Alabama

Energy Consumption

Alabama ranks 15th in the country of carbon dioxide (CO2)-polluting states, producing about 31 tons of CO2 per resident per year, and it ranks highest in per capita energy usage. About half of the state's energy consumption is due to the industrial sector. It also ranks fourth-highest in per capita gasoline consumption. The state has considerable natural gas and coal resources, which encourage its dependence on fossil fuels, though the plentiful rivers also have untapped hydroelectric potential, and many of the state's regions are perfectly suited to growing switchgrass for biofuel.

Waste Disposal

The Land Division of the Alabama Department of Environmental Management administers the state's waste management and remediation programs, with primary jurisdiction over the disposal of solid and hazardous waste and the remediation of contaminated sites. Specific major programs within the Land Division include hazardous waste, solid waste, remediation, scrap tire, and brownfields/voluntary cleanup. The state's rules for hazardous waste disposal follow those of the federal government, and the delegable portion of the federal Resource Conservation and Recovery Act is administered by the Land Division. The Land Division designates permitted landfills in the construction/demolition, industrial, and municipal waste categories, and it investigates illegal solid waste disposal sites and complaints regarding waste disposal.

The brownfields/voluntary cleanup program is set up to redevelop brownfield sites in Alabama. Brownfields are properties whose redevelopment or reuse may be complicated by the presence of hazardous substances, pollutants, or contaminants. Their safe redevelopment and remediation is intended to create jobs or to increase public space without doing so at the expense of greenfields. The program assists local governments and nonprofit organizations with the assessment, cleanup, and redevelopment of such sites.

Emelle Landfill

Emelle, Alabama, in Sumter County (on the Mississippi border), is home to the country's largest hazardous-waste landfill. A young, tiny town, Emelle had [Page 19]a population of only 31 (79 percent African American) as of the 2000 census, and it was not incorporated until the 1980s, despite continuous population since the previous century. The landfill is owned by Chemical Waste Management, Inc. (CWM), which has been accused of and used as a textbook example of environmental racism (the practice of shunting waste, especially hazardous waste, to areas populated by African American, Native American, and other minority communities). The CWM landfill was purchased in 1978 and the site has become the depository for approximately 6 million tons of waste. It is located near the top of the Eutaw Aquifer, which supplies water to much of Alabama. This part of the state is poor—about one-third of the residents live below the poverty level—and almost entirely African American, being located in the Black Belt soil region. Political considerations may have been involved in the landfill's inception, as one of the original owners was the son-in-law of former Alabama governor and presidential candidate George Wallace, a noted racist. Resource Industries later sued CWM for fraud and misrepresentation, winning an award of $91 million, though the general public of Alabama and Sumter County received nothing.

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