April
1999
Environmental
Justice: Understanding the Principles, Making the Connections
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On January 20, 1999, the Environmental
Justice Committee of the New York City Sierra Club group sponsored
a panel
to answer the
question, “What is environmental justice?” The history of the
environmental justice movement was discussed, along with issues of equity,
the jobs vs. environment fallacy, the role of mainstream environmental
organizations, the role of the government and the community in bringing
about change, examples of current campaigns and issues, and strategies
for action. An edited version of the main points of the panelists and
the moderator follows.
Leslie Lowe, NYC Environmental
Justice Alliance, moderator
I would like to give a little history. The EJ [Environmental
Justice] movement is what I call the intersection of the environmental
movement and the civil rights movement. This intersection has been energizing
and invigorating for the environmental movement. EJ is not just an issue
of low-income people of color benefiting from this movement; it is really
a question of re-energizing environmentalism, which was in danger of becoming
a land conservation movement for wealthy people. The environmental justice
movement is quite broad, encompassing both low-income rural communities
and inner-city communities of color.
In 1994, President Clinton signed Executive Order 12898, which was a directive
to federal agencies to examine their actions and to avoid disproportionate,
adverse impact on low-income populations and populations of color. This
executive order was proceeded by a number of studies and a good deal of
controversy. One of the leading studies was done by the United Church
of Christ’s Commission for Racial Justice, which documented that
you were more likely to live near a toxic facility if you were poor or
if you were a person of color. But color, not poverty, was the key factor:
even if you were an affluent person of color, you were still more likely
to live near a toxic facility. This was one of the factors that prompted
President Clinton to issue this directive. It is a policy, not a law.
People can’t use the directive independently to bring lawsuits. But
the directive has generated a lot of creative legal thinking and a number
of strategies. One of them is the application of Title Six of the Civil
Rights Act, which forbids discrimination in any federal program or federally
funded program, and which applies not just to federal agencies, but to
recipients of federal funds, like the states and the cities.
This has been one of the tools of the environmental justice movement.
But it would be a big mistake to think of the environmental justice movement
as just about Title Six. It is about equal enforcement of the environmental
laws and about tightening up the environmental laws because the loopholes
have been progressively getting larger, both due to decisions by the courts
and the inaction of regulatory agencies.
Samara Swanston, Greenpoint/Williamsburg
Watchperson Project
Environmental justice is about equitable decision-making.
EJ means that governmental decision-making includes all of the residents
of a state, all of the residents of the country. That means that public
land should advantage everybody, not just a few. That means that if it’s
difficult to get to public land, the government should make it easier.
The government should not facilitate the needs of one group to the disadvantage
of the other.
We talk a lot about environmental justice and say it’s about the
burdens that are a result of our use of the environment. We all place
burdens on the environment; remember, we all flush the toilet, and that
is placing a burden on the environment. But we also all want to enjoy
the benefits of the environment, like healthy air or having a place for
our children to play. A lot of the discussion has been focused on who’s
getting the burden—and it is disproportionately urban areas. For
example, air pollution is primarily an urban problem. However, not much
discussion has been focused on who’s getting the benefit, and that
is a very important environmental justice issue. People who live in New
York City are all funding, to the tune of $2.2 billion, the watershed
agreement that our comptroller [Alan Hevesi] said was seriously flawed.
And people under 40 will be financing or paying for the [New York State]
Environmental Quality Bond Act after I am dead. How much of that will
you actually benefit from? Of the $1.7 billion in funding provided by
the bond act, not one square inch [of land] has been purchased in a community
of color in New York City.
Equitable Tree-Hugging
I love trees—like everybody. I’m a tree-hugger,
and I believe that at least a few acres of land purchases [from the bond
act] ought to be made in New York City. The state has bought perhaps as
many as 50,000 acres of land upstate with $150 million of bond act money.
I work for the Greenpoint-Williamsburg Watchperson Project and we identified
a site for a park that could clearly meet the needs of the community,
where 156,000 people have less than half an acre of open space for each
1,000 residents. This piece of property [along the East River] was certified
by Governor Pataki to be eligible to be purchased with bond act money.
But the site has also been targeted for another garbage dump, even though
Greenpoint-Williamsburg already has half the waste- transfer station capacity
in New York City. The governor vetoed the environmental protection fund
money. We couldn’t even get a little garbage-strewn, 15-acre piece
of property for open space for a community that is largely of color in
Greenpoint-Williamsburg right on the waterfront, even though we could
buy tens of thousands of acres upstate.
So to me, environmental justice is about not only seeing who gets the
burdens—and we all should have our fair share of burdens because
we’re all placing burdens on the environment—it is also about
who’s getting the benefits, and making sure we’re getting what
we’re paying for when we fund environmental quality improvement.
If you talk to Native American activists, EJ for them started when there
was inequitable management of land when the Europeans came. For Native
Americans, environmental justice is intimately connected with property
and land and the ability to make decisions about what should be done with
their land. Environmental justice is about land. It is about what kind
of development takes place on our land. It is about how government regulates
the use of land. It is about how government permits people to pollute
the land. Environmental justice is about access to land and ownership
of land.
