Reinvention in the Name of Environmental Justice: A View from State Government
By Anne L. Kelly
INTRODUCTION
For decades, citizens bearing the brunt of our collective environmental insults have been excluded from environmental decision making affecting their lives. These citizens deserve a front-and-center seat at the environmental policy-making table. In turn, those in power have an independent responsibility to heed the call for a more “robustly democratic” decision-making process and to work towards a more equitable distribution of environmental benefits and burdens.
But as policymakers work towards inclusive, decentralized decision making, active outreach to low-income populations and communities of color, and more equitable overall outcomes, state government should not stifle the voices of advocates and lobbyists who also wish to be heard. A truly “democratic” process takes all voices into account. Today, these voices are forcing environmental policymakers to bridge an ever-widening gulf between competing interests, and demanding increasingly inconsistent results from their shrinking government.
Indeed, environmental regulators are under attack from all sides. Agencies are said to be “typically insensitive to the problems of people of color and the poor.” More specifically, environmental regulators have failed to account for the distributional implications of resource allocation and priority setting, resulting in the “aggregation of environmental risk in communities of color and low-income communities, and . . . less enforcement in those areas.” Thus, environmental justice advocates are calling for full public participation in environmental decisions and increased scrutiny in those communities most impacted by past environmental degradation. Under the “Principles of Environmental Justice” adopted by the first People of Color Environmental Leadership Summit:
[C]ommunities that demand self-determination will rally against projects imposed on them without their consent; communities that hold producers of waste accountable for detoxification will reject schemes to limit the liability of otherwise responsible parties; communities that demand the right to participate in every level of decision making will resist efforts to streamline or privatize the cleanup process; communities that demand a safe and healthy environment will react negatively to redevelopment that increases the risk of environmental harm to the community; and communities that insist on redevelopment consistent with their neighborhood vision will demand participation in redevelopment decisions before a project is packaged for public review.
Environmental justice requires an expansion of the environmental regulatory infrastructure as we now know it. However, the new conservative majority in Congress has advocated radical changes that threaten the underpinnings of that very infrastructure and may devastate regulators' ability to ensure the most basic environmental protections. With a “ ‘don't bother-me-with-the-facts' zeal for rolling back environmental standards,” those in favor of drastically lowering environmental standards are “sacrificing opportunities for genuine reform by . . . pursuing regulatory relief for special interests.” Interior Secretary Bruce Babbit recently noted, “Congress is engaged in a scorched-earth assault on all the environmental laws put together on a bipartisan basis over thirty years.”
The most extreme reforms in the new congressional agenda include: (1) a “ ‘roll-back [of] government regulations' that ‘strangle small businesses,”’ thereby encouraging investment, new jobs, and higher wages; (2) provisions regarding regulatory takings intended to “end the environmental free lunch being paid by individual property owners;” (3) elimination of unfunded mandates; and (4) required “risk assessment and cost-benefit analysis for any new regulations.”
Fortunately, “the Senate -- now seen as the cooling chamber for the House's hot initiatives -- already is showing itself a reluctant partner for some of the House's more ebullient dances.” Still, the outcry for substantive reform from regulated interests is real and, in its less extreme form, calls for: (1) the simplification of environmental requirements towards “more sector- and market-oriented approaches and a clearer federal-state allocation of responsibilities;” (2) increased flexibility and efficiency in the application of regulations to regulated entities; and (3) an increase in science-based priority setting.
Environmental regulators are not immune to the cry for a downsized, reinvented government that does more with less. For at least a decade, Americans have wanted more governmental performance for less money. Given the new and vocal constituency of the environmental justice movement, the demands on regulators are sure to increase while resources continue to diminish.
If the news about the environment were good, like that set forth in Gregg Easterbrook's optimistic book, A Moment On the Earth, a reduced environmental regulatory infrastructure would be more easily justified. While Easterbrook evaluates several traditional indicators of environmental progress (e.g., specific instances of cleaner air, water, and an increase in forested lands) to help explain his call for environmental optimism, it is notable that his six-hundred and ninety page book includes scarcely a page on environmental racism and never once mentions environmental justice. The conspicuous absence of such an important national movement is disturbing in a popular bestseller deemed by former EPA Administrator William K. Reilly, “the most influential book since Silent Spring.”
It is against this complex backdrop, on a rather uneven playing field, that the demands of environmental justice advocates must compete. In this brief essay, I will identify the conflicting nature of the current proposals for environmental reform and suggest a model for finding common ground through effective collaboration between competing constituencies.
