Search results

The report section contains a summary of the University of Montana's survey results in a memo submitted to the EQC by Robin Saha. The graduate students conducted research requested to support the investigation regarding House Joint Resolution 34 on challenges that occur at Superfund sites under the federal Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act (CERCLA), the state Comprehensive Environmental Cleanup and Responsibility Act (CECRA), and the Voluntary Cleanup and Redevelopment Act (VCRA). Students completed research for the six sites: Bozeman Solvent; Brewery Flats (Lewistown); Burlington Northern (Livingston); Lockwood Solvent; S&W Sawmill (Darby); and Upper Tenmile Creek (Rimini). The memo includes possible approaches to improve the state Superfund process.

A considerable number of quantitative analyses have been conducted in the past several decades that demonstrate the existence of racial and socioeconomic disparities in the distribution of a wide variety of environmental hazards. The vast majority of these have been cross-sectional, snapshot studies employing data on hazardous facilities and population characteristics at only one point in time. Although some limited hypotheses can be tested with cross-sectional data, fully understanding how present-day disparities come about requires longitudinal analyses that examine the demographic characteristics of sites at the time of facility siting and track demographic changes after siting. Relatively few such studies exist and those that do exist have often led to confusing and contradictory findings. In this paper we review the theoretical arguments, methods, findings, and conclusions drawn from existing longitudinal environmental justice studies. Our goal is to make sense of this literature and to identify the direction future research should take in order to resolve confusion and arrive at a clearer understanding of the processes and contributory factors by which present-day racial and socioeconomic disparities in the distribution of environmental hazards have come about. Such understandings also serve as an important step in identifying appropriate and effective societal responses to ameliorate environmental disparities.

National-level studies examining racial disparities around hazardous waste treatment, storage, and disposal facilities have been very influential in defining the academic and political debates about the existence and importance of "environmental injustice." However, these studies tend to employ methods that fail to adequately control for proximity between environmentally hazardous sites and nearby residential populations. By using GIS and applying methods increasingly used in environmental inequality research that better control for proximity, we conduct a comprehensive reassessment of racial inequality in the distribution of the nation 's hazardous waste facilities. We compare the magnitude of racial disparities found with those of prior studies and test competing racial, economic, and sociopolitical explanations for why such disparities exist. We find that the magnitude of racial disparities around hazardous waste facilities is much greater than what previous national studies have reported. We also find these disparities persist even when controlling for economic and sociopolitical variables, suggesting that factors uniquely associated with race, such as racial targeting, housing discrimination, or other race-related factors are associated with the location of the nation's hazardous waste facilities. We further conclude that the more recent methods for controlling for proximity yield more consistent and definitive results than those used previously, and therefore argue for their wider utilization in environmental inequality research. Keywords: environmental justice, environmental inequality, environmental racism, racial inequality, hazardous waste, GIS.