Are Black Areas Prime Targets For Waste Sites? Gregory Freeman. P-D 4/25/1995

Headline: ARE BLACK AREAS PRIME TARGETS FOR WASTE SITES?
Reporter: By Gregory Freeman

Publication: ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH
Last Printed: Tue., Apr. 25, 1995
Section: WAR PAGE, Page: 11B, Edition: FIVE STAR

THE 25TH observance of Earth Day is over.

For the most part, much of the attention over the years has been paid to areas like water, streams and wildlife - areas that affect all of us but which have been perhaps of lesser concern to inner-city residents, who've often found themselves faced with more pressing problems. If your biggest problems are making sure that you stay alive and keeping people out of your house who'd love to take the few possessions that you own, it's pretty hard to concentrate on issues such as cleaning up the nation's rivers.

Eight years ago, though, a report was issued that said that many hazardous-waste sites were concentrated in inner-city areas with a high number of minority residents.
   The report was issued by the Commission for Racial Justice, an organization affiliated with the United Church of Christ. The church is a 1.7 million-member denomination based in New York.
   The report, "Toxic Wastes and Race in the United States, " awakened the nation to the issue of economic justice. St. Louis was cited as one of the prime examples of the problem. It was one of six urban areas with the largest number of toxic-waste sites in areas where many blacks lived.
   That report went on to say that commercial facilities to store hazardous waste tended to be in areas with large minority populations, adding that such "environmental racism" was threatening the health of many minorities and might be a factor in high mortality rates.

Not surprisingly, the report came under attack by special interests that were directly involved.
   But it also was criticized by some with no particular ax to grind for its methodology: the commission used ZIP codes to determine a correlation between exposure levels and population groups.
   So Andrew Hurley, an environmental historian at Washington University, has revisited the issue of environmental inequity in St. Louis. And while he has found that some of his results fall in line with those of the commission, he has found some significant differences as well.
   Hurley, who used census tracts instead of ZIP codes as a basis for his study, has found that a disproportionate number of hazardous-waste sites in the St. Louis area are in African-American neighborhoods. Although blacks constitute only 22 percent of the population in St. Louis, St. Louis County, Madison and St. Clair counties, they account for 36 percent of the residents living within a half-mile of the source of uncontrolled toxic wastes.

But that's where Hurley's study and the racial commission report veer off in different directions.
The 1987 report suggested that companies often targeted minority communities when determining sites for hazardous waste.
Hurley's report says that while that may be true, there is also evidence that real estate dynamics here have played a significant role in such sites being located in areas with large minority populations.

Hurley examined the 58 most hazardous sites in the area. They were found all over the area, including the city, East St. Louis and Wellston, areas with large African-American communities.
But they were also found in places not known for large black populations, including Frontenac, Ellisville and Granite City.
"Yes, there is a bias, " Hurley said. "But it seems to be a combination of real estate dynamics and discrimination. A lot of the waste at these various sites was generated at a time when working-class whites lived in these neighborhoods."

In a case of chicken or the egg, Hurley suggests that the egg came first. Blacks are now in many of these areas because they were steered there by real estate brokers, he says.
"There's a lot of money to be made in real estate when there are racial transitions in neighborhoods, " Hurley said. "Real estate dealers took advantage of that and relatively cheap housing to bring African-Americans into areas that were near hazardous sites."
He cites Wellston, today a largely black municipality, as an example. The Wagner Electric location is on the list of hazardous sites. But it was first cited for toxic waste in 1950, at a time when Wellston was largely a white, working-class community.

The whole issue of hazardous waste sites in urban communities merits more study. As environmentalists continue to look back on how far they've come in the last 25 years, let's hope they express a greater willingness to examine the problems of urban areas in the next 25.

Daniel Schesch - Webweaver

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