The Quest for Environmental Justice in Dixie
by Michelle Chen
Some of the most toxic communities in the country confronted the Environmental Protection Agency on Tuesday, hoping for a sign that the new administration is more willing than its predecessor to deal with the legacy of environmental racism in the south.yet another legacy of the Bush era.
EPA Region 4 includes Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina and Tennessee. The region is dotted with poor, Black and Latino communities who live and work in the midst of hazardous waste and industrial pollution. The Obama administration is looking to appoint a permanent administrator for the area, and community activists are looking for accountability.
At a meeting in Atlanta with acting administrator A. Stanley Meiburg, the Associated Press reports, environmental justice advocates—representing 36 organizations, ranging from the Sierra Club to the Black Farmers & Agriculturalists Association—expressed frustration with a federal bureaucracy that has allowed ecological assaults to fester:
They argued that EPA officials have been bullied into overlooking environmental transgressions, and demanded everything from apologies to families impacted by pollution to a floor-to-ceiling overall of the federal agency charged with protecting human health and the environment.
Earlier this month, the groups sent a letter to Rep. John Lewis calling for a federal probe into the EPA's failure to act on its environmental justice mandates in Region 4 communities. The letter catalogued some of the issues that have surfaced over the years:
