Opinion Editorial | |
| Wednesday, June 10, 1998 | |
"Environmental Racism" is an Excuse to Block Development |
For some years, environmentalists have been attempting to forge an alliance
with civil rights groups over the issue of "environmental racism."
The argument is that toxic waste dumps and other environmental threats
to public health are disproportionately located near communities that are
predominantly populated by minorities. In 1994, President Bill Clinton
issued an executive order requiring federal agencies to take racial factors
into account in environmental policy. Earlier this year, the Environmental Protection Administration (EPA)
issued new guidelines for implementing the president's order. The guidelines
are based on Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibits recipients
of federal funds from taking actions that disproportionately impact on minorities,
even inadvertently. Consequently, EPA will now move to block any state
or local government environmental policy that is alleged to have disparate
impact on minorities. For example, a state permit for a business to build
or expand a facility could be blocked, even if existing environmental laws
and regulations were fully complied with, if it were found that minorities
were disproportionately affected. Even if it can be proven that minorities were not disproportionately
affected, those alleging such an impact can easily delay and often kill
industrial projects. Consequently, the easiest thing for a business to
do if it wishes to avoid a fight is to build in predominantly white areas.
The result, inevitably, will be a further decline of employment opportunities
in the inner cities, which tend to be heavily populated by minorities.
As Daniel Howes of the Detroit News recently put it, "the EPA's industrial-investment-equals-racism
equation is a sure-fire way to force General Motors Corp., Ford Motor Corp.
and Chrysler Corp. to rethink their investment plans for Detroit, Dearborn,
Pontiac, Flint and Lansing." This prospect has suddenly led to an attack on EPA's policies by a diverse
group of state and local government officials. They are concerned that
their efforts to promote economic development will be hamstrung by EPA bureaucrats.
Detroit Mayor Dennis Archer, in particular, is very concerned about the
potential loss of high paying auto jobs in his city if the EPA policy is
pursued with vigor. "We can't afford to lose those opportunities,"
he says. The argument that minorities suffer disproportionately from industrial
facilities' pollution is nothing but an excuse to stop industrial development
and enrich greedy lawyers looking for any excuse to file a lawsuit. Careful
research by leading scholars, such as Vicki Been of New York University
and Thomas Lambert and Christopher Boerner of Washington University, has
documented that industrial facilities are not targeted at minority communities.
Where such cases have been alleged, it usually turns out that when the
facilities were planned and built the surrounding areas were predominantly
white, becoming black at a later time. Indeed, the EPA's own research refutes the environmental racism charge.
According to David Mastio of the Detroit News, two internal EPA studies
found that whites were far more likely than blacks to live in areas surrounding
toxic waste sites. When the first study didn't come up with the politically
correct results--showing that blacks were more likely to live around such
sites -- the EPA trashed it and did another study. But the second study
confirmed the results of the first, so both were buried in EPA's memory
hole. Congress has now taken an interest in EPA's suppression of data contradicting
its environmental racism mindset. House Commerce Committee Chairman Tom
Bliley (R-Va.) has written to EPA Administrator Carol Browner demanding
release of the suppressed studies and may hold hearings on the issue later
this year. It could put a major crimp in EPA's environmental racism initiative. Source: Bruce Bartlett (senior fellow, National Center for Policy Analysis),
June 10, 1998. Home | Support Us | All Issues | Social Security Debate Central | Contact Us |