State Must Gauge Pollution in Minority Areas
By Katherine Bouma, Birmingham News Staff Writer

A Senate committee unanimously passed a bill recently that would require the state to measure pollution affecting minority populations before considering permits for industries.

The bill, approved 5-0 by the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, is one of three "environmental justice" proposals that were introduced in the Legislature this session. Supporters lauded the passage as a step forward in the effort to ensure that poor and minority populations get equal protection from industries' pollution.

"There's a position taken by some of us that environmental issues like dumping toxic wastes on poor and black communities are going on unchecked and unmonitored," said House sponsor Rep. Joseph Mitchell, D-Mobile. "There's an encroaching danger to quality of life in these communities. Dumps are rarely in upper-class communities."

Industry groups declined to comment on the bill.

The bill that passed out of committee Wednesday is designed to protect "subpopulations," defined as clusters of people who are not of the majority race, color or national origin or who earn less than $15,000 a year.

A closer look:

It would require the Alabama Department of Environmental Management (ADEM) to identify the subpopulation exposed to pollutants from any plant applying for a new, renewed or modified pollution permit.

Considering the populations within half a mile, one mile and three miles of the facility, ADEM would be required to add all the pollutants from all sources that contribute to exposure for people in the area. If there were more pollution on a minority or poor population than on another in the same county, the industry would be required to reduce its pollution or would be denied its permit.

"I think it's fair to say that that requirement would probably alter the siting decisions for facilities pretty dramatically," said the bill's author, David Ludder, general counsel at the Legal Environmental Assistance Foundation.

The bill also would create an Environmental Justice Division at ADEM.

Environmental justice:

ADEM has an environmental justice program, said Director Trey Glenn. After the issue began to be raised at ADEM meetings, a staff member was sent for training by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to head the program, he said.

"Every one of our supervisors has received training from EPA to be sure we're well-versed on this," he said. "To the best of my knowledge, we're the only state who has done all this."

A second bill, which environmentalists say is their fallback position, would do many of the same things. A third bill would require the governor to add two members recommended by the Legislature's Black Caucus to the Environmental Management Commission that oversees ADEM.

The environmental justice issue moved to the forefront in Alabama after an umbrella group for activists and environmentalists organized to reform ADEM, said Adam Snyder, executive director of the Alabama Rivers Alliance.

"The entire state is an environmental justice area," Snyder said. "We're poor, we have a tremendous problem with pollution and we have a high number who are minority. There are few enclaves in the state that would not qualify as an environmental justice area."

Lines aren't clear:

The most outrageous pollution problems that environmental justice advocates point out, such as PCB contamination in Anniston, invariably are in poor, working-class or black neighborhoods.

But on closer scrutiny, the lines sometimes blur.

For example, the ADEM Reform Coalition presented a report in August showing that most of the state's garbage landfills are in predominantly black or poor neighborhoods. However, several of the landfills in the study, such as Birmingham's city landfills, are within sight of affluent or upper-middle-class white neighborhoods. Minorities may predominate in the census tract of the landfill, but they may not be close enough to smell the garbage or feel the rumble of the passing trucks.

Similarly, air pollution from Birmingham's industries and power plants drifts to Shelby County, where it settles. Scientists agree that the poorer neighborhoods at the foot of the plants are sometimes less affected.

Ludder said the measures required by the bill could be funded by permit fees, or industries could pay their staff do the work.

But they may not have to gear up for that just yet. While many environmentalists are serious about passing the bills this year, Snyder acknowledged they're likely to be highly controversial.

"I think they'll get some traction," Snyder said. "I don't know if they'll necessarily pass."

E-mail: kbouma@bhamnews.com