Proving Environmental Inequity in Siting Locally Unwanted Land Uses
![handle is hein.journals/risk4 and id is 245 raw text is: Proving Environmental Inequity
in Siting Locally Unwanted Land Uses*
Michael Greenberg**
Introduction
Hazardous waste management facilities, airports, prisons, and other
locally unwanted land uses (LULUs) cause tension and political
conflict. For example, hazardous waste management facilities, argue
recent reports, have been deliberately sited in poor and minority
neighborhoods already suffering from political, economic, and social
inequities. Government, industry, and even national environmental
groups have been charged with toxic racism and environmental
racism for causing or ignoring the problem.1
Hazardous waste management facilities appear to be
disproportionately located in poor and in African- and Hispanic-
American communities. But are municipal landfills, electricity
generating facilities, solid waste transfer stations, airports, sewage
plants, highways, maximum security prisons, drug halfway houses,
housing projects, hospices for people with AIDS, garbage incinerators,
* I would like to thank my colleagues Frank Popper and Dona Schneider, and
Mitchell Small of Carnegie Mellon University, for their helpful comments on an earlier
draft of this paper.
** Dr. Green received his Ph.D. from Columbia University and is Professor of
Urban Studies and Community Health, Rutgers University, New Brunswick, New
Jersey. He is also Director, Environmental Policy Division, Environmental and
Occupational Health Sciences Institute.
1 COMMISSION FOR RACIAL JUSTICE, UNrrTED CHURCH OF CHRIST, ToxIc WASTE
AND RACE IN THE UNITED STATES (1987); ROBERT BULLARD, DUMPING IN DIXIE:
RACE, CLASS, AND ENVIRONMENTAL QUALITY (1990); PAT COSTNER & JOSEPH
THORNTON, PLAYING WITH FIRE: HAZARDOUS WASTE INCINERATION (1990). See
also Carol Grossman, From Toxic Racism to Environmental Justice, 3 ENVT'LMAG.
30 (1992); Daniel Goldberg, The Quest for Environmental Equity, MSW M GMT.,
Mar./Apr. 1992, at 27; Robert W. Collin, Environmental Racism: A Law and
Planning Approach to Environmental Racism, 11 VA. ENVT'L L.J. 495 (1992); Sam
Roberts, In My Backyard? Where New York City Puts Its Problems, New York
Times, Dec. 6, 1992, at 54; and various articles in Environmental Protection-Has It
Been Fair, 18 EPA J., MarJApr. 1992.
4 RISK - Issues in Health & Safety 235 [Summer 1993]](ViewImageLocal?handle=hein.journals/risk4&div=25&collection=&method=preview&ext=.png&size=3)
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Proving Environmental Inequity in Siting Locally Unwanted Land Uses
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