Jobs versus Trees
Environmental justice activists have often accused the
major environmental groups of caring more about trees than people. Well,
environmental justice is about trees and people and the connections between
trees and people. A study found that looking at trees lowers blood
pressure. We recognize that trees and people, environment and development,
are connected. And we want development of all kinds in urban areas. We
need it—schools, jobs, parks and community facilities. We need both
jobs and environmental quality. If we have our druthers, we want
environmentally benign or environmentally beneficial jobs; we don’t
want all the jobs that are environmentally degrading.
In fact, most of these [polluting] industries don’t create any jobs.
A sewage treatment plant doesn’t make any jobs. A garbage transfer
station creates a few jobs which are very dangerous. We are speaking out
for sustainable development in our communities for the future, as well
as sustainable greening of our communities. Greening is even better than
getting enforcement of environmental laws from the government because
it is an enforcement-free remediation method—it just cleans the air.
A 35-year-old tree cleans enough air to be the equivalent of 11,000 miles
of driving, and we don’t need any police to enforce that. So, we
want both, and we have to have both in urban areas, and balance
both in a sustainable way.
People who live in urban areas are already living in an environmentally
sustainable and sound way, better than folks who live in rural or suburban
areas. Not everyone in the world can live on a one-acre lot in a three-bedroom
house. If you are living in 900 square feet, then you are using fewer
resources, and that is more environmentally sustainable. Cities are more
environmentally sustainable, but that does not mean that we should get
all the environmental burdens. City dwellers who are taking mass transit
are making the world better. People who want to live an hour out of the
city on a one-acre plot are not making the world better.
Respectful Partnerships
The first lawsuits looking at environmental quality improvement,
access, and environmental benefits were not brought by any of the major
environmental groups. In the ’40s, ’50s and ’60s, people
of color community organizations went to court to get access to parks,
golf courses and pools. They brought lawsuits around transportation, in
the ’60s, to stop highways being built through communities. In the
’70s, they brought lawsuits on pollution. Not one of the major environmental
groups was there bringing the lawsuits—it was the community that
was fed up, that couldn’t take it anymore, and that said, “We
have got to find somebody to represent us.” The plaintiffs were all
regular old folks who said, “I can’t take it anymore. We have
to do something.”
Now we have major environmental groups as players on the scene, and some
of them are purporting to represent environmental justice. But their boards
of directors are all white, all white men. They don’t live in our
communities. They don’t know about our struggles, but they feel that
it is appropriate to sit down at tables with other governmental entities
or other bosses and make decisions about our communities. That is not
an example of a respectful partnership. A respectful partnership is when
these folks and their boards and their staff reach out to people who are
actually suffering—whether it’s a lack of open space or garbage
[facilities] or whatever—and say, “How can we partner? How can
we share our resources to advance your cause, because your cause is just?
When we sit down at the table, we want you right next to us. We’re
not going to purport to speak for you. And when we cut a deal, and we
sit down at the table and people are missing, we’re going to say,
‘Everybody isn’t here. We can’t move forward. Everybody
needs to be represented. Where is the ethnic balance, the geographic balance?’
” Any less than that is not a respectful partnership.
Money Talks
We also need good, strong campaign finance laws. A good
example is the bond act, which is a naked, outright giveaway to buy votes.
Six weeks before the election [in 1994], Governor Pataki made $817 million
in commitments, at least $100 million from the bond act. If we can’t
reform campaign funding, money is always going to be key. How can the
state enforce regulations against business if the Governor is saying,
“Wait a minute. They gave money to my campaign, so I can’t deny
that permit”? We are in a conundrum. If we had strong campaign reform
laws he would not be thinking about which Fortune 500 company was polluting
that also gave him money. He would be thinking about protecting our natural
resources, our air quality, our surface water and our land.
John Stouffer, Sierra Club Atlantic
Chapter
Environmental movements and campaigns have to be led by
the people affected, and have to be about the issues that are important
to people who are experiencing a lack of equity in terms of access to
open space and other kinds of things [e.g., exposure to toxins, proximity
to polluting facilities]. The issue of open space is an EJ issue. Open
space can have a significant impact on people’s lives: to be able
to have your kids play in a park, to see the breath-taking vistas of New
York City, even just to have access to natural resources like fish that
your family needs to survive. But how does open space come to be available
to the public in New York City, where even a relatively small garbage-strewn
lot in Williamsburg can sell for $5 to $20 million?
That [amount of money] is beyond the community in Williamsburg. The community
needs the hand of government to make the park come to fruition. The problem
is that there has been a lack of equity in how the money from the Environmental
Quality Bond Act has been allocated. In part this is because communities
don’t have a ready link to Governor Pataki or Commissioner Castro
that other communities might have. Or the issue isn’t on the tip
of the tongue of these communities’ elected officials, who may be
more concerned with jobs or schools. So what it takes is environmental
organizations working with communities and open space organizations on
efforts led by people in their own communities. We have to try to pull
together not just—in the case of the proposed park in Williamsburg—the
interests of Greenpoint and Williamsburg, but also to pull together the
interests of communities around New York City and New York State. Then
we can start to change the minds of some of the state agencies.
