1. Clearly, ideas can change the world.

As a world view-altering concept, can

environmental justice do the same? A growing body of evidence reveals that
people of color and low-income persons have borne greater environmental
and health risks than the larger society. Hardly a day passes without the
media discovering a community of color fighting some type of environmental
threat. This was not always the case. For years, residents of the nation’s
ghettos, barrios, reservations, and rural “poverty pockets” watched helplessly
as their communities became the dumping grounds for garbage, toxic waste,
incinerators, smelters, sewage treatment plants, chemical industries,
highways, and a host of other polluting facilities.

2. “Environmental issues have been in the public eye for some time” However, it
was during the birth of the environmental justice movement when “the who
and the why” behind decisions impacting environment were bought to light.

3. What is environmental justice? Environmental justice is defined as the fair

treatment and meaningful involvement of all people regardless of race, color,
national origin, or income with respect to the development, implementation,
and enforcement of environmental laws, regulations, and policies. Fair
treatment means that no group of people, including racial, ethnic, or socio-
economic groups should bear a disproportionate share of the negative
environmental consequences resulting from industrial, municipal, and
commercial operations or the execution of federal, state, local, and tribal
programs and policies. Simply put, environmental justice means everyone
(not just the people who can “vote with their feet” and move away from threats
or individuals who can afford lawyers, experts, and lobbyists to fight on their
behalf) is entitled to equal protection and equal enforcement of our
environmental, health, housing, land use, transportation, energy, and civil
rights laws and regulations.

4. A new movement has taken root in the United States, and spread around the
world, that defines environment as “everything”—where we live, work, play,
worship, and go to school, as well as the physical and natural world. This
relatively new national movement is called the environmental and economic
justice movement. Three decades ago, the concepts of environmental justice
had not registered on the radar screens of environmental, civil rights, or social
justice groups. Nevertheless, one should not forget that Dr. Martin Luther
King, Jr. went to Memphis in 1968 on an environmental and economic justice
mission for the striking black garbage workers. The strikers were demanding
equal pay and better work condition. Of course, Dr. King was assassinated
before he could complete his mission.

The concept of environmental justice emerged in 1982, in the US case of

Bean v. Southwestern. The case involved a decision of North Carolina to
choose Afton, an impoverished and predominantly black community in
Warren Country, North Carolina,as the dumpsite for toxic waste landfill for
over 32, 000 cubic yards of polychorinatedbiphenyl (PCB)

5. Another landmark garbage dispute took place in 1978 in Houston, Texas

when African American homeowners began a bitter fight to keep a garbage
dump—also known as a “sanitary landfill” (it is hard to find anything sanitary
about a landfill where garbage is dumped) out of their suburban middle-
income neighborhood. Residents formed the Northeast Community Action
Group or NECAG. NECAG and their attorney, Linda McKeever Bullard, filed a
class action lawsuit to block the landfill from being built. The 1979
lawsuit, Bean v. Southwestern Waste Management, Inc., was the first of its
kind to challenge the location of a waste facility under civil rights law.
 From the early 1920s through 1978, over 80 percent of Houston’s household
garbage landfills and incinerators were located in mostly black neighborhoods
—even though blacks made up only 25 percent of the city’s population. These
findings were first written up in a 1979 report in support of the Houston
citizens’ lawsuit and published in Sociological Inquiry (1983). In the Bean v.
Southwestern Waste case, the lawyer, plaintiffs, and expert witness were all
African American. The case was argued in Houston, the only major city in the
United States that does not have zoning. Houston is also the world
headquarters of Browning Ferris, Inc. (BFI)—the company that proposed
building and operating the Whispering Pines sanitary landfill. The judge and
the lawyers for the waste company were all white. When the case went to trial
in 1985 (not 1885), the judge repeatedly referred to the black plaintiffs and the
residents of Houston’s black neighborhoods as “Niggras.” Anyone growing up
in the South knows that “Niggra” is another way some southerners call black
people the other “N” word.

The Bean v. Southwestern Waste lawsuit was filed three years before the

environmental justice movement was catapulted into the national limelight in
the rural and mostly African American Warren County, North Carolina. Oil
laced with the highly toxic PCBs (polychlorinated biphenyls) was illegally
dumped along the roadways in fourteen North Carolina counties in 1978. The
roadways were cleaned up in 1982. The state needed a disposal site for the
PCB-tainted soil and Warren County for some reason won the dubious prize
of hosting the dump.

The PCB-landfill decision became the shot heard around the world. In 1983, it
became the catalyst for mass mobilization against environmental injustice.
Over 500 protesters were arrested—including District of Columbia Delegate
Walter Fauntroy (chairman of the Congressional Black Caucus), Reverend
Benjamin F. Chavis, Jr., (Commission for Racial Justice), and Reverend
Joseph Lowery (Southern Christian Leadership Conference)—protesting
“Hunt’s Dump” (named for then Governor James Hunt). This marked the first
time any Americans had been jailed protesting the placement of a waste
facility.

6. A massive protest against it was led by Reverend Ben Chavis who coined the
term”environmental racism”. This concept was incorporated into the 1991
National People of Color Environmental Summit where the 17 Principles of
Environmental Justice was adopted.
7. As a result of the protest, two major studies (by the Government Accounting
Office an the United Church of Christ Commission on Racial Justuce
(UCCCRJ) on the distribution of environmental hazards were conducted. The
studies showed that the location of hazardous waste sites in the United
States were predominantly African American communities.
8. Another principal player in the advent of the environmental justice movement
was the sociologist, Robert Bullard. His book “Dumping in Dixie: Race, Class,
and Environmental Quality” added further empirical support to the two studies
abovementioned.
9. In the earky 1990s, the federal government of the United States began taking
action on the issue. The EPA established the Environmental Equity
Workgroup to examine the distributional issues raised by environmental
policies and enforcement. In 1992, the EPA also created the Office of
Environmental Justice.
10. In 1994, U.S. President Bill Clinton issued Executive Order No. 12, 898,
entitled “Federal Actions to Address Environmental Justice in Minority and
Low-Income Populations”. It directed government agencies to make
environmental justice a vital part of their mission by reviewing their programs,
policies, and activities. It also directed them to ensure that all portions of the
population have a meaningful opportunity to participate in the development of,
compliance with and enforcement of federal laws, regulations, and policies
11. From a movement that started in the United States, environmental justice has
become a worldwide concern with researchers examining the same issues in
other country.
12. While the environemnatl justice movement in the United States predominantly
dealt with race, inequality, and the environment, globally, the concept has
evolved and shifted in focus.