Volume 2, Issue 4

Baton Rouge, LA: 3-11-94

The Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) has denied a request for appeal from Supplemental Fuels, Inc. (SFI). Readers may recall that SFI was trying to build and operate a waste fuels blending facility (CWMCN Vol. 1, Issue 12) and was recently denied a permit to pursue those plans by the new DEQ secretary (CWMCN Vol. 2, Issue 2). SFI still has the option of appealing to the District Court. Readers may also remember that the SFI situation was shaping up to be a potential test case for President Clinton's new environmental racism/justice edict.

Amherst, MA: 4-20-94

A scant two months after President Clinton signed an executive order addressing environmental racism (environmental justice in this politically correct society of today), two university studies seriously question this latest environmental activist concept. Census tracts containing 555 waste processing facilities were compared to similar tracts without such facilities. A study director is quoted as follows, " Facilities are more often located in census tracts that are white working class industrialized neighborhoods. In larger metropolitan areas, even other census tracts nearest to those with facilities had no higher percentage of minorities." The study suggests that minority residents move into an area after it becomes industrialized, not the other way around.

Back to Environmental Justice / Environmental Racism