What is Environmental Justice?
Environmental justice, the effort to address the disproportionate distribution of benefits and burdens, identifies minority and low-income populations as lacking access to social goods and lacking protection from health and safety hazards.
In November 2017, Virginia Governor Terry McAuliffe created the Virginia Environmental Justice Advisory Board (VEJAB). Since this creation, VEJAB has identified environmental justice “hot spots” in the state.
One of these hot spots is Richmond, Virginia, where one-third of black households and more than half of all low-income households have more than twice the energy burden of the average household (Robinson, 2017). This means that in communities home to low income and minority groups the design and upkeep of energy infrastructure is not adequate, resulting in higher bills. This is an environmental justice issue because Richmond’s minority and low-income populations have an unfair burden due to energy infrastructure.
Hampton Roads and the entire Norfolk area face threats of sea level rise or severe flooding due to a large storm. These are areas with large minority and low-income populations and they are more likely than other groups to face the impacts of rising sea levels due to climate change due to the communities’ locations. Chesterfield Heights is a neighborhood located in Norfolk, Virginia that is predominately African-American with a government housing community called Grandy Village. This community’s location is extremely susceptible to sea level rise. This area has recently begun a project with a goal to provide protection from inundation to the historic community of Chesterfield Heights and the government housing community of Grandy Village by improving berm and flood walls, providing better stormwater drainage and runoff management, improving access to public transportation in the event of flooding, and providing more community space. This project is funded by a $112 million Virginia Housing and Urban Development (HUD) grant. The HUD grant emphasizes social justice in ubran development and improving coastal resiliency.
In the case of Chesterfield Heights and Grandy Village, the beginning of the project required interviews and surveys from the community to assess the neighborhood’s needs. The city of Norfolk was unable to obtain this information due the widespread distrust between the city and the residents. Moving forward, Norfolk identified an organization that was trusted on both sides to work within the community and provide feedback to the City and designers: Norfolk State University – traditionally black college, ingrained university, is trusted by the community members.
HUD grants are extremely helpful to low income and minority communities facing environmental burdens, but unfortunately, they are uncommon.
It is easier to prevent environmental injustices than to fix issues of the past that have already had a negative impact. Environmental justice issues exist around the nation and result in financial burdens, health impacts, a diminished quality of life. This is seen in the Ringwood Mines Landfill Superfund site.
Necessary Background on the Ringwood Mines
The Ringwood Mines Landfill is a former 500-acre iron mining area. Ford Motor Company used this landfill to dispose of waste from their nearby Motor Plant in Mahwah, New Jersey in the late 1960s and early 1970s. This plant, built in 1955, was the largest auto manufacturing plant in the country at the time. The waste dumped into the abandoned mine shafts consisted of paint sludge, Freon, lead, arsenic, and other industrial wastes, creating dioxin. Ford claims that their waste disposal was legal at the time and they were unaware of the toxicity of the components of the waste.
In the late 1970s, parts of the landfill were repurposed for residential housing. This area is home to the Ramapough Native American community. The Ramapough Lenape Nation is a Native American tribe consisting of about 5,000 members living in Mahwah, Ringwood and nearby Hillburn, New York. (CITE)
In the Ringwood area, where the Ramapough people live, the waste in the saturated soil caused massive fires in the late 1970s allowing the toxins to travel in the air and into homes, being inhaled. (CITE) In addition to this, the Ramapough people recall playing in the sludge as children and making colorful mud pies out of the paint waste and consuming it. Subsequently, this group has continually shown extremely high cancer rates and adverse health effects, along with many premature deaths. The sicknesses include skin sores, miscarriages, bleeding disorders, asthma, and cancer. (CITE)
The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) identified the Ringwood Mines Landfill as a Superfund site in 1984. (CITE) EPA’s Superfund program creates a priority list of the nation’s most contaminated sites and provides funding for the cleanup of these sites. (CITE) The EPA directed Ford Motor Company to clean up the Ringwood area, and the Ringwood Landfill was removed from the Superfund list in 1994 after remediated funded partially by the Ford Motor Company and overseen by the EPA. Despite the EPA’s promise of an adequate cleanup to the Ramapough people, toxic paint sludge was still being found by residents in 1995. Due to failures in multiple cleanups, the site was removed and placed back on the Superfund list multiple times in 1995, 1998, and 2006—remaining on the list today. After each removal, the EPA confirmed to residents of Ringwood, New Jersey that the site was safe. Now, the EPA confirms that the area is contaminated with industrial and hazardous waste. By 2011, an additional 47,000 tons of contaminated soil had been removed from the site, five times as much as had been removed in cleanups in the 1980s and 1990s. (CITE)
For over 30 years, the Ramapough people have been exposed to toxic chemicals. The Ramapough believe this is the reason for their lack of elderly, high rates of cancer, and a sick population.
