Environmental justice analysis : theories, methods, and practice

357 Pages·2001·2.756 MB·English

by  Feng Liu

1 Environmental Justice,
Equity, and Policies
1.1 THE ENVIRONMENTAL JUSTICE MOVEMENT
Aurora Castillo was a soft-spoken woman in her early sixties. A resident of East
Los Angeles, she led the efforts during the late 1980s to defeat California’s plan
to locate the state’s first hazardous-waste incinerator near her predominantly His-
panic neighborhood (Russell 1989). Not far away in south-central Los Angeles,
Sheila Cannon, a single parent and part-time nurse, spent several hours a day
mobilizing her community in an attempt to scrap the city’s siting proposal for a
garbage incinerator in the predominantly African-American neighborhood. It is
people like Aurora Castillo and Sheila Cannon who have defined the concept of
environmental justice.
The environmental justice movement is “a national and international movement
of all peoples of color to fight the destruction and taking of our lands and commu-
nities” (Lee 1992). It represents a diverse, multi-racial, multi-national, and multi-
issue coalition and calls for equal protection of all people from environmental harms,
regardless of their race, ethnicity, origin, and socioeconomic status. “As with other
social movements (i.e., antiwar, civil rights, women’s rights, etc.), the environmental
justice movement emerged as a response to industry and government practices,
policies, and conditions that many people judged to be unjust, unfair, and illegal”
(Bullard 1996:493). It has emerged from grassroots activism and organizations and
penetrated national and international arenas. It is this grassroots environmental
justice movement starting from the early 1980s that pushes the environmental justice
and equity issue into the national and international environmental policy agenda. It
is this grassroots environmental justice movement that has made a difference in the
environmental thinking and policy making in the U.S. and will continue do so
worldwide well into the 21st century.
The environmental justice movement originated in the struggles of people of
color against toxic waste dumps and waste facility sitings in their communities. A
milestone event occurred in a rural, low-income, predominantly black community
in Warren County, North Carolina, in 1982. At that time, the State of North Carolina
had decided to site a polychlorinated biphenyl (PCB) disposal landfill facility in
Warren County. This siting decision sparked strong opposition from local commu-
nities. Local residents, grassroots organizations, regional and national civil rights
groups, and politicians joined together to protest the decision. The protest to block
the PCB-laden trucks resulted in the arrest of more than 500 people, including Walter
E. Fauntroy, then Congressman from the District of Columbia; Dr. Benajamin F.
Chavis Jr., then Executive Director of the United Church of Christ (UCC) Commis-
sion for Racial Justice (UCC 1987).
Many believe that this was a seminal event for the environmental justice move-
ment, and triggered a series of studies investigating the association between envi-
ronmental risks and population distribution by income and race. The most influential
of these studies is a 1987 nationwide study of treatment, storage, and disposal
facilities (TSDFs) and uncontrolled toxic waste sites conducted by the UCC Com-
mission for Racial Justice. The report, titled Toxic Wastes and Race in the United
States, found that minorities and the poor bear a disproportionate burden of these
waste sites in their neighborhoods, and “(r)ace proved to be the most significant
among variables tested in association with the location of commercial hazardous
waste facilities” (UCC 1987:xiii).
When the Warren event and the UCC study gained national prominence, grass-
roots organizations protesting against environmental hazards in their communities
sprang up across the nation. Community protest organizations arose from Los Ange-
les to New York and from Houston to Chicago. In 1983, the city of Los Angeles
proposed the Los Angeles City Energy Recovery Project (LANCER), a network of
three 1,600-ton-per-day waste-to-energy incinerators (Russell 1989). The first incin-
erator, LANCER1, was to be constructed on a site in south-central Los Angeles, a
predominantly African-American neighborhood. Residents in the neighborhood
formed the Concerned Citizens of South-Central Los Angeles (CCSLA) to fight this
siting decision. They mobilized citizens in the community, and forged coalitions
with several grassroots groups, public interest law groups, and national environmen-
tal organizations. Their efforts led to the final withdrawal in 1987 after a commitment
of 5 years and $12 million. While the CCSLA was battling the city of Los Angeles,
the Mothers of East Los Angeles (MELA) was formed in 1984 to fight against the
state of California and the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).
