Environmental Justice Stalled, Report Finds

Federal regulations have an impact on the development of technologies, the finances of companies, the competitive playing field and how many lawyers are on a company's staff to interpret the rules. These are the practical, known effects of regulations on business.

The rules also have an effect on communities when it comes to important decisions about where to locate a hazardous-waste facility, an industrial plant or a refinery, especially if race is involved.

A recent report by the United Church of Christ in Cleveland suggests that decisions made by federal, state and local governments, as well as by companies, have penalized minority groups. The evidence: There are a disproportionate number of hazardous-waste facilities near where they live.

The report, a reprise of a 1987 examination of the problem, found that over the past 20 years, minorities have been subjected to excessive levels of toxic pollutants from sites that have negatively affected their health and, often, property values.

The report, "Toxic Wastes and Race at Twenty," cites "clear evidence of racism where toxic waste sites are located and the way government responds to toxic contamination emergencies" in minority communities. Many communities also face new threats "because of government cutbacks in enforcement, weakening health protection, and dismantling the environmental justice regulatory apparatus," the study said.

Using updated research and new methods, the study found that 56 percent of the people who live within three kilometers (1.86 miles) of one of the nation's 413 hazardous-waste facilities are Hispanics, blacks, Asians, Pacific Islanders or American Indians.

The number jumps to 69 percent in areas with multiple facilities.

The study shows that the 1987 report, which relied on cruder measures such as Zip codes, underestimated the number of people of color living near hazardous-waste sites.

Robin Saha, a professor at the University of Montana's Environmental Studies Program who worked on the report, said minority communities became "the path of least resistance" as industry's entry to white neighborhoods was blocked by not-in-my-backyard opposition.

In 1994, President Bill Clinton addressed the issue of race in the placement of facilities when he ordered 11 federal agencies to identify and address the effects of their policies on minority and low-income populations in the United States.

Since then, there have been legal battles, the flowering of a grass-roots advocacy movement and differences over how to approach the problem, depending upon who has been in the White House.

Even the concept of "environmental justice" itself is the source of disagreement: The term originally meant paying attention to underprivileged populations who might be overexposed to pollution and toxics. The Bush administration has reinterpreted it as an effort to protect all people.