Environmental Justice Chronicle

In This Issue:
Profiles in Environmental Justice: Dollie Burwell / Rosa Parks / Peggy Shephard
Environmental Justice Milestones
How does Environmental Justice Improve Transportation Planning?
Environmental Justic Panel to Review New Jersey's Long Range Plan

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Profiles in Environmental Justice Dollie Burwell

The Environmental Justice movement was born in Warren County, North Carolina when Warren County was selected to be the final burial site for over 32,000 cubic yards of soil contaminated with PCBs (polychlorinated biphenyls). It has been stated time and time again that this area was selected not because it was the most environmentally suitable but because it was a poor, black, powerless community. The site, opened in late 1982, would go on to have a five-acre dump and a twenty- acre buffer between it and the community. There was also the promise of a cleanup of the area when the technology to do so became available. Even though there has been no direct link found between PCBs and physical or mental illness, it is speculated that the airborne particles have played a part in the continuously high cancer rate and the high occurrence of behavioral problems in the teenagers who attended the elementary school less than two miles from the site.

Dollie Burwell was born in Warren County and has lived less than three miles from the dump site for the past twenty years. She can remember the time before the landfills were in her community and has been working on local restoration ever since. Much of her time and energy is devoted toward forcing the government to take an active role in decontaminating this site. As one of the lead members of Warren County Concerned Citizens volunteer group, her efforts have begun to pay off. One million dollars was given in 1996 to fund a study and assessment on toxicity levels. That study and pressure from the community and other supporting organizations prompted the state government to pledge 15 million dollars in the budget to go towards a cleanup of the landfill using BCD technology. According to Ms. Burwell, that is just the first step; the budget still has to be approved. It will take another $9 million dollars to complete the task, which is not only to detoxify the land but to stimulate the economy. The one good thing that came from all of this is that it led the community to action. Between 1978, when the first illegal dumping took place, and 1982, when the site was opened, a record number of voters were registered and many people risked their lives and safety to protect their homes.

Rosa Parks
On December 1, 1955, Rosa Parks had finished her work as a seamstress in a Montgomery, Alabama, store and boarded a city bus to go home. She took a seat in the 11th row, behind the seats reserved exclusively for white passengers, as required by the city's segregation law at that time. Blacks were entitled to seats from the 11th row to the rear of the bus. However, the city law said that if the first 10 rows were filled, a white passenger could request a seat in the back of a bus. Rosa Parks noted that the bus was crowded with people standing in the aisle when several whites boarded. A white man told the driver he wanted a seat. The driver, who had the authority under city law, went to the rear of the bus and ordered Mrs. Parks and three other black passengers to get up. The others reluctantly stood. Rosa Parks, tired after a day of work, refused. Mrs. Parks said her decision to remain seated was based on her desire to be treated with decency and dignity. She was arrested.

Mrs. Parks, who worked for the local chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), asserted that she had not intended to provoke arrest. Her incarceration for violating the city segregation law was the catalyst for a mass boycott by blacks of the city's buses; ridership had been 70 percent black. That boycott brought the young minister, Martin Luther King, Jr., to national prominence as the head of the Montgomery Improvement Association, the group that organized and led the protest. The Montgomery Improvement Association also filed a federal suit challenging the constitutionality of the segregation law on February 1, 1956. The boycott continued for 382 days, until December 20, 1956, when the U.S. Supreme Court ordered city officials to desegregate their buses. The Parks family moved to Detroit, Michigan, soon after the conclusion of the bus boycott because of continuing threats of violence by the Ku Klux Klan as well as by angry individuals who held Mrs. Parks responsible for the desegregation of city buses. She was hired by Michigan Congressman John Conyers, Jr., as a secretary and administrative assistant and in later years, became a spokeswoman for civil rights issues.

Rosa Parks, who ignited the modern civil rights movement in the United States when she refused to surrender her seat on a bus , died on October 24, 2005. On December 1 of 2005, transit companies throughout the country honored Mrs. Parks by leaving the first seat open on all buses.

