Discrimination, Environmental Hazards

The Environmental Protection Agency

Initially, the main concern of the U.S. environmental movement focused on pollutants that harmed human health and degraded the natural environment. The [Page 395]Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) was established in 1970 to enforce standards and practices that would monitor environmental hazards that polluted the air, water, or land. The Superfund, the federal environmental program established to address abandoned hazardous waste sites, was specifically set up to identify the most toxic sites and enforce clean-up by the polluters. Environmental protection and cleanup was not equitably distributed, however.

Minority and lower-income people recognized that their communities were carrying the burden of environmental hazards, compared with White and middle-class communities. This burden included exposure to noxious air pollution and contaminated land, along with proximity to hazardous waste industries; the result was adverse health conditions disproportionately affecting the health and mortality of minority communities. The clean-up of contaminated lands occurred more slowly and less efficiently in non-White communities and tribal lands. Additionally, the fines and penalties assessed to polluting industries were disproportionately lower if the pollution was in non-White, poor communities when compared with White and wealthier communities. These practices were recognized as environmental racism.

In 1990, the EPA established the Environmental Equity Workgroup to address the claims of environmental racism. Environmental racism was substantiated by this workgroup, and several recommendations were established. The most significant action was the establishment of the Office of Environmental Equity. Two years later, in 1994, President Bill Clinton signed Executive Order (EO) 12898, “Federal Actions to Address Environmental Justice in Minority Populations and Low-Income Population.” The name of the Office of Environmental Equity was changed to Office of Environmental Justice (OEJ).

The Environmental Justice Movement

With the signing of EO 12898, all government agencies were required to make environmental justice part of their mission by focusing on outcomes in their action plans, initiatives, policies, and practices. This order did not have the effect of law nor could it be enforced. Many have attempted to use civil rights laws to oppose unfair and discriminatory acts and correct environmental inequities. However, many of those lawsuits have been unsuccessful because it is difficult to show intent to discriminate. The concepts of segregation and migration of minority communities and the poor have been reframed by critics of EO 12898 as self-selected determinants. Researchers and policymakers who support environmental justice look to other factors that result in environmental inequity. They take as their basic assumption that people don't intentionally choose to expose their families and loved ones to toxic environments.

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