On environmental justice, local regulators need to step up

In November 2021, Michael Regan, the newly-appointed administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, embarked on a “Journey to Justice” throughout the South, visiting communities that have been historically victimized by pollution, public health crises and environmental injustice. Regan capped off his tour with a stop in “Cancer Alley,” an 85-mile stretch of land on the Mississippi River lined with more than 200 fossil fuel and petrochemical facilities.

These facilities are crucial to the production of rubbers and plastics, but they simultaneously spew carcinogenic chemicals like chloroprene into the air. Near one facility, the EPA determined that the presence of cancer-causing chemicals was among the highest in the country. At the macro level, the agency found that the collective cancer risk of the entire region was 47 times higher than acceptable EPA standards. This blatant public health abuse is rooted in systemic inequities; several of the worst-affected neighborhoods have a majority Black population and the regional poverty rate is several percentage points higher than the United States as a whole. Meanwhile, policy has specifically been designed to put pollutants in these neighborhoods because of a government level disregard for the lives and health of those that are outside the bounds of white, affluent areas. 

Regan finished his stop in Cancer Alley with a visit to a home surrounded by several massive petrochemical plants. When asked about the effectiveness of the current environmental regulatory apparatus, Regan called for federal and state governments to rigorously review their failed approaches to implementing environmental law, positing that stricter legislation on environmental protections was necessary.

Coming from the head of the most powerful environmental regulatory body in the country, this commitment to improvement was monumental; there was now renewed hope that injustice would finally be rectified. Yet, despite the EPA’s firm dedication to sweeping reform, the agency has been deadlocked by the resistance of state governments and state-level regulators.

In Cancer Alley, recent data shows that, from 2019 to 2021, the Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality permitted industrial pollution that was seven to 21 times higher in Black communities than in predominantly white communities. Even so, it still refuses to recognize the name “Cancer Alley” — a term coined by The Washington Post in 1987 — as it neglects decades of scientific consensus of greater cancer risk.

For the past three years, the state of Louisiana and the EPA have been locked in a vicious brawl across several courtrooms. While the EPA tries to circumvent Louisiana’s efforts to protect its petrochemical industry by enforcing new pollution regulations, they have also played defense as the state government has worked to strip them of their ability to enforce environmental racism claims through the Civil Rights Act. In the meantime, Cancer Alley residents continue to be deprived of the reform they need and are increasingly forced to vye for themselves in the courtrooms through advocacy groups.

Louisiana is not an isolated incident. One of the most pertinent examples of failed state authorities occurs here in Michigan, where the Flint Water Crisis has loomed over the state for the last decade. According to census data, the city of Flint is 56.3% Black and has a poverty rate of 40.7%. Amid the crisis, the Flint Water Advisory Task Force acknowledged the targeted injustice at play, conceding in a statement that “Flint residents, who are majority Black or African American and among the most impoverished of any metropolitan area in the United States, did not enjoy the same degree of protection from environmental and health hazards as that provided to other communities.”

In 2017, the EPA found that the local and statewide regulatory efforts of the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality were severely flawed, as poor testing practices, minimal efficiency and misinformation plagued their response to the crisis.

Our Environmental Protection Agency is more in tune with environmental justice and its needs than ever before, one step closer to repairing trust and health in communities such as Flint and Cancer Alley. 

However, reliance on the federal government is a poor investment at this time. The current national mood best resembles Richard Nixon’s theory of “New Federalism,” in which “power, funds, and responsibility (flow) from Washington to the states and to the people.” The repeal of Chevron Deference has handicapped the bureaucratic arm of the executive branch, while states — fueled by political divisions — are pushing to expand their autonomy and Americans trust their local governments more than twice as much as the federal government.

In an interview with The Michigan Daily, Benjamin Wilson, professor of environmental law at the Howard University School of Law, emphasized the local roots of these human rights failures.

“One of the hidden causes of environmental injustice is the absence of a fair zoning policy,” Wilson said. “Zoning is local, and when we don’t have adequate controls, we can get developers who will site these facilities in the place where there is the least resistance. Poor and minority communities are often living in such a place because they do not enjoy political clout.”

The fight for environmental justice will inevitably be waged at the local level, about policy like zoning laws. Today, the desks of governors and state legislators are arguably more important for delivering immediate environmental justice than the Resolute desk in Washington. That progress begins with increased voter focus on local elections (the elections in which their ballots mathematically have the most influence) and greater efforts to inform the public about these crises.

Due to their niche circumstances or location, some of the most pressing instances of injustice in our country don’t receive proper coverage or attention. Although localized public health crises seem isolated and specific, they reflect the broader importance of local officials and the vast power they hold under our federalist system. These injustices should be broadcasted loudly to a national audience, as they underscore the importance of community involvement and down-ballot elections, which often determine who is appointed or hired into these bureaucratic wings of state government.

Hunter Ryerson is an Opinion Columnist writing about Environmental Justice and public health in his column “Learning Environment.” He can be reached at hryerson@umich.edu.

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