The state’s first state-of-the-art hazardous-waste incinerator was sited in Vernon,
which was only a mile and upwind from several neighborhoods in East Los Angeles,
the city’s largest Latino community. Like CCSLA, MELA mobilized its residents,
garnered allies, and took to the street during the campaign. They targeted permit-
granting authorities, challenged the decision in court, and pressured legislators. In
1991, the project was withdrawn (Bullard 1993).
While residents of Los Angeles were targeting facility siting issues, local com-
munities elsewhere in the country were also mobilizing and organizing to combat
various other types of environmental problems in their backyards. In the south side
of Chicago, predominantly African-American community members founded People
for Community Recovery to deal with a wide range of environmental risks from air
and water pollution to toxics. In Harlem, New York, African-Americans formed the
West Harlem Environmental Action (WHEACT) to educate and mobilize residents
on the issues of air and water pollution, toxics, open space, transportation, and
landmark preservation. In Albuquerque, New Mexico, the Southwest Network for
Economic and Environmental Justice (SNEEJ) was formed in 1990 to represent over
fifty grassroots and indigenous organizations from eight states in the Southwest
(Moore and Head 1993). SNEEJ led the regional efforts in educating, researching,
organizing, lobbying, campaigning, demonstrating, and petitioning about a wide
range of environmental and economic justice issues in the communities of color
throughout the Southwest. In southern Louisiana, a bi-racial coalition of community,
civil rights, religious, labor, and environmental groups was formed to combat envi-
ronmental problems in the so-called Cancer Alley (Bryant 1989). Cancer Alley refers
to a roughly 80-mile industrial corridor along the Mississippi River between Baton
Rouge and New Orleans. In 1988, hundreds of people embarked together on the 11-
day, 100-mile “Great Louisiana Toxics March” through the area. In the following
year, Louisiana passed its first air quality law (Goldman 1991).
The environmental justice issue intensified in early 1990 and was elevated to
the national arena. The environmental justice movement challenged major national
establishments, including mainstream environmental groups and the EPA. In 1990,
the Gulf Coast Tenants Organization and the Southwest Organizing Project sent
letters to the ten largest environmental organizations, “calling for equitable distri-
bution of resources and for representation of people of color on the boards and staffs
of the major environmental players” (Moore and Head 1993:119). The letters also
challenged the environmental groups for their lack of accountability to minority
communities in the United States and Third World countries. In July 1991, the NEEJ
submitted an open letter to the EPA “that documented more than a decade’s lack of
enforcement of environmental regulations in communities of color in the region”
(Moore and Head 1993:120). In January 1990, a small group of scholars, researchers,
and grassroots activists attended the Michigan Conference on Race and the Incidence
of Environmental Hazards. After the conference, the Michigan Coalition was formed
and drafted a memorandum to the United States Department of Health and Human
Services, EPA, and the Council on Environmental Quality, which called for the
agencies’ involvement in environmental justice by means of research, risk commu-
nication, policy impact assessment, education, and policy development (Bryant and
Mohai 1992).
These local and regional efforts led to national organizing and coalition building.
In October, 1991, the First National People of Color Environmental Leadership
Summit was held in Washington, D.C. “This was the first time that over five hundred
participants came together from a variety of traditions and cultural and economic
backgrounds to engage each other for the purpose of building unity and effective
agenda for environmental justice and action” (Bryant and Mohai 1992:215). The
three-day Summit produced the Principles of Environmental Justice (Lee 1992). The
conference received widespread media attention. It signified that a national and
international movement for environmental justice had taken hold. Indeed, when the
first “Directory for People of Color Environmental Groups” was published in 1992,
it identified 205 organizations in 35 states, the District of Columbia, and Puerto Rico.
