Community Voices at the Center of Environmental Justice Now Tour | Article

In a project called the “Environmental Justice Now Tour,” Democrats on the House Natural Resources Committee are holding a series of discussions with community leaders and activists on environmental justice. The tour is centered around the Environmental Justice for All Act (H.R.5986/S.4401). The bill, introduced in the House by Rep. Raúl Grijalva (D-Ariz.) and Rep. Donald McEachin (Va.) and in the Senate by Sen. Kamala Harris (D-Calif.), aims to address the environmental harms disproportionately inflicted on underserved communities, particularly low-income communities of color. The House Natural Resources Committee held a hearing on the Environmental Justice for All Act on October 1st.

The Environmental Justice Now Tour is bringing to the forefront the impacts of industrial pollution, waste, and climate change on Environmental Justice (EJ) communities. The Tour virtually traverses the country, visiting six locations from Louisiana and Michigan to the West Coast. During the Louisiana Cancer Alley discussion, activists spoke about the health impacts of the petrochemical industry concentrated in the area. Cancer Alley is home to the “Mississippi river chemical corridor”, an 85-mile stretch of land between New Orleans and Baton Rouge which houses over 150 petrochemical facilities and six oil refineries. The destructive health and safety impacts of these polluting industries are overwhelmingly felt by Black communities.

Beverley Wright, scholar and executive director of the Deep South Center for Environmental Justice, noted that while Black people make up 37 percent of the population of Louisiana, 80 percent of Black people living in the corridor are within three miles of a pollution source. Sharon Lavigne, an environmental activist with Rise Saint James, spoke about air, water, and soil pollution in her area. Lavigne told stories of several neighbors and family members who died of cancer and people who regularly became sick. Wright and Lavigne both discussed how chemical companies beginning construction on new projects often bought out the property of White residents so they could move away, but rarely offered the same option to Black residents.

Activists speaking during the Los Angeles tour stop brought similar stories of deep environmental inequities. Megan Chichester, Black Maternal Health Coordinator at Black Women for Wellness, discussed how 580,000 people in Los Angeles, disproportionately low-income people and Black, Indigenous, and people of color, live less than a mile away from an active oil well. The wells emit carcinogens and other toxins, which can cause a range of adverse health effects, from asthma to premature birth risk among pregnant women.

The disproportionate impacts of natural disasters were also discussed extensively throughout the Tour. Chichester spoke about how low-income people and Black, Indigenous, and people of color in the Los Angeles area experienced some of the worst health effects from smoke emitted by the recent wildfires. Wright discussed how, after Hurricane Katrina, money for repairing broken levees was primarily directed toward White communities, despite the fact that Black communities’ levees had suffered far worse damage. The Army Corps of Engineers claimed their priorities were determined by technical considerations, but the levees in Black communities had long been neglected by the local government. Black residents argued the Corps’ actions represented another example of political processes failing to account for the interests of underserved communities. Wright used this process as an example of a system that appears “color-blind” on the surface, but leads to racist impacts in practice.

“We are still trying to disentangle the effects of how these laws are affecting Black and Brown people,” she said.

Throughout the Tour, activists repeatedly highlighted the need for dramatically improved transparency, accountability, and community input on critical environmental issues. Activists agreed that companies and officials at the local, state, and federal levels were extremely unresponsive to the concerns of environmental justice communities. Lavigne recalled how in her work at Rise Saint James, her mayor, Congressional representative, and the Governor of Louisiana had ignored her calls to action. Wright stated that until 1984, polluters in the chemical corridor refused to disclose the amount of toxins and carcinogens their facilities released annually. When community pressure forced the companies to release an analysis, their results showed annual emissions of 800 million tons of pollutants.

In addition to increased transparency, Wright argued for a need to replace what she called the “industrial standards” regulating pollution in the National Environmental Policy Act with new standards that place a far greater emphasis on health impacts. The inclusion of “cumulative health impacts” in the environmental permitting process is a central provision of the Environmental Justice for All Act.

At the Los Angeles forum, Mark Lopez, Co-Director of East Yard Communities for Environmental Justice, discussed several examples of polluters overriding community objections and evading responsibility, including Los Angeles’ China Shipping port terminal. Despite strong community concern over the terminal, the City of Los Angeles waived environmental standards for the project without notifying the public after China Shipping claimed the standards would make its business unprofitable. Lopez emphasized the importance of granting environmental justice communities the power to ensure bottom-up accountability.

“If we have community power to shed a light, that’s where we find ways to stop business as usual,” he said.

Rep. Grijalva (D-Ariz.), chair of the House Natural Resources Committee and champion of the Environmental Justice for All Act, said he worked to place empowering communities at the center of the bill. He compared the current legislation to his previous attempt to introduce an environmental justice bill, which he said failed because it was a “top-down” effort that was constructed without sufficient community input. In contrast, he said, the current bill was built on a foundation of community input from its inception.

Lopez summarized the importance of community input on environmental justice.

“Communities are the first to spot an issue, the first to smell an issue, to taste an issue, and they’re going to be the first to feel the impact,” he said. “A lot of these issues are normalized. Folks are made to believe that it’s okay for your everyday surroundings to kill you. A lot of the work is breaking through that and saying this isn’t normal, it’s been normalized, and we need to change this.”

Author: Joseph Glandorf