FIGHTING ENVIRONMENTAL RACISM: A SELECTED ANNOTATED BIBLIOGRAPHY

corporate polluters. Using strategies of the civil rights movement and labor struggles, Watchdog plans to fight in the courts, legislatures, workplaces, the media, and the marketplace. Face-to-face negotiations with executives of polluting companies and concrete demands will be part of the strategy. a of legal options for discriminatory siting procedures based upon race, class, and resource allocation. state and local hazardous waste siting procedures currently in use; state statutory, common law and constitutional options for litigants affected by the discriminatory sitings; and the relevance of the equal protection clause of the U.S. Constitution for issues of environmental justice.

Waste disposal companies have been attempting to convince Native Americans to permit dumping on the reservations under the guise of improving the economic conditions. High rates of lung cancer and poisoned land have occurred on Navajo reservations as a result of uranium mining.
The South Side of Chicago, which is predominantly African-American and Hispanic, has the greatest concentration of hazardous waste sites in the nation.
Radiation exposure is a major health problem in the Marshall Islands, Bikini, and other Pacific Islands which have been used as test sites for nuclear and atomic weapons.
The portion of minorities living in communities with existing incinerators is 89 percent higher than the national average. Pharmaceutical companies, oil refineries, and petrochemical plants are responsible for making Puerto Rico one of the world's most heavily polluted places.
Six of the eight municipal incinerators and five of the municipal landfills in Houston, Texas, are located in predominantly African American neighborhoods.
Communities where incinerators are proposed have minority populations 60 percent higher than the national average and property values 35 percent lower than the national average.
In communities with existing incinerators, the average income is 15 percent less than the national average and property values are 38 percent lower than the national average. (Commission on Racial Justice, United Church of Christ 1987 ;Lee 1990;De La Pe a 1991;Satchell 1992;Lee 1993.) Studies suggest clear relationships between a high concentration of minority populations, or low average incomes, with an unhealthy environment. Poor people do not have the economic means to leave their neighborhoods for resettlement elsewhere. Housing discrimination often makes it difficult to find alternative dwellings at affordable rates. Industries that pollute are attracted to poor neighborhoods because land values, incomes, and other costs of doing business are lower. The industries are drawn to poor neighborhoods where political power and community resources to fight back are weak or lacking. Higher income areas are usually more successful in preventing or controlling the entry of polluting industries to their communities. (Mohai and Bryant 1992.) The effects of pollution and environmental hazards on people of color, the poor, and the working class have been overlooked by environmental policy makers because it was perceived that those communities were politically powerless and would not protest the siting of such facilities. African Americans, for example, were seen as "less informed, less aware and less concerned with environmental issues than whites" (Taylor 1989).
However, recent studies indicate that poverty and lack of empowerment is a better indicator of environmental racism than race itself. These studies, which measured the broad environmental perspectives of African Americans, Hispanics, and Native Americans, showed that, when considered broadly, without specific emphasis on a particular environmental aspect, concern among racial minorities and the poor is as strong and active as in the larger population.
Structural barriers and lack of adequate resources within the communities account for the low level of activism by minority groups. When citizens in the contaminated communities are adequately informed about the hazards, their level of awareness and opposition to the toxic facilities results in active protest. (Ostheimer and Ritt 1976, Noe and Snow 1989, Caron 1989, Booth and Jacobs 1990, Mohai 1990.) The mainstream environmental movement has been criticized for its glaring lack of minority representation.