In response to the calls from the environmental justice movement, EPA began
dialogues with environmental justice advocates. In July 1990, EPA created its
Environmental Equity Workgroup. The Workgroup was charged to (1) “review
and evaluate the evidence that racial minority and low-income people bear a
disproportionate risk burden,” (2) “review current EPA programs to identify
factors that might give rise to differential risk reduction, and develop approaches
to correct such problems,” (3) “review EPA risk assessment and risk communi-
cation guidelines with respect to race and income-related risks,” (4) “review
institutional relationships, including outreach to and consultation with racial
minority and low-income organizations, to assure that EPA is fulfilling its mission
with respect to these populations” (U.S. EPA 1992a:7-8). In June 1992, the
Workgroup released the final, two-volume report titled Environmental Equity:
Reducing Risk for All Communities. In November 1992, EPA established the
Office of Environmental Equity, which was later renamed the Office of Environ-
mental Justice. On November 4, 1993, EPA formally announced creation of a
National Environmental Justice Advisory Council to “provide advice, consulta-
tions and make recommendations … directed at solving environmental equity
problems.” Environmental justice has evolved from the grassroots level and
entered the national environmental policy agenda.
As part of government response to the environmental justice challenges, gov-
ernment-sponsored conferences were held to address the environmental justice issue.
In December 1990, the National Minority Health Conference: Focus on Environ-
mental Contamination was held and represented the first comprehensive effort to
look at environmental justice issues from a scientific perspective (Johnson, Williams,
and Harris 1992). EPA, ATSDR (Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry),
and the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS) sponsored a
workshop on “Equity in Environmental Health: Research Issues and Needs” in North
Carolina in August 1992 (Sexton et al. 1993). The initial manuscripts discussed at
the workshop were published as a special issue in Toxicology and Industrial Health
in 1993. Other academic and non-academic journals also began to devote entire
issues to the subject of environmental equity and justice. The 1992 March/April
issue of EPA Journal was titled “Environmental Protection — Has It Been Fair?”
(Heritage 1992). The National Law Journal published a special report in September
1992. The report argued that environmental laws were not enforced equitably.
In the U.S. Congress, bills were introduced which addressed environmental
justice issues. The “Environmental Justice Act of 1992” was drafted by then Senator
Albert Gore and later re-introduced by Senator Max Baucus and Representative John
Lewis. The “Environmental Equal Rights Act of 1993” was introduced by Repre-
sentative Cardiss Collins. Gore’s bill ordered EPA to scrutinize human health in the
100 counties containing the highest total weight of toxic chemicals and if adverse
health effects were found, to impose a moratorium on future siting that would
compound the problem. Collins’ bill sought to “amend the Solid Waste Disposal
Act to allow petitions to be submitted to prevent certain waste facilities from being
constructed in environmentally disadvantaged communities.” These bills did not
succeed in passing the Congress.
Some state governments also responded to the environmental justice call. In
April of 1993, the Arkansas legislature enacted the first state law on environmental
justice and equity (Hart 1995). The Siting High Impact Solid Waste Management
Facilities Act recognized the disproportionate concentration of disposal facilities
in low or minority communities and sought to “prevent communities from becom-
ing involuntary hosts to a proliferation of high impact solid waste management
facilities” (Ark. Code Ann. 8-6-1501 (b)). The Act established a rebuttable pre-
sumption that prevents permitting the construction or operation of a high impact
waste management facility within twelve miles of an existing one. In addition to
Arkansas, Florida, Louisiana, Tennessee, and Virginia enacted environmental jus-
tice legislation, mandating data collection and analysis of environmental justice
issues. Environmental justice bills were also introduced in Georgia, South Caro-
lina, New York, and California.
On February 11, 1994, President Clinton issued Executive Order 12898, “Federal
Actions to Address Environmental Justice in Minority Populations and Low-Income
Populations.” He ordered each federal agency to “make achieving environmental
justice part of its mission” and identify and address “disproportionately high and
adverse human health or environmental effects of its programs, policies, and activ-
ities on minority populations and low-income populations in the United States and
its territories and possessions” (President Clinton 1994). In implementing this order,
federal agencies subsequently issued their environmental justice strategies. EPA has
made environmental justice one of its top priorities (see Table 1.1).
Originating in the facility siting issue, the environmental justice movement has
since broadened its agenda. The environmental justice movement has continued to
challenge the governments for unequal enforcement of environmental, civil rights,
and public health laws and differential exposure to environmental risks. Environ-
mental justice advocates have also attacked current policies and practice in risk
assessment, “discriminatory zoning and land use practices,” and “exclusionary pol-
icies and practices that limit some individuals and groups from participation in
decision making” (Bullard 1996:493). Recently, attention has also been given to
distributional impacts of transportation systems and urban sprawl.
1.2 ENVIRONMENTAL JUSTICE POLICIES
Executive Order 12898 identified several areas for addressing environmental justice:
strategic planning, research, public participation, and information dissemination. It
established an Interagency Working Group on Environmental Justice for providing
guidance to and coordination among federal agencies, and directed each federal
agency to develop an agency-wide environmental justice strategy. In April of 1995,
the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency released the document titled “Environ-
mental Justice Strategy: Executive Order 12898.” EPA’s guiding principles for envi-
ronmental justice include (U.S. EPA 1995a):
1. Environmental justice begins and ends in our communities. EPA will work
with communities through communication, partnership, research, and the
public participation processes.
2. EPA will help affected communities have access to information that will
enable them to meaningfully participate in activities.
3. EPA will take a leadership and coordination role with other federal agen-
cies as an advocate of environmental justice.
These agency strategies addressed major areas identified in the Executive Order
as relevant to their specific domains. The major themes for addressing environmental
justice concerns in these strategy plans include research, public participation, infor-
mation dissemination, development, enforcement, and pollution prevention.
Executive Order 12898 embodied a fundamental federal policy philosophy for
environmental justice: addressing environmental justice in the existing framework
of laws and regulations. Two laws that are very important for addressing environ-
mental justice are the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) of 1969 (42 U.S.C.
§4321 et seq.) and Title VI of the 1964 Civil Rights Act (42 U.S.C. §§2000d to
2000d-7). In December 1997, the Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ), which
has oversight of the federal government’s compliance with NEPA, issued Environ-
mental Justice Guidance under the National Environmental Policy Act. In February
1998, EPA issued an Interim Guidance for Investigating Title VI Administrative
Complaints Challenging Permits (U.S. EPA 1998a).
NEPA’s fundamental policy is to “encourage productive and enjoyable harmony
between man and his environment” (42 U.S.C. §4321). A primary purpose of NEPA
is to ensure that federal agencies consider the environmental consequences of their
actions and decisions as they conduct their respective missions (U.S. EPA 1998b).
For “major Federal actions significantly affecting the quality of the human environ-
ment,” the federal agency must prepare a detailed environmental impact statement
(EIS) that assesses the full range of potential effects of the proposed action and all
reasonable alternatives on human health and the environment. Regulations estab-
lished by both CEQ (40 CFR Parts 1500-1508) and EPA (40 CFR Part 6) require
that socioeconomic impacts associated with significant physical environmental
impacts be addressed in the EIS.
In the memorandum that accompanied Executive Order 12898, President Clinton
specifically recognized the importance of NEPA for addressing environmental justice
concerns. The memorandum identifies four important ways to consider environmen-
tal justice under NEPA (Council on Environmental Quality 1997):
• Each federal agency shall analyze the environmental effects, including
human health, economic and social effects, of federal actions, including
effects on minority communities and low-income communities, when such
analysis is required by NEPA.
