Of racism and rubbish: the geography of race and pollution in Mississippi.

• Author: Couch, Jim F.

"Nobody can question that, for far too long, communities across this country--low income, minority communities--have been asked to bear a disproportionate share of our modern industrial life." --EPA Administrator Carol Browner, April 22, 1994 (Earth Day) The notion of racism has recently taken a new twist. (1) Using demographic variables in the description of hazardous-waste sites, the United Church of Christ Commission on Racial Justice (1987) reported a correlation between race and the location of waste-producing facilities. Charges of environmental racism and environmental injustice quickly followed. Robert D. Bullard asserts: "Environmental discrimination is defined as a disparate treatment of a group or community based on race, class, or some other distinguishing characteristic. White racism is a factor in the impoverishment of black communities and has made it easier for black residential areas to become dumping grounds for all types of health-threatening toxins and industrial pollution" (1994, 7).

Anecdotal evidence providing prima facie support of this proposition certainly exists. The area around Baton Rouge, Louisiana, and extending south along the Mississippi River--an area of high minority population--has been called "cancer alley" or the "toxic corridor." Likewise, the so-called Devil's Swamp, one of Louisiana's largest hazardous-waste dump sites, is located near the low-income, high-minority population of Scotlandville (Adeola 1994).

The charge of environmental injustice has been taken seriously. At least two national conferences have been held to review the existing research on the subject and to propose policies to alleviate the problem. (2) The Clinton administration took steps to outlaw environmental discrimination. A 1994 executive order instructed all federal agencies to be on the lookout for evidence of such discrimination. In 1998, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) was instructed to investigate facilities whose emissions have a disparate impact on minorities. Any state agency that approves such facilities is to be found in violation of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (Payne 1997).

In this article, we add to the growing literature investigating the link between environmental waste and both minorities and the poor. We consider data on pollutants emitted in the state of Mississippi. The next section provides a brief description of externalities and an overview of the benefits and costs of government intervention. Next we provide a review of the existing pertinent literature, then present pollution and racial-demographic data, and follow that with a conclusion and final comments. An appendix contains additional statistical analysis.

Externalities

A negative externality involves the imposition of a cost on a third party who is neither the buyer nor the seller in a transaction--a cost the contracting parties disregard. Thus, the true cost of the activity is not reflected fully in the standard supply curve. In the case of pollution, third-party residents suffer from the emissions, but the market ignores their suffering. Government can seek to correct the externality by regulating the activity or by applying a tax on the polluter, the revenue from which can be transferred to the residents who bear the pollution burden.

Ronald Coase (1960) advocates an alternative solution that calls for the harmed parties to negotiate with the polluter. The residents may be willing to "sell" some of their clean environment to the polluting firm. Although exposure to toxic chemicals is thought to be associated with a host of human health problems, residents may focus instead on the benefits of heavy industry. A recent example is worthy of consideration.

In 1997, Greenpeace and other political organizations blocked a Shintech factory from locating in St. James Parish, Louisiana, by making use of the EPA's Title VI rule forbidding new pollution sources in areas that have a greater minority representation than the rest of the state. The plastics plant ended up being located in another state in a predominantly white community. This shift occurred even though an overwhelming majority of the citizens of St. James Parish expressed a desire for the facility in a poll conducted by the local chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) (Payne 1998).

According to the proponents of environmental justice, minority residents' willingness to accept polluting plants serves only to illustrate the desperation of the poor: "Polluting industries exploit the pro-growth, pro-jobs sentiment exhibited among the poor ... and minority communities. Industries such as paper mills ... and chemical plants, searching for operation space, found these communities to be a logical choice for their expansion" (Bullard 1994, 29).

Bryant and Mohai (1992) contend, however, that rather than exploiting a desperation for jobs, companies target minority communities because such communities have less political clout and therefore represent the path of least resistance. Still, whatever one's views on job desperation or paths of least resistance, the question remains: Are minorities and the poor actually subject to greater exposure to hazardous waste from polluting plants?

Existing Literature

As Friedman (1998) points out, many believe that "environmental justice" initially became a topic of policy analysis in 1982, when efforts to block the movement of a hazardous-waste landfill into a predominantly minority-populated area of North Carolina were unsuccessful. The fight over this toxic landfill led to the involvement of various politicians and ultimately of the EPA. EPA involvement in the form of issue statements and...