Critics claim that these organizations fail to recruit minority memberships and have not addressed the daily environmental hazards in minority communities. With the possible exception of organizations like Natural Resources Defense Council, Greenpeace, and Earth Island Institute, mainstream environmental organizations appear to be more interested in wilderness and wildlife preservation, resource conservation, and population control than in human environmental hazards. (Baugh 1990, Adams 1992 One of the first steps toward addressing the problem of environmental racism was the establishment of the Conference on Race and the Incidence of Environmental Hazards held at the University of Michigan in January 1990. This conference gave national visibility to the public debate on environmental racism and served as a catalyst for residents of polluted communities to organize. This is not a situation that lends itself to overnight solutions or simple policy formulations. As the papers at the conference illustrated, there are historical, economic, political, and ethical ramifications of environmental racism which require bold action and equitable environmental decisionmaking. Activists in communities around the country are using the strategies of the civil rights and antiwar movements of the 1960s and 1970s for the environmental struggles of the 1990s. The movement's goal is to remedy past injustices and promote fairness in local, national, and international environmental decisionmaking Mohai 1992a, 1992b;Grossman 1992;Taylor 1992).
Citizens who are tired of being subjected to the dangers of pollution in their communities have been confronting the power structures through organized protest, legal actions, marches, civil disobedience, and other activities. Community newsletters, pamphlets, magazines, classes, lectures, and videocassettes have made it possible to recruit large numbers of people. In addition, minorities are using the power of the ballot and economic pressures to make their stands (Kuzmiak 1991). Minority voter blocs are forming around the country to exercise clout in many areas where their opinions are not usually sought. They have the strength in numbers and the activist skills to form effective coalitions with environmental organizations to promote effective change. In addition, the Black Congressional Caucus has a strong record of solid support for environmental issues. Mainstream organizations would benefit from the skills and savvy of the grassroots organizations by forming coalitions to press for establishment of desirable environmental agendas (Jordan and Snow 1992).
Carol Merchant (1992) sees this revitalized protest activity as an attempt to solve the human health and welfare problems which are rooted in the "malign side-effects of industrial capitalist development." The movement is attempting to resolve the contradictions between production of goods and reproduction of their daily lives in healthy neighborhoods with an acceptable standard of living through regulation of aspects of production or economic restructuring. Snow (1992) appeals to the environmental nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) to recruit minorities into their ranks: Efforts must be made to expand the national constituency for conservation through deliberate recruitment of leaders from minority and low income communities and through focused efforts to address environmental issues of particular concern to these communities. . . . This effort could be initiated through the development of a new conservation fellowship program designed to groom minority and low income students for positions of professional leadership among conservation NGOs. But the effort must go farther and must include the deliberate engagement of environmental issues of greatest concern to nonwhite citizens, coupled with recruitment of leaders from the communities that have traditionally been omitted from the conservation constituency.
The Environmental Equity Workgroup of EPA offered several recommendations that would enable the Agency to deal more equitably with minorities and the poor in environmental decisionmaking. A summary of the recommendations follows (U.S. Environmental Protection Agency 1992): Increase the priority given to issues of environmental equity.
Establish and maintain an effective database for assessing risks on the basis of income and race.
Improve the risk assessment procedures to ensure better characterization of risk across populations, communities, or geographic areas.
Create measures to reduce high concentrations of risk among specific population groups. When making major decisions or promoting Agency initiatives, assess and consider the distribution of projected risk.
Integrate equity into EPA programs by addressing high risk communities in its permit, grant, monitoring, and enforcement procedures.
Increase efforts to communicate with racial minority and low income communities and involve them in environmental policymaking.
Establish mechanisms to include equity considerations in long term planning and agency operations.
This bibliography consists of selected resources describing the empowerment of racial minorities and the poor in their struggles for environmental justice. The items chosen for inclusion represent the variety of approaches being used by grassroots environmental groups to make their views known to those who make decisions that affect their lives. It is intended to offer readers an overview of the activities and orientations of those who are fighting environmental racism and to demonstrate the importance of citizen action in issues of public health and welfare. For citations to additional resources on environmental racism, see the bibliography by Link (1993  Dumping in Dixie is an in-depth study of environmental racism in black communities in the South. Bullard explores the barriers to environmental and social justice experienced by blacks and the factors that contribute to the conflicts, disparities, and the resultant growing militancy. He provides case studies of strategies used by grassroots groups who wanted to take back their neighborhoods in Houston's Northwood Manor neighborhood; West Dallas, Texas; Institute, West Virginia; Alsen, Louisiana; and Emelle-Sumter County, Alabama.
