Ecology and Environmental Justice in Context: The Sierra Club's Toxic Tour of Memphis

Author(s): Charles Nilon

Source: Bulletin of the Ecological Society of America, Vol. 88, No. 2 (April 2007), pp. 199-
203
Published by: Wiley on behalf of the Ecological Society of America
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/bullecosociamer.88.2.199
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 Eco-justice
Ecology and Environmental Justice in Context:
The Sierra Club’s Toxic Tour of Memphis

Background

As part of the focus on environmental justice and ecology at the 2006 ESA Annual Meeting, Rita Harris
(Sierra Club Environmental Justice Program), Stanley Abell (Lemoyne-Owen College), and I organized a field
trip titled, Toxic Tour of Memphis. Ms. Harris leads the Sierra Club’s environmental justice project in Memphis,
one of eight locations in the Sierra Club’s Environmental Justice Program. Dr. Abell is an ecologist and a faculty
member at Lemoyne-Owen College, a historically black college in Memphis (Fig. 1). Our objectives on this trip
were to:

1) Provide ESA members with an overview of environmental justice issues in Memphis.

2) Describe how Memphis residents are addressing environmental justice issues.
3) Discuss the role that ecologists can play in addressing environmental justice issues.

Fig. 1. Rita Harris and Stanley Abell led the field trip.

Contributions April 2007 199

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Contributions

Environmental justice issues in Memphis

Memphis has a long history of the production of agricultural chemicals. Facilities to produce these chemicals,
transport them, and dispose of them ring the historically black neighborhoods of Memphis. Harris and Abell
explained the historical context of the environmental injustice in Memphis: black residents were historically
excluded from jobs that produced agricultural chemicals, while black neighborhoods were heavily impacted by
emissions and waste from these industries. Concerns about chemical spills and accidents at factories led to the
Sierra Club’s initial involvement in the environmental justice project. During our field trip, smoke was still vis-
ible from an explosion and fire at an agricultural chemical factory the previous evening (Fig. 2) (Drake 2006).

Fig. 2. Smoke from an explosion and fire at an agricultural chemical plant was a re-
minder of the environmental justice issues imbedded in Memphis neighborhoods.

We visited the Douglass neighborhood on the city’s northeast side. Ms. Harris described the strong sense of
community in this economically diverse neighborhood and the variety of environmental justice issues faced by
residents. During a visit to Douglass Park she described the Sierra Club’s efforts to form a citizen-based monitor-

200 Bulletin of the Ecological Society of America

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ing program that allowed Douglass residents to identify the pollutants emitted by the Penn Specialty Chemicals
plant that borders the park (Fig. 3). Penn Chemical produces specialty chemicals used in a number of manufac-
turing processes. The emissions from the plant have raised concerns among local residents.

Fig. 3. Douglass Park and nearby Douglass Elementary School are in the heart of the
Douglass neighborhood and adjacent to a site that was owned by Penn Chemicals for the
production of “specialty chemicals.”

After leaving Douglass Park we drove through neighborhoods bordering the Wolf River and its tributary, Cy-
press Creek. Velsicol Chemical Corporation used Cypress Creek for wastewater disposal prior to 1963. During
the 1960s the creek was channelized and sediment from the stream channel was used as fill in several backyards
that bordered the creek. There are concerns about residents’ exposure to aldrin, dieldrin, and endrin ‹http://www2.
state.tn.us/health/CEDS/PDFs/fs-e-cypresscreekarea3.pdf#search=%22cypress%20creek%20velsicol%22›

The final site on our visit to the Douglass community was to the area surrounding the North Hollywood Dump,
a Superfund site often described as the most dangerous site in Tennessee (Leppanen et al. 1998). The dump was
operated from 1930 to 1967, with illegal dumping occurring through 1980. Residue from the production of chlor-
dane, heptacholor, aldrin, endrin, dieldrin, and lindane were in the dump and leached into an adjacent pond used
by local residents for fishing and other activities. (Leppanen et al. 1998, Townsend 2005).

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Contributions

Fig. 4. A local oil refinery impacts a large park along the Mississippi River and
several Memphis neighborhoods.

Addressing environmental justice issues

The community response to environmental injustice issues has focused on raising awareness and encouraging
participation by community residents. The Sierra Club uses a number of approaches to engage local residents in
environmental justice issues. Harris described how census data for Memphis neighborhoods and emissions data
from EPA and the Tennessee Department of Health were combined to show that both low-income people and
people of color were impacted by emissions, contaminated soils, and threats of chemical spills. She described
how this information was combined with information form Velsicol’s risk management plan to document who
would be at risk from a toxic spill involving a rail car. She described the “Bucket Brigade” project that the Sierra
Club started in the Douglass neighborhood where residents collected data to provide a snapshot of emissions from
the five plants surrounding their community. All of these have been successful in involving residents and local
government officials in strategies to address environmental justice issues ‹http://www.sierraclub.org/environmen-
tal_justice/projects_tn_bucket.asp›.

Abell described Lemoyne-Owen College’s role in organizing and hosting community awareness programs
on environmental justice issues in Memphis. Student groups supported by the United Negro College Fund and
by ESA’s SEEDS program have done outreach visits in local neighborhoods to identify threats and inform com-
munity residents. Funds from several small grants have trained local residents, including high school students, in
monitoring techniques needed to help address environmental justice issues ‹http://www.esa.org/seeds/newslet-
ter/sep06/print.php›.

202 Bulletin of the Ecological Society of America

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Ecologists and environmental justice

Our field trip concluded with a tour of broader environmental issues in Memphis, including a toxic waste
incinerator and an oil refinery adjacent to the Mississippi River and associated parks (Fig. 4). We ended the trip
in a riverfront park and initiated a discussion about the role that ecologists can play in addressing environmental
justice issues in Memphis and other places. We started with an overview of the ecological issues we observed
and agreed that environmental justice issues raise interesting ecological questions. Several examples of funded
projects were discussed, and the unique research questions raised in addressing environmental justice issues
were described. Ms. Harris noted the importance of working with local residents and communities in addressing
their concerns and needs, noting that many agencies are aware of the differences between token participation of
residents and true participation of residents. She also stated that ecologists bring needed skills to environmental
justice issues.

The “Toxic Tour of Memphis” was the first ESA field trip focused on linking ecology and environmental jus-
tice. ESA’s Environmental Justice Working Group hopes that these and similar trips will become a part of future
ESA meetings

Literature cited

Charlier, T. 2006. Tests find Cypress pollution is limited. The Commercial Appeal. 9 August 2006; section B:1.
Drake, S. 2006. Boom, then flames. Anxious families get good news: no serious injuries at Pro-Serve. The Com-
mercial Appeal. 5 August 2006; section A:1.
Leppanen, C. J., P. M. Blanner, R. S. Allan, W. H. Benson, and K. J. Maier. 1998. Using a triad approach in the
assessment of hazardous waste site leaching from a superfund site to an adjacent stream. Environmental Toxi-
cology and Chemistry 17:2106–2113.
Townsend, P. K. 2005. North Hollywood Dump Superfund site, Memphis, Tennessee. Society for Environmental
Anthropology. Environmental Anthropology Publications. ‹http://www.sfaa.net/eap/memphis.pdf›

Charles Nilon
Department of Fisheries and Wildlife Sciences
University of Missouri-Columbia
Columbia, MO 65211-7240
(573) 882-3738
E-mail: nilonc@missouri.edu

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