• Mitigation measures identified as part of an environmental assessment
(EA), a finding of no significant impact (FONSI), an environmental
impact statement (EIS), or a record of decision (ROD) should, whenever
feasible, address significant and adverse environmental effects of pro-
posed federal actions on minority populations, low-income populations,
and Indian tribes.
• Each federal agency must provide opportunities for effective communi-
cation participation in the NEPA process.
• Review of NEPA compliance must ensure that the lead agency has appro-
priately analyzed environmental effects on minority populations, low-
income populations, or Indian tribes, including human health, social, and
economic effects.
The CEQ guidelines offer six principles for considering environmental justice
under NEPA (Council on Environmental Quality 1997:8-9):
1. Agencies should determine whether, in the area affected by the proposed
action, “there may be disproportionately high and adverse human health
or environmental effects on minority populations, low-income popula-
tions, or Indian tribes.”
2. Agencies should consider “the potential for multiple or cumulative expo-
sure to human health or environmental hazards in the affected population
and historical patterns of exposure to environmental hazards, to the extent
such information is reasonably available.”
3. “Agencies should recognize the interrelated cultural, social, occupational,
historical, or economic factors that may amplify the natural and physical
environmental effects of the proposed agency action.”
4. “Agencies should develop effective public participation strategies.”
5. “Agencies should assure meaningful community representation in the
process.”
6. “Agencies should seek tribal representation in the process in a manner that
is consistent with the government-to-government relationship between the
United States and tribal governments, the federal government’s trust
responsibility to federally-recognized tribes, and any treaty rights.”
Notwithstanding these environmental justice considerations in the NEPA pro-
cess, the power of NEPA to address environmental justice concerns has its limita-
tions. As the CEQ guidelines point out, “[t]he Executive Order does not change the
prevailing legal thresholds and statutory interpretations under NEPA and existing
case law. For example, for an EIS to be required, there must be a sufficient impact
on the physical or natural environment to be ‘significant’ within the meaning of
NEPA. Agency consideration of impacts on low-income populations, minority pop-
ulations, or Indian tribes may lead to the identification of disproportionately high
and adverse human health or environmental effects that are significant and that
otherwise would be overlooked” (Council on Environmental Quality 1997:9-10).
CEQ regulations require that significance be evaluated in terms of “intensity” or
“severity of impact.” The narrowed focus because of environmental justice consid-
erations could affect the determination (U.S. EPA 1998b). Again, these consider-
ations might not change the final decision, but they may introduce a very important
dimension that would make federal decision-making better and socially beneficial.
The CEQ guidelines clearly state the boundary: “Under NEPA, the identification of
a disproportionately high and adverse human health or environmental effect on a
low-income population, minority population, or Indian tribe does not preclude a
proposed agency action from going forward, nor does it necessarily compel a
conclusion that a proposed action is environmentally unsatisfactory. Rather, the
identification of such an effect should heighten agency attention to alternatives
(including alternative sites), mitigation strategies, monitoring needs, and preferences
expressed by the affected community or population” (Council on Environmental
Quality 1997:10). NEPA’s role is also limited for its future dimension, only dealing
with the proposed actions and decisions of federal governments.
Title VI of the 1964 Civil Rights Act is an important avenue for addressing
environmental concerns associated with the past, present, and future actions and
decisions undertaken by any entity that is a recipient of federal financial assistance.
This represents a much broader scope than that contained in NEPA. Title VI and
other related federal regulations prohibit recipients of federal financial assistance
from taking actions that discriminate on the basis of race, sex, color, national origin,
religion, age, or disability.
No person in the United States shall, on the ground of race, color, or national origin,
be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to dis-
crimination under any program or activity receiving Federal financial assistance.