In these predominantly Black communities, grass roots organizing was carried out to protest against landfills, incinerators, toxic waste, chemical industries, salvage yards, and garbage dumps. Strategies included demonstrations, public hearings, lawsuits, the election of supporters to state and local offices, meetings with company representatives, and other approaches designed to bring public awareness and accountability.
Bullard offers action strategies and recommendations for greater mobilization and consensus building for the ensuing environmental equity struggles of the 1990s. gallons of radioactive waste into the Puerco River. The river winds through the reservation and the communities of Manuelito and Lupton. Since the river is still polluted, the 10,000 Navajos who live along the Puerco River must use shallow wells and springs to draw water for their livestock and personal needs. The spill, which was not publicized in the press and was not taken seriously by the tribe due to lack of information about its dangers, caused a dramatic rise in animal deformities and cancer-related deaths in the communities along the river.
The Southwest Research and Information Center in Albuquerque initiated a program in 1986 called the Puerco River Education Project (PREP) to enable affected communities to develop their own water resources with sovereign authority over all Indian waters. The Southwest Organizing Project (SWOP) has helped local activists develop strategies for empowerment. SWOP also assisted Hispanics in northwest Albuquerque in protests against a particle board company which ultimately invested US$2 million to reduce air and noise contaminants. Through voter registration and candidate accountability forums, SWOP has made it possible for local grassroots groups to confront the polluters and demand compliance with environmental laws.  Over 300,000 farmworkers suffer from the effects of pesticide-related illnesses each year. Children are also exposed to pesticide poisoning because they accompany their parents to the fields. Migrant labor camps are contaminated by pesticide drift from adjacent fields and lack appropriate running water and washing facilities.

The Farm Labor Organizing Committee (FLOC) in Michigan and Ohio has achieved a variety of gains against
Campbell Soup and Heinz after years of strikes and boycotts. Negotiations with these companies resulted in a more equitable wage system, compliance with basic field sanitation requirements such as running water and toilets, and a requirement that farmworkers be notified prior to any pesticide spraying. These agreements have allowed farmers and farmworkers to interact as parties with common interests. The authors conclude that "government officials and agencies have exercised their power to exploit the less politically influential, the less informed and the poorer members of society. Rather than receiving protection from a democratic system designed to protect the minority voice, the ethnic and racial minority communities became a convenient scapegoat for difficult political decisions." As public awareness grows, minority opposition to environmental racism will continue until the neighborhoods in which they live are no longer treated as safe places for polluters. Godsil examines equity issues that arise in the placement of commercial hazardous waste facilities. Since affluent communities oppose hazardous waste facilities in their neighborhoods, developers often place these facilities in predominantly poor and minority communities. Consequently, minorities are unfairly bearing an excessive burden of environmental hazards while the benefits of production that result in hazardous wastes are dispersed among the larger society. The nature and causes of the disproportionate burden of hazardous waste are described.

Multi-Ethnic
Godsil presents current state and federal hazardous waste legislation and its failure to address issues of environmental racism. She recommends that constitutional remedies such as the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment be invoked to challenge environmental disparities and proposes federal legislation to ameliorate the burden of waste siting in minority communities. The proposed act would allow minority communities to argue that there is a disparate impact. It would permit definition of the population that would be physically or financially harmed by the sites. Plaintiffs would have to prove that there is a disparate impact on the minority community relative to the affluent community. Legislation at the state level should permit the relevant state agency to take the race and socioeconomic status of a community into account when considering the potential hazards of such sites.
Godsil provides examples of court cases in which race and class played a role in decisions concerning environmental equity.
