justice communities (Institute of Medicine, 1999). The study also confirmed what most environmental justice leaders and communities have known for decades. People of color and low-income communities are exposed to higher levels of pollution than the rest of the nation; and they experience certain diseases in greater numbers than more affluent, white communities. In the United States, all communities are not created equal. If a community happens to be poor or working class or is inhabited largely by people of color, it generally receives less protection.
The environmental justice framework challenges the dominant environmental protection paradigm that largely institutionalizes unequal enforcement; trades human health for profit; places the burden of proof on the “victims” and not the polluting industry; legitimates human exposure to harmful chemicals, pesticides, and hazardous substances; promotes “risky” technologies; exploits the vulnerability of economically and politically disenfranchised communities; subsidizes ecological destruction; creates an industry around risk assessment and risk management; delays cleanup actions; and fails to
