Environmentalists hit the roof in 2002 when President Bush
announced his Clean Sky Initiative. The initiative would not
clean the skies but dirty them further. It would allow corporations
to dump tons more toxic pollutants in the air, delay or exempt
enforcement of smog and soot pollution standards, and gut
EPA pollution enforcement powers. Though the initiative is
stalled in Congress, Bush did an end around and used an administrative
order to weaken enforcement.
That virtually assures that blacks, especially poor blacks,
will breather dirtier air. This has had dire health consequences.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has repeatedly
warned that blacks are more likely to live in neighborhoods
with higher air pollution levels and suffer higher rates of
respiratory and blood ailments than whites, and suffer more
deaths. The Bush administration defends its contempt for the
lungs of the poor by saying that race should not be as issue
in the battle against toxic pollution, and that it will protect
all groups against environmental damage. The Bush record shows
that it has done just the opposite.
A recent Associated Press survey of government data found
that in 19 states blacks were more than twice as likely as
whites to live in neighborhoods where pollution posed a severe
health hazard. Despite the severe health risks that toxic
damage poses in these neighborhoods, the residents have gotten
very little attention or support from environmental groups.
But the fight against environmental racism is a civil rights
battle, and a fight to save black lives. That battle should
fully engage civil rights and environmental groups. Black
residents in some cities have screamed just as loudly as white,
middle class homeowners and urban conservationists about hacked
up parkland, toxic dump sites, waste incinerators, garbage
dumps, recycling centers, contaminated sewage sites, and power
plants in their backyard. They label this racially-warped
policy, "PIBBY" or, put it in blacks backyard.
In
1979, Houston city officials tried to dump yet another
toxic waste site in a black neighborhood. This time
the homeowners and residents fought back. They filed
and won the first major lawsuit against the dumping
of a waste facility in an urban neighborhood. Their
action transformed the fight for environmental justice
into a health and a civil rights issue. Since then blacks
have marched, demonstrated, filed lawsuits, been jailed,
and held local and national conferences, to denounce
environmental degradation of their neighborhoods. In
a milestone report on race and toxic wastes in 1987,
the Commission for Racial Justice, a church-based civil
rights advocacy group, revealed that blacks are far
more likely than whites to live near abandoned toxic
waste sites, waste landfills, and sewer treatment plants.
They prodded former President Clinton in 1994 to issue
an executive order directing federal agencies to intensify
efforts to determine the harm toxic waste plants and
sites wreak on urban communities.
A decade later, the Government Accounting Office found
that all of the offsite hazardous waste landfills in
nine Southern states were situated in or in close proximity
to black neighborhoods. This environmental racism outraged
black environmental activists.
Meanwhile, Bush has done everything he could to scrap
the Clinton rules, and corporations and public officials
have dutifully taken their cue and tossed more pollutants
into the air and water. The courts haven't helped. Residents
in poor, highly toxic neighborhoods can sue polluters
under the 1964 Civil Rights Act, but they must prove
intentional discrimination. This is virtually impossible
to prove. The Supreme Court has ruled that private citizens
can't sue to enforce federal environmental regulations
that ban discrimination. The EPA has moved with glacial
speed to investigate complaints of environmental pollution,
and has been even more reluctant to take strong action
against polluters. In one two-year stretch from 2001
to 2003, the EPA settled only two cases against corporate
polluters. There's little evidence that the agency's
settlement scorecard has gotten much better since then.
The damage from official neglect of the problem has
been profound. Toxic eyesores disfigure black neighborhoods,
degrade property values, and discourage public and private
investment in those neighborhoods, and that in addition
to the grave health risks that toxic pollution poses
to the residents.
Corporate and industrial polluters get away with their
toxic assault on low-income, black neighborhoods by
skillfully twisting the jobs versus environment issue.
They claim that the choice is between creating more
jobs and business growth and economic stagnation. Their
economic black mail works since few politicians will
risk being tagged as anti-business. They gamble that
poor, blacks and Latinos, many of whom do not own their
homes, and vote in far smaller numbers, are less likely
than politically connected white, middle-class homeowners
to squawk at putting a hazardous plant or toxic waste
site in their neighborhood.
Many officials will eagerly waive requirements for environmental
reports, provide special tax breaks, and even alter
zoning and land use requirements to allow them to set
up shop in these underserved neighborhoods. They'll
get it with the full blessing of the Bush administration,
but let's hope not with Congress.
Earl
Ofari Hutchinson is a columnist for BlackNews.com,
an author and political analyst.
For
media interviews, contact:
Mr. Hutchinson at 323-296-6331 or hutchinsonreport@aol.com
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