By Patricia Houser
For Nature’s Sake
Patricia Houser
Some people are exposed to more pollution in Connecticut than others. Some neighborhoods, because of the number of smokestacks and landfills and highways nearby, have air quality problems that put every resident there (even before birth) at a higher-than-average risk for heart disease, diabetes, asthma and more.
That disturbing and uneven distribution of pollution in Connecticut, and the US as a whole, is significantly due to historic, race-based real estate and zoning policies. (For examples, see the March 2022 New York Times article, “How Air Pollution Across America Reflects Racist Policy from the 1930s.”)
As we approach our second official celebration of “Juneteenth” on June 19, a holiday commemorating the end of slavery, it seems a good time to reflect on how bias and pollution have combined to burden low-income groups and people of color, locking them into neighborhoods and homes that are, literally, toxic.
Some key events and facts related to the need for greater “environmental justice” are highlighted in this quiz:
Question 1: So-called “Cancer Alley” is a notoriously toxic corridor in the US – an 85-mile stretch including more than 150 petrochemical plants and refineries, with a majority Black population where, according to the Environmental Protection Agency, an individual is 95 percent more likely to get cancer from air pollution than the average American.
Where is cancer alley? a) Louisiana, b) Texas, c) Oklahoma, d) Illinois
Question 2: Starting in 2014, residents in this majority Black city complained for 18 months about foul smelling and discolored water that caused hair loss and skin rashes. Public officials did not correct the problem until thousands of children had been exposed to lead contamination in the water.
That city was: a) Nashville, Tennessee, b) Flint, Michigan, c) Glastonbury, Connecticut
Question 3: True or false: In the US, according to a 2019 study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, non-Hispanic white people experience around 17 percent less air pollution exposure than is caused by their consumption.
Question 4: True or false: According to the same 2019 study, African Americans experience 56 percent more pollution than their consumption generates and Latinx people experience 63 percent more pollution than their consumption generates.
Question 5: True or false: In Connecticut, the recent strengthening of the state environmental justice law allows a community to stop a new factory from being built in an already over-polluted community.
Answer 1: a) Louisiana – The stretch along the Mississippi River between Baton Rouge and New Orleans is nicknamed Cancer Alley. Texas is not a bad second guess, though, given the 2021 research of ProPublica and its online interactive, “Most Detailed Map of Cancer-Causing Air Pollution in the United States,” which shows 1,000 “hotspots” around the country and locates five of the 20 most toxic places nationwide in Texas.
Answer 2: b) Flint, Michigan. Among other things, the Flint crisis alerted many Americans to the dangers of lead in water. The EPA and health experts agree: no amount of childhood lead exposure is safe. In Connecticut, according to a March 2022 public radio report, health experts have found that Hispanic and non-Hispanic Asian children of the same age in our state were twice as likely to have elevated lead levels than white children. Non-Hispanic Black children under 6 years old were 2.6 times more likely to have lead poisoning than white children.
Answer 3: True. White populations generally have what the study calls a “pollution advantage” in that they feel the impact of whatever waste leaves their homes less than others. Once the garbage truck leaves the curb or the toilet is flushed or the sink drained, many Americans don’t tend to think about the destination of their waste. Others live downstream and downwind of effluent and emissions at the end of that waste stream.
Sharon Lewis, the executive director of the Connecticut Coalition for Environmental Justice, tells people, “You have no idea what it’s like living near an incinerator because you send your trash to a transfer station and you walk away and you don’t know where it goes. Well, I’m letting you know this trash goes to an urban area where people breathe this trash being burned 24 hours a day, seven days a week.”
Answer 4: True. Lewis cites disproportionate pollution burdens as an example of an “environmental wrong.”
“Environmental justice is righting an environmental wrong,” she notes. “Unfortunately, not everyone has access to clean and healthy environments. Many people are disproportionately exposed to the environment’s ills as opposed to the environment’s benefits. Some people never enjoy the benefits. So, for me true justice comes when everyone shares equally in the burdens and the benefits.”
Answer 5: False. There is much to celebrate in Connecticut’s 2020 legislation to strengthen our state’s environmental justice law. It improves requirements for engaging the local community when a new, potentially polluting, facility is proposed for a neighborhood; it also adds mitigation requirements.
However, Connecticut state agencies still do not have the power to outright deny a permit to a new factory or plant in an already burdened community. The two states that have added that authority in landmark legislation, are New Jersey in 2020 and New York in 2021.
When asked what residents from Milford and Orange can do to support greater environmental justice, Lewis agreed with the idea of lowering one’s waste footprint and ensuring street trees and park space accompany new, denser, housing projects. She offered to send on a more complete answer in a few days.
Before Lewis could follow up, a new gun violence incident occurred in Buffalo, New York, killing 10 Black victims at their local supermarket, in the rampage of a white supremacist.
Lewis’s usual answer for what she wants people to know most or how they can support environmental justice had a special resonance in the wake of the Buffalo shooting.
“I often tell people that racism is the root of environmental injustices which begin with 250 years of slavery, 100 years of Jim Crow and decades of government sponsored segregation, redlining and a plethora of other conditions which gave rise to why African Americans are forced to live in sacrifice zones where they are disproportionately assaulted on a daily basis by life-altering toxins from polluted air, water and soil,” she said.
“I tell people to say something when they see something that’s not fair and equitable. I tell them to go to the source of the racism and call it out. To learn the real history of the way things are.”
Patricia Houser, PhD, AICP, shares her exploration of local and regional environmental issues in this column as a member of the nonpartisan Milford Environmental Concerns Coalition.