Peggy Shepard
For her groundbreaking work, Peggy Shepard was honored with the 2003 Heinz Award in the Environment category. A former Democratic District Leader, she represented West Harlem from 1985 to April 1993, and served as President of the National Women's Political Caucus-Manhattan from 1993 to1997. In 1988, Ms. Shepard co-founded West Harlem Environmental Action (WE ACT); a non-profit organization working to improve environmental policy, public health and quality of life in communities of color. Based in Northern Manhattan, WE ACT advances its mission through research, public education, advocacy, organizing, government accountability, litigation, legislative affairs and sustainable economic development. WE ACT works for environmental and social justice on issues of land use, waterfront development, brownfields redevelopment; transportation and air pollution, open space and environmental health. WE ACT was New York's first environmental justice organization created to improve environmental health and quality of life in communities of color.

In January 2002, Ms. Shepard was elected the first female chair of the National Environmental Justice Advisory Council (NEJAC) to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, and is co-chair of the Northeast Environmental Justice Network, a group that she represents on the board of the Environmental Justice Fund. Ms. Shepard is a founding member of the National Black Environmental Justice Network. She is a member of the National Advisory Environmental Health Sciences Council of the National Institutes of Health and of the Environmental Justice Advisory Committee to the NYS Department of Environmental Conservation. She is a frequent lecturer at universities and conferences on issues of environmental justice and community-based health research, and has written extensively in both fields. She is also a board member of the national and NYS Leagues of Conservation Voters, Environmental Defense, NY Earth Day, Citizen Action of NY, the Children's Environmental Health Network, and Healthy Schools Network, Inc. Ms. Shepard is an advisory board member of the Bellevue Occupational and Environmental Medicine Clinic; the Harlem Center for Health Promotion and Disease Prevention; and Mt. Sinai's Children's Environmental Health Center.

Environmental Justice Milestones
Over the past two decades, environmental justice and environmental racism have become household words. Many of the on-theground environmental struggles in the 1960s and through the beginning of the new millennium have seen the quest for environmental and economic justice become a unifying theme across race, class, gender, age, and geographic lines. A potent grassroots community-driven movement has emerged out of these small and seemingly isolated environmental struggles.

After more than a decade of intense study, targeted research, public hearings, grassroots organizing, networking and movement building, environmental justice struggles have taken center stage. Yet all communities are still not created equal. Some neighborhoods, communities and regions have become the dumping grounds for all kinds of toxins. Some progress, however, has been made in mainstreaming environmental protection as a civil rights and social justice issue.

A dozen environmental justice networks exist that were not around in 1991. The last decade has seen some positive change in the way groups relate to each other. We now see an increasing number of community-based groups, environmental justice networks, environmental and conservation groups, legal groups, faith-based groups, labor, academic institutions and youth organizations teaming up on environmental and health issues that differentially impact poor people and people of color. Environmental racism and environmental justice panels have become "hot" topics at national conferences and forums sponsored by law schools, bar associations, public health groups, scientific societies, professional meetings and university lecture series.

In just a short time, environmental justice advocates have had a profound impact on public policy, industry practices, national conferences, private foundation funding, research and curriculum development. In addition, groups have been successful in blocking numerous permits for new polluting facilities as well as forced government and private industry buyout and relocation of several communities impacted by Superfund sites and industrial pollution.

Environmental justice activists and academicians have been key actors, convincing the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (under the first Bush Administration) to create an Office on Environmental Equity. Many of the policies, programs and initiatives that began under the first Bush administration were continued and expanded under the Clinton Administration. Clearly, environmental justice is not a Republican or Democratic issue. It's just about justice.

The following pages are a timeline of some significant Environmental Justice milestones.

1964
U.S. Congress passes the Civil Rights Act. Title VI prohibits use of federal funds to discriminate based on race, color, and national origin.

1968
In April, Martin Luther King, Jr. leads black Memphis sanitation workers in garbage strike. Dr. King was assassinated on April 4, 1968 before he could complete his environmental and economic justice mission in Memphis, Tennessee.

1969
Ralph Abascal of California Rural Legal Assistance files suit on behalf of six migrant farm workers that ultimately resulted in the ban of the pesticide DDT. Congress passes the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA).

1971
The Presidents' Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ) annual report acknowledges racial discrimination adversely affects urban poor and quality of their environment.