A new legal specialty called Environmental Poverty Law helps minorities and the poor fight their environmental battles in the courts. The Environmental Poverty Law working group was formed to serve as a clearinghouse for poverty lawyers who handle environmental cases. Legal strategies pursued by this "new breed" of lawyers are designed to get government agencies to release data, forcing municipalities to hold public hearings on projects that may pose health hazards, and filing lawsuits against companies and government agencies who use racial or ethnic bias in pollution projects. A detailed report on the toxic air and water in Los Angeles and its detrimental effects on the health and well being of the citizens of the city.
Industries in the Los Angeles area emit great amounts of nitrogen oxides, organic gases, and dangerous toxins into the air, water, and workplaces. Working class people, the poor, and people of color are most vulnerable because the polluting industries are located mainly in their neighborhoods. However, the toxins are present throughout Los Angeles and affect all citizens.
Failure of the regulatory agencies to control the pollution and enforce the law made it necessary for the citizens of Los Angeles to act. A multi-ethnic coalition of workers, minorities, labor unions, and environmental groups formed an organization called Labor/Community Watchdog to confront the polluters and demand a clean up of L.A.'s air. Public education campaigns, lawsuits, protest rallies, and other active strategies will be used to monitor and pressure the existing regulatory agencies and provide a watchdog strategy to confront corporate polluters. Using strategies of the civil rights movement and labor struggles, Watchdog plans to fight in the courts, legislatures, workplaces, the media, and the marketplace. Face-toface negotiations with executives of polluting companies and concrete demands will be part of the strategy.
This coalition comprises workers, high school and college students, women, Latinos, African Americans, Asian Americans, white working people, farmworkers, and inner-city residents who are victims of air pollution, waste incineration, and groundwater contamination.
Labor/Community Watchdog has been instrumental in gaining dialogue with polluters and forcing regulatory agencies to monitor the industries. Watchdog is demanding that corporations which profit from pollution be required to pay for clean up. Many more successful strategies are being planned as the organization grows.
Perkins discusses legal strategies for addressing environmental racism involving location of hazardous waste sites and exposure of children to toxic lead.
Title VI of the Civil Rights Act prohibits discrimination on grounds of race, color, or national origin in programs or activities receiving federal funds. Perkins points out that local and state environmental and health programs and activities often receive federal funds and must abide by Article VI. She recommends using this as a legal remedy when the siting of toxic waste sites will have a discriminatory effect on minority groups. Other remedies include public hearings when companies apply for permits and compliance with state and federal environmental impact provisions. Citizens should attend those hearings and demand that state and federal authorities enforce environmental laws.
Lead poisoning can be attributed to paint, gasoline, solder, food, soil, water, and air. Parents in East Baton Latino and African American students in the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn, New York, are fighting environmental racism in their neighborhood. Eight activists, ranging in age from sixteen to twenty, have lectured, marched, and organized rallies against the Radiac Research Corporation, which stores and transports toxic waste and low-level radioactive and flammable materials. They object to its location next to a public school playground.
A study by Hunter College found twenty-eight facilities in the Williamsburg-Greenpoint area which stored large amounts of toxic waste. Eleven of those sites contained substances classified as extremely dangerous by the EPA and exceeding government recommendations.
The Toxic Avengers have started a recycling program in the neighborhood and workshops for inner city youth around the country. The group has received public service awards and gained the attention of state legislators.
Russell describes the activities of MELA, Mothers of East Los Angeles, a predominantly Hispanic organization established in 1985 by Lucille Roybal-Allard (who was elected a state assemblywoman in 1987) to fight the construction of an incinerator in a Hispanic community. A predominantly Black coalition, Concerned Citizens of Central Los Angeles (CCSLA), which succeeded in stopping a plan to build a large garbage incinerator in a predominantly Black neighborhood, joined MELA in its efforts.