A Bogus Argument
The whole environmental justice vs. jobs or economic development
argument is just another version of the jobs vs. the environment argument,
that is bogus. Common sense tells you it is bogus, but some scientists
studied it and they also found it was bogus. One study found that environmental
protection had no impact on gross national product (GNP), or even a slight
positive impact. This is because you can actually make money building
pollution control equipment. Where does this false argument come from?
In part, it comes from the fact that the people that build the least desirable
kinds of facilities have, for a long time, known where to build them—where
you are going to get the least kind of resistance. They didn’t even
just say, “Well, maybe it’s a community of color so we’ll
try that.” They actually had consultants go out and do a study. These
consultants looked at a whole list of characteristics of communities that
were less likely to fight back. They found that it had to do with income,
religion and ethnic background. These folks know where to go with their
facilities, and when you start talking about this with those communities—where
the developers have been going for a long time and getting their facilities
permitted with very little difficulty—the developers are going to
fight. And the first specter these folks raise is that these communities
are low income, and we’ve got to do something to help them. We’re
just here to help.
Carlos Padilla, South Bronx
Clean Air Coalition
We who work in environmental justice [EJ] today,
as we know it, are trying to define EJ for ourselves. Are we talking about
trees and flowers and water, which are very important issues? Are we talking
about the dispensing of equal quality of life for everyone regardless
of income, race, creed, religion, or sexual orientation? Are we talking
about civil rights in the new millennium? Are we talking about it from
the government’s perspective, where we constantly find ourselves
up against these regulatory agencies which are really corporate hatchet
men? Is it their perspective of environmental justice—specifically,
that there are “acceptable levels”? Acceptable levels of what
and for whom? We [my organization and its members] have a different view
of environmental justice.
From our perspective, we talk about environmental injustice. When
you speak of environmental justice, you more or less give the impression
that things are going all right. But that is not the case. Environmental
racism/injustice is rearing its ugly head in our community. We are a community
under siege, a community where it is considered an opportunity to have
a minimum wage job which pays the rent and which allows these facilities
[waste transfer stations, incinerators, garbage dumps] to come into our
community. I call it the carrot and stick, because every time they want
to stick something down our throats, [they say], “Remember, you need
a job.” That’s the carrot. They say to us, “Sometimes you
have to put things in certain areas. You need industry. You have to flush
the toilet.” There is so much disregard for human life, for our schools
and our children, our daycare centers, our senior citizens, and they keep
shoving that job in our faces as the issue.
“What, do you want nothing?” they ask. “You people need
jobs. Look at you.” It is as if they say, “You’re trying
to stop that nuclear silo from being built in your community? Why? We’ll
let you ride on the nose of the missiles.” That is a little exaggerated,
but our politicians are more concerned with money and power than with
our communities. The politician will say, “I brought these jobs to
you.” Jobs that pay $6 or $7 an hour with minimal health benefits.
People come from outside of our community wearing their suits and ties
and they never see the toxins or the garbage. It’s the members of
our community who have to go back home with filth under their nails at
night, for $6 or $7 an hour.
We have trouble sometimes when we say, “For protection and justice,
go to your political leaders.” When we fought the Harlem River Yard,
we found out that our political leader received $100,000 from the developer.
So, it’s kind of moronic to go and tell him, “Stop this.”
So, we have taken this and other issues to the community. We have organized
in the community, gotten out the facts and asked people to write letters
to government officials. We need the support of people in other communities,
so those in power know that it isn’t just those in the affected community
that are concerned about corporate and government behavior.
When issues of environment move into our communities, we are often alone
in the fight. We have received help from the mainstream environmental
movement, but we have received the type of help that says, “Wait
a minute, these plants can’t stink real bad, they can only stink
a little bit.” Some people truly in their hearts thought that was
EJ. Corporate America today has EJ principles: they interpret communities
and school children as part of an environmental justice program while
they run plants that are polluting and poisoning the communities.
The issue of EJ is about human and civil rights in the millennium and
about all of us sharing in the quality of life—not making improvements
here at the expense of over there. We have this mindset, “Oh, that’s
over there.” But when dioxins are emitted from our incinerator in
the South Bronx, Queens is being battered. Nationally, respiratory cancer
and asthma rates are going through the roof in poor, urban areas. We’re
the canary in the cage. This is not just our issue. The rest of the nation
will pay a price for what happens in our communities. There is no roof
on the environment. You wouldn’t go to sleep with the back door open,
so why leave the back door open on the environment?
For more information on: The Greenpoint-Williamsburg Watchperson Project,
contact GWWP, 113 Berry Street, Brooklyn, NY 11211. Tel.: 718-384-3339;
Fax: 718-384-3394; New York City Environmental Justice Alliance, 271 West
125th Street, Suite 303, New York, NY 10027. Email: nyceja@aol.com.
Tel.: 212-866-4120; The South Bronx Community Coalition, Tel.: 718-993-4400;
Fax: 718-993-4260; The Sierra Club Atlantic Chapter, Tel.: 518-426-9144;
Fax: 518-426-3052.
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