ANN ARBOR—Environmental injustice in minority communities is as much or more prevalent today than 20 years ago, according to a follow-up study to the landmark “Toxic Waste and Race” report that put the environmental justice movement on the map two decades ago.

Both that initial study and the subsequent study, “Toxic Waste and Race at Twenty 1987-2007,” were commissioned by The United Church of Christ. The recent study commemorates the 20th anniversary of the ground-breaking first study.

“Our new report again signals a clear racial pattern where waste sites are located and the way government responds or not responds to contamination emergencies in people of color communities,” said Carlos Correa, minister of environmental justice with United Church of Christ Justice and Witness Ministries.

The findings show that 20 years later, disproportionately large numbers of people of color still live in hazardous waste host communities, and that people of color are not equally protected by environmental laws. “People of color across the United States have learned the hard way that waiting for government to respond to toxic contamination can be hazardous to their health and health of their communities,” said Robert Bullard, director of the Justice Resource Center at Clark University in Atlanta. Bullard was the principal investigator for the study.

The 180-plus page report points to the dismal post-Katrina response in New Orleans as one poster example of unequal treatment of minorities in hazardous waste emergencies. The findings also show that environmental laws don’t protect minority communities any more than they did 20 years ago when the original report was commissioned.

Paul Mohai, professor of environmental justice at the University of Michigan School of Natural Resources and Environment and a co-author of the report, described the results as dismaying. “You can see there has been a lot more attention to the issue of environmental justice but the progress has been very, very slow,” Mohai said. “Why? As important as all those efforts are they haven’t been well executed and I don’t know if the political will is there.”

Bullard, Mohai and colleagues Robin Saha, assistant professor of environmental studies at University of Montana and a former student of Mohai’s, and Beverly Wright, founding director of the Deep South Center for Environmental Justice at Dillard University and a Hurricane Katrina survivor, released the executive summary of the study at a special news briefing at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in San Francisco. The full report will be available in mid-March.

“The cleanup and reconstruction efforts in New Orleans have been shamefully sluggish and patchy, and the environmental injustice may be compounded by rebuilding on poisoned ground,” Wright said.

The report uses a new method of data that better locates people in relation to hazardous waste sites, and uses 2000 census data to show that the racial disparities are much greater than previously reported.

“We think this study and the findings in it, as well as the case studies that show the human side to the national statistics, make a really strong case for environmental injustice to be on the policy agenda of Congress,” Saha said. “It’s clear the policies we are trying aren’t working and that something else needs to be done.”

More than nine million people are estimated to live in host neighborhoods within 3 kilometers of one of 413 hazardous waste facilities nationwide. The study found that the proportion of people of color in host neighborhoods is almost twice that of the proportion of people of color living in non-host neighborhoods. Host neighborhoods are typically economically depressed, with poverty rates 1.5 times that of non-host communities.

The report analyzed the percentages of all people of color in host communities by EPA region and every region with commercial hazardous waste facilities had a disproportionate number of minorities in host neighborhoods. The study also looked at 50 select metropolitan areas.

In addition to analyzing the total percentage of people of color in host communities, the report analyzes the percentages of Hispanic/Latino, African-American, and Asian Pacific Islander separately. For example in Michigan, which had the largest disparity in the proportion of people of color living in host neighborhoods, the majority of those minorities affected were African American.

The report also gives more than three dozen recommendations for action at the Congressional, state and local levels to help remedy the disparities. It also makes recommendations for nongovernmental agencies and the commercial hazardous waste industry.

The report includes testimonials on the progress of the environmental justice movement by some of its founders and key leaders. There are also two detailed case studies, one on post- Katrina New Orleans, and the other on toxic contamination of an African American community in Dixon, Tenn. Finally, the report includes a timeline of milestones in the environmental justice movement that Bullard solicited from environmental justice leaders around the country.

For more information:
? Carlos Correa, United Church of Christ: (630) 926-4041(c); [email protected]
? Robert Bullard, Clark University-Atlanta; (678) 725-0435, [email protected]
? Paul Mohai, University of Michigan; (734) 255-2124, [email protected]
? Robin Saha, University of Montana; (406) 546-4836, [email protected]
? Beverly Wright, Dillard University; (504) 782-8989, [email protected]

United church of ChristClark University-AtlantaUniversity of MontanaDillard University