Through public hearings, petitions and public information campaigns, CCSLA and MELA fought successfully to prohibit the building of incinerators in minority areas. On short notice, MELA could muster 400 volunteers to make announcements at churches, place bilingual advertisements about hearings and marches in neighborhood newspapers, and distribute updates and flyers. As public outcries intensified, CCSLA and MELA gained additional support from Greenpeace, Citizens for a Better Environment (Oakland, California), National Health Law Program, Center for Law in the Public Interest, and the Institute for Local Self Reliance.
Additional alliances were formed with two groups that advocate slow growth, Not Yet New York and the California Alliance in Defense of Residential Environments.
These protests against incinerators and toxic industries in minority neighborhoods have forged a powerful coalition that has gained many important victories through local protests and marches, lawsuits, attendance at hearings, notification of voters, demonstrations, and picketing. Suro, Roberto. "Pollution-Weary Minorities Try Civil Rights Tack." New York Times, 11 January 1993, A1.
Grassroots protests by Black, Hispanic, Asian, and American Indian groups are battling pollution hazards in their communities using a variety of strategies.
A report from the Environmental Protection Agency revealed that racial and ethnic minorities suffer disproportionate exposure to dust, soot, carbon monoxide, ozone, sulfur, sulfur dioxide, lead, and emissions from hazardous waste dumps. An environmental justice movement has developed out of many local protests.
These groups are using the strategies of the civil rights movement to battle environment racism around the country.
The West Dallas Coalition for Environmental Justice has filed lawsuits against local, state, and federal agencies to fight for the cleanup of contaminated soil from a lead smelter that closed in 1984. Black residents of Wallace, Louisiana, helped to defeat plans to build a $700 million wood pulp and rayon plant on one of the remaining nonindustrial stretches of the Mississippi River between New Orleans and Baton Rouge.
With assistance from the Natural Resources Defense Council, several Harlem groups filed suit against a sewage treatment plant that produces odors offensive to the community. The suit contends the site was chosen because it was perceived as a poor community that lacked the political clout to oppose the plant. Tsao provides a comprehensive analysis of state and federal legal options for opposing discriminatory hazardous waste siting procedures based upon race, class, and resource allocation. He discusses state and local hazardous waste siting procedures currently in use; state statutory, common law and constitutional options for litigants affected by the discriminatory sitings; and the relevance of the equal protection clause of the U.S. Constitution for issues of environmental justice.
Tsao finds that states have tended to interpret constitutional equity provisions more broadly than has the U.S. Supreme Court. He recommends, therefore, that litigants pursue state law options first; federal claims should be made only after evaluating the effectiveness of state law.
The Environmental Congress of Arkansas (ECA), representing sixteen grassroots environmental organizations, gathered to discuss strategies to reclaim Arkansas, the third most polluted state in the country.
Examples of some of the successes of local groups include Citizens Against Polluted Streams, which received court awarded damages from Tyson Chicken for dumping chicken feces and scraps into local waterways.
Friends United for a Safe Environment successfully fought against an overstuffed landfill.
ECA led successful protests against an incinerator in Jacksonville, Arkansas, which was permitted to burn dioxins. The incinerator was built on a site which was used to dispose of 28,300 barrels of toxic waste, 140 vats of heavy chemicals and over 100 acres of contaminated soil which has accumulated at the site since the 1960s. ECA strategies included protests at the state capitol, media attention, and press releases. Citizen protests and class action lawsuits caused the company to file for bankruptcy, pay a fine, shut down the operation in Jacksonville and relocate to Memphis, Tennessee. (This success was short lived. The EPA and the Arkansas Department of Pollution Control and Ecology granted the company a license on 2 January 1992 to burn toxic waste in the Jacksonville incinerator).
Other protests have been undertaken against a hazardous waste incinerator in El Dorado which resulted in a $500,000 fine for noncompliance with the Clean Air Act. Protests in Camden, Arkansas, resulted in the relocation of a 300 acre landfill. ECA has gained credibility with the state Attorney General and the Pollution Control Department, further enhancing the organization's visibility and empowerment.