Toxic burden for poor, minorities
And EPA looks set to ease remedy efforts
“I’m tired of being a dumping ground.”
Debbie Carlin ticks off the reasons why she often feels bombarded by environmental hazards. The noxious fumes wafting from a nearby paint company were bad enough. They plagued Carlin’s South Park.
There also is the Duwamish River, a Superfund cleanup site, which flows a short walk from her house. Her dog can’t swim there safely. Most fish are too tainted to eat.
Now Southwest Airlines wants to bring its noise and jet exhaust to Boeing Field, just across the river.
“It is so hard,” the self-employed housecleaner said. “I’ve got my house to take care of, and health issues.”
Carlin figures that South Park doesn’t get enough attention from environmental regulators because it is one of the poorest communities around Seattle, and “people here don’t get involved. They put (polluting) things out there and see who puts up the least resistance.”
Carlin’s suspicions aren’t far-fetched.
Research shows that low-income and minority communities nationwide frequently bear the brunt of toxic waste sites, polluting businesses, pesticides, highway exhaust and unhealthy homes.
And, raising the ire of lawmakers and community activists, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is reshaping its decade-old policy of pursuing “environmental justice” — a program aimed at protecting the poor and minorities from bearing an unfair burden of exposure to harmful pollutants.
In what amounts to the end of “affirmative action” for pollution protection, EPA now plans to protect all citizens equally — regardless of income or skin color, officials said this week.
“National environmental justice groups are really nervous (that) the next step is for the EPA to start cutting some of the environmental justice programs, and we can’t afford that,” said Yalonda Sinde, executive director of the non-profit Community Coalition for Environmental Justice in Seattle.
Continue reading this story from the Seattle P-I:
Toxic burden for poor, minorities