For decades, citizens bearing the brunt of our collective environmental insults have been excluded from environmental decision making affecting their lives. These citizens deserve a front-and-center seat at the environmental policy-making table. In turn, those in power have an independent responsibility to heed the call for a more “robustly democratic” decision-making process and to work towards a more equitable distribution of environmental benefits and burdens.
But as policymakers work towards inclusive, decentralized decision making, active outreach to low-income populations and communities of color, and more equitable overall outcomes, state government should not stifle the voices of advocates and lobbyists who also wish to be heard. A truly “democratic” process takes all voices into account. Today, these voices are forcing environmental policymakers to bridge an ever-widening gulf between competing interests, and demanding increasingly inconsistent results from their shrinking government.
Indeed, environmental regulators are under attack from all sides. Agencies are said to be “typically insensitive to the problems of people of color and the poor.” More specifically, environmental regulators have failed to account for the distributional implications of resource allocation and priority setting, resulting in the “aggregation of environmental risk in communities of color and low-income communities, and . . . less enforcement in those areas.” Thus, environmental justice advocates are calling for full public participation in environmental decisions and increased scrutiny in those communities most impacted by past environmental degradation. Under the “Principles of Environmental Justice” adopted by the first People of Color Environmental Leadership Summit:
[C]ommunities that demand self-determination will rally against projects imposed on them without their consent; communities that hold producers of waste accountable for detoxification will reject schemes to limit the liability of otherwise responsible parties; communities that demand the right to participate in every level of decision making will resist efforts to streamline or privatize the cleanup process; communities that demand a safe and healthy environment will react negatively to redevelopment that increases the risk of environmental harm to the community; and communities that insist on redevelopment consistent with their neighborhood vision will demand participation in redevelopment decisions before a project is packaged for public review.
Environmental justice requires an expansion of the environmental regulatory infrastructure as we now know it. However, the new conservative majority in Congress has advocated radical changes that threaten the underpinnings of that very infrastructure and may devastate regulators' ability to ensure the most basic environmental protections. With a “ ‘don't bother-me-with-the-facts' zeal for rolling back environmental standards,” those in favor of drastically lowering environmental standards are “sacrificing opportunities for genuine reform by . . . pursuing regulatory relief for special interests.” Interior Secretary Bruce Babbit recently noted, “Congress is engaged in a scorched-earth assault on all the environmental laws put together on a bipartisan basis over thirty years.”
The most extreme reforms in the new congressional agenda include: (1) a “ ‘roll-back [of] government regulations' that ‘strangle small businesses,”’ thereby encouraging investment, new jobs, and higher wages; (2) provisions regarding regulatory takings intended to “end the environmental free lunch being paid by individual property owners;” (3) elimination of unfunded mandates; and (4) required “risk assessment and cost-benefit analysis for any new regulations.”
Fortunately, “the Senate -- now seen as the cooling chamber for the House's hot initiatives -- already is showing itself a reluctant partner for some of the House's more ebullient dances.” Still, the outcry for substantive reform from regulated interests is real and, in its less extreme form, calls for: (1) the simplification of environmental requirements towards “more sector- and market-oriented approaches and a clearer federal-state allocation of responsibilities;” (2) increased flexibility and efficiency in the application of regulations to regulated entities; and (3) an increase in science-based priority setting.
Environmental regulators are not immune to the cry for a downsized, reinvented government that does more with less. For at least a decade, Americans have wanted more governmental performance for less money. Given the new and vocal constituency of the environmental justice movement, the demands on regulators are sure to increase while resources continue to diminish.
If the news about the environment were good, like that set forth in Gregg Easterbrook's optimistic book, A Moment On the Earth, a reduced environmental regulatory infrastructure would be more easily justified. While Easterbrook evaluates several traditional indicators of environmental progress (e.g., specific instances of cleaner air, water, and an increase in forested lands) to help explain his call for environmental optimism, it is notable that his six-hundred and ninety page book includes scarcely a page on environmental racism and never once mentions environmental justice. The conspicuous absence of such an important national movement is disturbing in a popular bestseller deemed by former EPA Administrator William K. Reilly, “the most influential book since Silent Spring.”
It is against this complex backdrop, on a rather uneven playing field, that the demands of environmental justice advocates must compete. In this brief essay, I will identify the conflicting nature of the current proposals for environmental reform and suggest a model for finding common ground through effective collaboration between competing constituencies.