In 2006, approximately 600 Ramapough people filed a class action lawsuit against Ford Motor Company for the dumping of toxic waste called Mann v. Ford.
The outcome of the case was a settlement where Ford was not required to admit fault or liability. Ford continually states that at the time the dumps were legal and/or in accord with permitted practices. Each plaintiff in the case received an average of $8000. (CITE)
Co-production of Science and Social Order using the Ringwood Mines Case
To further understand environmental justice, I would like to introduce the concept of Co-production of Science and Social Order, which explains how the production of science and technology becomes entangled with social norms and hierarchies. This STS theory can help identify the issues that arise with this co-production by following the pathway of “making identities, making institutions, making discourses, and making representations” (SHEILA).
This shows how scientific ideas and beliefs, and (often) associated technological artifacts, evolve together with the representations, identities, discourses, and institutions that give practical effect and meaning to ideas and objects.
A 2008 study by the Union of Concerned Scientists investigates political and business interference at the EPA. This study gathered interviews from current and former EPA scientists along with written statements. The investigation found that scientific document and assessments were often manipulated, distorted, and/or suppressed by EPA scientists. (CITE)
The mission of EPA is to protect human health and the environment. (CITE) It seems that in the case of Ringwood, the EPA strayed from this mission statement. Entangled with the obdurate political pressure to use funding efficiently, the EPA hurried the Ringwood cleanup in order to remove it from the Superfund Priority List. While the EPA was protecting their own image, they were also allowing the business interests of Ford Motor Company to be a priority over the protection of human health. The American government and economy do not benefit from big businesses failing.
By the Environmental Protection Agency aligning their priorities with those of Ford, they have created a mistrust with the Ramapough people. Moving forward, the Ramapough had no reason to rely on the institution that was created to protect them. The failed remediation attempts by Ford and the EPA that left colorful toxic sludge behind created a social order where the EPA perceives the Ramapough people as less than Ford. Now moving into the class-action lawsuit, the problems of the Ramapough people are perpetuated by the mistrust of institutions and the social order the EPA enforced.
When beginning research for the Ramapough know that the EPA has protected Ford in the past and they feel it’s the people against the large institutions, therefore they cannot rely on EPA scientists to protect them. In all cases of environmental justice, it is extremely difficult to prove in a court of law that cancer hot spots and adverse health effects are directly linked to certain chemicals, in this case Ford’s dumping of toxic waste at the Ringwood Mines. It also requires massive amounts of money to hire the scientists and gather the data necessary to make analyses. In the eyes of Ramapough, knowing this further perpetuates the social order that makes it difficult for minority groups to win cases.
At the time of the lawsuit, Mann v. Ford, the American economy went downhill and many thought that Ford would declare bankruptcy during the case. This led to the federal court protecting Ford from a higher settlement because of their financial position. The institution of law worked in a way to protect the big business and not protect the Ramapough Native American community. The next year they made a great deal of money. To correct the mistrust between Ford and the Ramapough, should a moral Ford Motor Company share their bonuses with the people dying of cancer in Upper Ringwood, N.J., or the families of the 30 people who died of cancer during the five years it took for the lawsuit to go forward?
The Ramapough people, leaving the settlement with $8000 each, felt that they walked away from the lawsuit as losers after so many of their people had died.
Moving Forward
In order for environmental injustices to be corrected, the minority and low-income communities affected should take their grievances to court. However, the mistrust between minority or low-income communities and the institutions that are meant to protect keeps many cases from ever being brought to attention. The high cost and high risk associated with a class-action lawsuit keeps environmental justice cases hidden.
Without pointing out environmental justice cases, no precedent is set and things will not change. Pointing out past environmental injustices will only help us prevent them in the future.
The case of Ringwood exposed flaws within the EPA. It leaves us asking if this happens at more superfund sites or if people are facing negative health effects because the EPA did an inadequate site remediation.
Conclusion
Environmental justice is the effort to identify and address disproportionate distribution of environmental benefits (access) and burdens (protection). Past injustices affecting low-income and minority groups are worsened by the mistrust of institutions designed to provide welfare and the social orders perpetuated by these institutions—law, the EPA, etc. By recognizing this, we can hope that they can be corrected and brought to the public eye but also that we prevent environmental injustices from happening in the first place.
26.2.2019