Both the Equal Protection Clause of the United States Constitution and Title VI
prohibit intentional discrimination. The United States Supreme Court has ruled that
Title VI authorizes federal agencies to adopt implementing regulations that prohibit
discriminatory effects. On July 14, 1994, Attorney General Janet Reno issued a
memorandum, reiterating that “administrative regulations implementing Title VI
apply not only to intentional discrimination but also to policies and practices that
have a discriminatory effect.” The memorandum further states:
Individuals continue to be denied, on the basis of their race, color, or national origin,
the full and equal opportunity to participate in or receive the benefits of programs from
policies and practices that are neutral on their face but have the effect of discriminating.
Those policies and practices must be eliminated unless they are shown to be necessary
to the program’s operation and there is no less discriminatory alternative.
The Presidential memorandum accompanying Executive Order 12898 directs
Federal agencies to ensure compliance with the nondiscrimination requirements of
Title VI for all federally funded programs and activities that affect human health or
the environment. EPA’s Interim Guidance for Investigating Title VI Administrative
Complaints Challenging Permits demonstrates EPA’s commitment to use Title VI
as a means of redress for environmental justice. “Facially-neutral policies or practices
that result in discriminatory effects violate the EPA’s Title VI regulations unless it
is shown that they are justified and that there is no less discriminatory alternative”
(U.S. EPA 1998a:1-2)
A closely watched, high-profile case under Title VI is Seif vs. Chester Residents
Concerned for Quality Living. In this case, the U.S. Supreme Court agreed to decide
whether a group of Chester residents may sue the State of Pennsylvania for permit-
ting waste-treatment facilities in their communities that allegedly resulted in dis-
criminatory effects. The legal issue the court is asked to address is whether private
citizens can sue over a government agency’s regulations that allegedly result in racial
discrimination. Did the U.S. Congress intend to create a private course of action in
federal court that bypasses a federal agency’s review and enforcement process under
Section 602 of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 simply by alleging a
discriminatory effect in the administration of programs and activities of a federally
funded state or local agency? The Supreme Court ruled in 1983 that the federal civil
rights law allows such private lawsuits when intentional discrimination is alleged,
but it has never ruled directly on whether they are allowed over discriminatory effects.
Chester is a predominantly African-American, low-income community located
southwest of Philadelphia. It is home to four hazardous and municipal waste facilities:
the nation’s fourth largest trash-to-steam incinerator, the nation’s largest medical
waste autoclave, a sewage treatment plant, and sludge incinerator. EPA has found
that blood lead-levels in Chester’s children are “unacceptably high,” and that “both
cancer and non-cancer risks, e.g., kidney and liver disease and respiratory problems,
from the pollution sources at locations in the city of Chester exceed levels which
EPA believes are acceptable.”
Chester Residents Concerned for Quality Living (CRCQL) is the local grassroots
community organization that has been fighting for environmental justice since 1994.
In May 1996, CRCQL filed a complaint in the Federal District Court for the Eastern
District of Pennsylvania, accusing the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental
Protection (DEP) of discrimination by permitting waste facilities in this black com-
munity. Their suit was dismissed on the ground that there was no intentional dis-
crimination on the part of the DEP. CRCQL appealed his decision to the 3rd Circuit
Court. The Chester lawsuit makes no claims of adverse health effects suffered by
residents living near the plants, even though the plaintiffs cite statistics showing
higher mortality rates in Chester, when compared with all of Delaware County.
Instead, the lawsuit argues a narrower issue, that when the Pennsylvania Department
of Environmental Protection granted an operating permit to a fifth waste-treatment
plant in one Chester black-majority neighborhood, the residents suffered discrimi-
nation. In December 1997, the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals reversed the judge’s
ruling and reinstated the suit. “We hold that private plaintiffs may maintain an action
under discriminatory-effect regulations promulgated by federal administrative agen-
cies,” the appeals court said. The decision has already set precedent for the nation:
A community group has the right to seek enforcement of the civil rights statute and
more importantly they do not have to prove the intention to discriminate, which is
extremely difficult. On August 17, 1998, the Supreme Court dismissed the case as
moot at the request of the plaintiffs, who learned that the state agency had recently
revoked the permit for the proposed facility at the request of the permittee. Thus,
this important legal issue is left to a future case for resolution in the Court.
