Volume 2, Issue 6

Washington, DC: 6-1-94

As if the Office of Solid Waste and Emergency Response (OSWER) doesn't have enough to do, they have become the first EPA office to develop a plan to combat so called "environmental racism". Draft recommendations include considering "environmental justice" in citing RCRA facilities. OSWER intends to work to implement the recommendations during fiscal 1994 and 1995.

Tallahassee, FL: 6-9-94

Environmental justice, environmental racism; you say tomato, I say tomahto; call it what you want, it seems to be the new hammer for impeding and/or stopping waste related facilities. (CWMCN Vol.1 Issues 15 & 16) The Florida legislature has passed an environmental justice bill that creates the Environmental Equity and Justice Commission. The commission will hold hearings to determine whether or not there is possible disproportionate concentration of environmental hazards in areas with people of color and low income communities. At least further legislation is not planned until the commission has looked into the possible problem.

Harrisburg, PA: 6-9-94

In a slightly different situation in another part of the state, at least five Pennsylvania representatives are preparing to introduce environmental justice legislation in response to a recent approval of an incinerator project in Chester, PA. The proposed legislation would amend the human relations code to define as discriminatory the citing of waste facilities in predominantly minority and low income neighborhoods. One has to wonder whether this is a legitimate attempt to somehow provide some sort of implied protection, or an organized attempt to keep jobs out of these areas?

Oak Brook, IL: 6-15-94

A conference on Environmental Justice (scheduled to include representatives from government, industry & academia) was recently canceled as a result of complaints by grassroots activists groups claiming they had been excluded. WMX was to have held the conference at their Corporate training facility. This Editor does not remember similar complaints the last couple of major EPA enforcement/regulatory announcements when these groups shared the EPA dais. Nor does this Editor remember anything getting changed, let alone canceled when industry complained they had not been included in discussions.

It should be noted that WMX underwrote a University of Massachusetts study that called into question the very tenet of environmental justice, finding that more often than not, industry moved into a white working class neighborhood which later became a minority situation, rather than industry always moving into minority neighborhoods. (CWMCN Vol. 2 Issue 4) Not surprisingly, the study was criticized by "environmental" activist groups.

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