Racism, of the Environmental Kind

The admonition that we should protect all our neighbors from oppression, lest their be none to protect us when we are threatened, applies to the environment, local and national.

Tar Heel is the nickname, at first derisive and pejorative, for a North Carolinian, probably due to the turpentine industry of the 18^th Century. In 1893, the students of the University proudly gave that name to their newspaper, the Daily Tar Heel. Best I can tell, they’ve been doing pretty good journalism for a long time.

Just after arriving in Chapel Hill, I picked up the August 16^th  edition. On Page 11, I saw the headline: “Rogers Road sewer system unveiled after over 40 years.”

Turns out the Rogers Road sewer system saga is the familiar one of environmental racism and Tweed Ring style political buck-passing.. It is making people sick. Rogers Road is a pre-dominantly black rural enclave just outside of Chapel Hill. In 1970, sewer and water services and sidewalks were promised if residents accepted the location of Chapel Hill’s landfill in the neighborhood.

Almost fifty years later, the main sewer is completed. Meanwhile the landfill affected well water quality. Only a neighborhood association, RENA, fought the city and Orange County to deliver what had been promised two generations ago.

This is not so different from the Peninsula, south of San Francisco, where I’ve lived for the past 25 years. There, Romic, a chemical recycling plant that poisoned the air and ground in Stanford University’s version of Rogers Road, East Palo Alto. Redlined until the late 1960s, EPA has been home to African-Americans, Pacific Islanders and Mexicans. Affluent neighbors in Palo Alto were indifferent to the dangers posed to East Palo Alto. Finally, after fires and spills, the State of California shut Romic down in 2007.

Last week issue of the Tar Heel, I read “Over 60 North Carolina species lose federal protections.” This is a state that loves hunting and fishing. Yesterday, the New York Times told me that Trump has repealed a major clean water regulation. Streams, wetlands and other bodies of water will be affected. Yesterday, The White House announced it will curtail California’s car emissions standards, which had so reduced smog, and greenhouse gasses.

Perhaps this is environmental justice for all. The consequences will not be limited to minority communities.