On May 1, 1997 the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s (NRC) Atomic Safety
and Licensing Board rejected, until further review, the application of the Louisiana
Energy Services (LES) for a license to build and operate a privately owned uranium
enrichment plant in the mostly poor and African-American Forest Grove and Center
Springs, Louisiana communities. Citizens Against Nuclear Trash (CANT), a local
citizens group, charged the company with environmental racism and filed a lawsuit
to block the plant. The judges found that the NRC staff had failed to consider
environmental and socioeconomic impacts of the proposed plant on the two nearby
African-American communities as required under NEPA and the 1994 Environmen-
tal Justice Presidential Executive Order 12898. The decision is significant in that it
is the first court ruling in the country whereby a permit was denied on environmental
justice grounds.
These developments turn into a demand for rigorous analysis of environmental
justice implications of public policies, programs, projects, and plans. This analysis is
equally important for governments at federal, state, and local levels, environmental
groups, environmental justice advocates, civic and grassroots groups, environmental
consulting companies, and industries. Any policies, programs, projects, and plans, with-
out careful analysis of their distributional impacts, could be and have been challenged.
1.3 ENVIRONMENTAL JUSTICE ANALYSIS
The importance of analysis and research has been demonstrated in Executive Order
12898, agency environmental justice strategies, court decisions, and the environ-
mental justice movement. Executive Order 12898 recognizes the importance of
research, data collection, and analysis in Section 3-3. It orders environmental human
health studies of “segments at high risk from environmental hazards, such as minority
populations, low-income populations and workers who may be exposed to substantial
environmental hazards,” and analysis of “multiple and cumulative exposures” to
environmental hazards. It directs each federal agency to “collect, maintain, and
analyze information assessing and comparing environmental and human health risks
borne by populations identified by race, national origin, or income.” The order
specifically identified data collection and analysis needs for areas surrounding federal
facilities and “areas surrounding facilities or sites expected to have substantial
environmental, human health, or economic effect on the surrounding populations,
when such facilities or sites become the subject of a substantial Federal environ-
mental administrative or judicial action.”
While environmental justice policies were formulated at the national and state
levels, the debate also intensified on several grounds. The 1992 EPA report on
Environmental Equity acknowledged “clear differences between racial groups in
terms of disease and death rates” and higher-than-average exposure of racial minority
and low-income populations to “selected air pollutants, hazardous waste facilities,
contaminated fish and agricultural pesticides in the workplace” (U.S. EPA 1992a:3).
However, the report did not find a clear cause–effect relationship between differential
environmental exposure and differential incidences, except for lead poisoning. “In
fact, there is a general lack of data on environmental health effects by race and
income” (U.S. EPA 1992a:3).
These findings apparently clashed with the belief of environmental justice advo-
cates, who saw their communities loaded with environmental hazards and their
residents suffering from a variety of illnesses and even cancers (Grossman 1992;
Lavelle 1992). This clash partially reflects two different perspectives on environ-
mental justice research (Sexton, Olden, and Johnson 1993). The community per-
spective, represented by environmental justice advocates, believes that there is strong
and sufficient evidence for environmental inequity and that environmental racism is
the cause. Therefore, policy intervention for redressing inequities and injustice is
justified, and environmental justice research is to help such intervention. The scien-
tific perspective, as held by some scientists, holds that there is still a paucity of data
for proving the cause–effect relationships and that the goals of environmental justice
are to identify, assess, compare, manage, and communicate environmental health
risks (Sexton, Olden, and Johnson 1993).
The fundamental differences between these two perspectives have created great
tension and debate between environmental justice advocates and the scientific com-
munity. Environmental justice advocates perceive scientists’ pursuit of the cause-
and-effect relationship as an excuse for delaying governmental action for addressing
their problems. They are frustrated that the scientific community cannot provide
clear answers to their questions, and confused when scientists themselves disagree