1978
Houston Northwood Manor subdivision residents protest the Whispering Pines Sanitary Landfill.

1979
Linda McKeever Bullard files Bean v. Southwestern Waste Management, Inc. lawsuit on behalf of Houston's Northeast Community Action Group, the first civil rights suit challenging the siting of a waste facility.

1982
Warren County residents protest the siting of a polychlorinated biphenyl (PCB) landfill in Warren County, North Carolina. It is also noteworthy that it was in Warren County that Dr. Benjamin Chavis coined the term "environmental racism.”

1983
The U.S. General Accounting Office (GAO) publishes Siting of Hazardous Landfills and Their Correlation with Racial and Economic Status of Surrounding Communities. The GAO report found that three out of four of the off-site commercial hazardous waste facilities in EPA Region IV are located in African American communities. However, African Americans make up just one-fifth of the region's population.

EPA, DOJ, DOD & Olin Chemical Company settle a $25 million lawsuit with black residents in Triana, Alabama. The tiny all-black community was contaminated with DDT from Redstone Arsenal Army base and was dubbed the "unhealthiest town in America."

1986
West Harlem Environmental Action's community organizing begins to combat the harmful impacts of the North River Sewage Treatment Plant on the people of the West Harlem community.

1987
United Church of Christ Commission for Racial Justice issues the famous Toxic Wastes and Race in the United States report, the first national study to correlate waste facility siting and race.

1988
Revielletown buyout and relocation by Georgia Pacific (now Georgia Gulf) takes place.

1989
Morrisonville, Louisiana relocation (Dow Chemical Company buyout) occurs. The Great Louisiana Toxic March led by the Gulf Coast Tenants and communities in "Cancer Alley"(corridor between Baton Rouge and New Orleans) takes place. The march brought public attention to toxic living conditions in "Cancer Alley."

1989
Indigenous communities, organizations, traditional societies and tribal nations begin meeting on environmental and natural resource extraction issues. This leads to national meetings in 1990 on the Dine' (Navajo) territory and in 1991, near the sacred Bear Butte in South Dakota that ultimately formed the Indigenous Environmental Network, a grassroots-lead indigenous voice in regional, national and international forums on environmental and economic justice issues.

1990
The Clean Air Act is passed by U.S. Congress.

Bush EPA administrator William Reilly establishes the Environmental Equity Work Group.

The first of four meetings on Environmental Justice is held between grassroots leaders and EPA Administrator Riley.

The Indigenous Environmental Network (IEN) is established.

1991
On December 30, El Pueblo para el Aire y Agua Limpio v. County of Kings judge rules that the permit process for toxic waste incinerators is flawed because of the failure to translate documents into Spanish meant the affected public was not "meaningfully involved" in the environmental review; the case was brought by the Center on Race, Poverty & the Environment.

In October, the First National People of Color Environmental Leadership Summit is held in Washington, DC, attracting over 1,000 participants.

1992
The "Environmental Justice Act of 1992" is introduced into Congress by Congressman John Lewis (DGA) and Senator Albert Gore (D-TN).

The first Title VI administrative complaint is filed with the U.S. EPA by St. Francis Prayer Center in Flint, Michigan, against Genessee Power.

The Deep South Center for Environmental Justice is founded at Xavier University of Louisiana.

The Governmental Accountability Campaign persuades the U.S. EPA and the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry (ATSDR) to clean up waste sites and support sustainable economic development efforts, and enforce laws and regulation in communities.

1993
The Environmental Justice Act is redrafted and reintroduced in 1993 by Congressman Lewis (D-GA) and Senator Max Baucus (D-MT). The U.S. EPA establishes the 25-member National Environmental Justice Advisory Council (NEJAC).

The first two EPA Title VI (Civil Rights Act) administrative complaints are filed against the MS Dept of Environmental Quality and LA Department of Environmental Quality. Other network members follow and file administrative Title VI complaints against state agencies and the EPA.

The first wave of Title VI administrative complaints are filed with the U.S. EPA by Tulane Environmental Law Clinic and Sierra Club Legal Defense Fund in New Orleans, on behalf of groups in Louisiana and Mississippi.

1994
The Environmental Justice Resource Center at Clark Atlanta University is formed in Atlanta, Georgia.

The Environmental Justice Legal Clinic is formed at Texas Southern University Thurgood Marshall School of Law in Houston, Texas.

In February, President Bill Clinton issues Executive Order 12989, "Federal Actions to Address Environmental Justice in Minority Populations and Low- Income Populations."

1996
The Washington Office on Environmental Justice facilitates environmental justice leaders' participation in the United Nations Conference on Human Settlements, Habitat II, Istanbul, Turkey.

The U.S. EPA Superfund Relocation Roundtable Meeting is held in Pensacola, Florida. Because of the hard work of Margaret Williams and local grassroots leaders, the EPA decides to relocate the entire community of 358 African American and/or low-income households living next to the Escambia Wood Treatment Plant in Pensacola, Florida.

1997
President Clinton issues Executive Order 13045 protecting Children from Environmental Health and Safety Risks.

Memphis TN Concerned Citizens Committee is held. The resolution requires posting of hazardous signs at all Superfund sites.

1998
The Florida Legislature passes the 1998 Environmental Equity and Justice Act.

1999
Congressional Black Caucus Chair James Clyburn (D-SC) convenes "Environmental Justice: Strengthening the Bridge Between Economic Development and Sustainable Communities” at Hilton Head, South Carolina.

2000
Macon County Citizens for a Clean Environment successfully wage a major fight to stop the siting of a mega-landfill near historic Tuskegee University campus. Judge Orlofsky rules in South Camden Citizens in Action v. NJ Dept of Environmental Protection that compliance with environmental laws does not equal compliance with civil rights laws, and determines that NJ has violated Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the first EJ case to prevail under this theory. The decision is later overturned by the Third Circuit Court on grounds that plaintiffs do not have the right to enforce EPA's disparate impact regulations.

2002
Norco, Louisiana's Diamond Community, secures full relocation and buyout by the Shell Chemical Refinery.

The second People of Color Environmental Leadership Summit is convened in Washington, DC.

2005
The 50th Anniversary of the Montgomery Boycott is marked.

How does Environmental Justice Improve Transportation Decision-Making?
Concern for environmental justice should be integrated into every transportation decision... from the first thought about a transportation plan to postconstruction operations and maintenance. Properly implemented, environmental justice principles and procedures improve all levels of transportation decision-making. This approach will guarantee:

Better transportation decisions that meet the needs of all people.

Transportation facilities that fit more harmoniously into communities.

An enhanced public-involvement process, stronger community-based partnerships, and opportunities for minority and low-income populations to learn about and improve the quality and usefulness of transportation in their lives.

Improved data collection, monitoring, and analysis tools that assess needs and potential impacts on minority and low-income populations.

Partnering opportunities with other public and private programs to leverage transportation-agency resources as a means of achieving a common vision for communities.

Less disproportionately high and adverse impacts on minority and low-income populations.

Fewer unavoidable impacts by identifying concerns early in the planning phase and by providing offsetting initiatives and enhancement measures to benefit affected communities and neighborhoods.

Environmental Justice Panel to Review New Jersey's Long Range Plan
The New Jersey Department of Transportation (NJDOT) and NJ Transit are preparing the latest update to the New Jersey Long-Range Transportation Plan, known as Transportation Choices 2030. To serve as a true statewide plan, the plan will need to provide policies that consider all the state's residents. In order to meet this goal, NJDOT and NJ Transit have created an Environmental Justice Advisory Panel.

Recognizing that numerous needs and concerns must be addressed in the plan, NJDOT and NJ Transit have initiated a series of advisory panels to focus on the different aspects of transportation planning in the state. The Environmental Justice Advisory Panel will focus on ensuring that transportation benefits are shared among all segments of New Jersey's population.

Questions this panel will be considering are:
Will the plan's benefits be shared by those communities with high concentrations of low-income or minority residents?

What are some of the particular transportation needs of EJ targeted populations, and will they change by 2030?

What policies and programs are most promising for addressing these needs in the plan?

For further information go to www.njchoices.com This web site also provides an opportunity to comment on EJ and other issues. (See "It's Your Turn" at the end of the Critical Issues discussion).

Environmental Justice Chronicle
is a publication of theDelaware Valley Regional Planning Commission, Office of Public Affairs, Candace Snyder, Director Kendall Miller, Manager of Public Involvement, Editor