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63 U. Colo. L. Rev. 921 (1992)
Environmental Injustice: Weighing Race and Class as Factors in the Distribution of Environmental Hazards

handle is hein.journals/ucollr63 and id is 937 raw text is: ENVIRONMENTAL INJUSTICE: WEIGHING RACE AND CLASS AS FACTORS IN THE DISTRIBUTION OF ENVIRONMENTAL HAZARDSt PAUL MOHAI* AND BUNYAN BRYANT** A prevailing assumption in this country has been that pollution is a problem faced equally by everyone in society. However, that as- sumption has become increasingly challenged as greater attention has been given by the media, social scientists, legal scholars, and policy makers to the issues of environmental injustice. A major event which helped to focus national attention on issues of environmental injustice occurred in 1982 when state officials de- cided to locate a poly-chlorinated biphenyl (PCB) landfill near a predominantly black community in Warren County, North Carolina.' Protests very similar to those of the civil rights movement of the 1960s resulted. More than 500 people were arrested including Congressman Walter E. Fauntroy who subsequently requested an investigation by the U.S. General Accounting Office (GAO) of the socioeconomic and racial composition of the communities surrounding the four major hazardous waste landfills in the South. The GAO study (1983) found that 3 of the 4 major hazardous waste landfills were located in commu- nities that were predominantly black and living disproportionately be- low the poverty line.2 The findings of the GAO report, plus the earlier Warren County events, prompted the United Church of Christ's Com- t Portions of this paper have been adapted from Environmental Racism: Reviewing the Evidence, in RACE AND THE INCIDENCE OF ENVIRONMENTAL HAZARDS: A TIME FOR DISCOURSE (Bunyan Bryant & Paul Mohai, eds.) (forthcoming 1992). The authors would like to acknowledge the Detroit Area Studys Executive Committee, the Department of Sociology, the School of Natural Resources, the Office of Minority Affairs, and' the Office of Minority Research and Development of the Rackham School of Graduate Studies at the University of Michigan for their generous support of the 1990 Detroit Area Study. We also wish to thank the Natural Resources and Sociology graduate students at the University of Michigan who contributed to various phases of the project. Special thanks and gratitude are owed to Dr. Karl Landis, former Director of the Detroit Area Study. * Assistant Professor, School of Natural Resources and Environment, University of Michigan. ** Associate Professor, School of Natural Resources and Environment, University of Michigan. 1. Charles Lee, Toxic Waste and Race in the United States, in RACE AND THE INCIDENCE OF ENVIRONMENTAL HAZARDS: A TIME FOR DISCOURSE (Bunyan Bryant & Paul Mohai, eds.) (forth- coming 1992); ROBERT D. BULLARD, DUMPING IN DIXIE: RACE, CLASS AND ENVIRONMENTAL QUALITY 38 (1990). 2. U.S. GENERAL ACCOUNTING OFFICE, SITING OF HAZARDOUS WASTE LANDFILLS AND

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