Environmental Justice TODAY for a healthy tomorrow
Yesterday afternoon, the University of Michigan Graham Environmental Sustainability Institute, along with the U of M Law School, Program in the Environment, and SNRE, hosted a symposium on Environmental Justice, aptly titled “Environmental Justice in Michigan: The Challenges and Opportunities of Implementing the Governor’s Directive”. The directive referred to is, of course, Governor Granholm’s Environmental Justice executive directive of 2007, which charged the Michigan DEQ with creating the Environmental Justice Working Group, which was then commissioned with drafting the Michigan Environmental Justice Plan, which is currently up for public comment until Friday, April 9th. You can submit comments at DEQ-EJplan@michigan.gov.
The panelists at the symposium presented an interesting range of views. There was the former director of the Michigan DEQ, three organizers from environmental justice communities around the state, and two industry representatives, one from Dow Chemical and one from Marathon Oil. All were members of the Environmental Justice working group, with the exception of the woman from Marathon Oil. The first speaker was former director of the Michigan DEQ, Steven Chester. He gave a quick overview of the process leading up to the creation of the plan, and of the plan itself. I’ll refrain from giving you a play-by-play of the event itself, and instead highlight the things that struck me the most:
• Steve Chester chaired the initiative to develop the plan, and was an integral member of the EJ working group. Now his position in the government no longer exists; in fact, the regulatory component of the Department of Natural Resources and Environment (DNRE) is currently the most understaffed that it’s ever been. My question is: who in the state government, especially with Governor Granholm on her way out at the end of this year, is going to take up the torch of Environmental Justice? State Representative Rashida Tlaib was actually in the audience, and she expressed her own dedication to the issue of environmental justice, but the panelists emphasized the fact that with a few exceptions, the issue of EJ has gotten very little legislative support. The EJ plan stipulates the creation of an Environmental Justice coordinator position in the governor’s office, and an Environmental Justice Advocate position in the DNRE office. We can only hope that whoever steps into these positions is truly committed to the issue.
• In Michigan’s draft plan, environmental justice is defined as fair treatment, and meaningful involvement. Plain and simple, this means that no single community should have to bear the disproportionate effects of pollution, and if a department of government is making a permitting or other decision that is going to affect a community, members of that community deserve to have their voices heard on the issue. Everyone at the table, including the industry representatives, agreed on this basic premise of the environmental justice plan, but the concern was with the nuts and bolts of the plan…
• Ginny King, the representative from Marathon Oil, was concerned that the draft plan requires consideration of “cumulative impact” of pollutants. Cumulative impact is the idea that although the pollution from one source may be minimal, when small (or large) amounts of pollution from many different sources are all concentrated in one area, it has a very negative effect on the environment and human health. Environmental justice communities often feel the impacts of many different sources of pollution. Industry’s concern is that cumulative impact assessments are “more of an art than a science”, and that trying to assess cumulative impact will be an onerous process that will slow down development.
• But cumulative impact is one of the most detriment things to these environmental justice communities. As Rhonda Anderson of the Detroit chapter of the Sierra Club pointed out, wealthy communities are constantly advocating that polluting industry and construction be located in communities that are already industry-heavy, since it won’t really make a difference to these neighborhoods. But there is a tipping point, and these additional sources of pollution cannot be handled by these poor communities. Nor should they have to be. From my perspective, the whole idea of a permitting process is to assess potential negative impacts of development, so to ignore potential problems in order to speed the process seems completely counterproductive.
• The effects of cumulative impact are very real. Both Rhonda Anderson and Pamela Smith from the Saginaw County Department of Public Health talked about the effects folks in their communities are experiencing: outrageous rates of childhood asthma, extremely high lead levels in children, and in Saginaw, the leading cause of death is cancer, when the leading cause of death elsewhere in the state is very consistently heart disease.
• Donele Wilkins from Detroiters Working for Environmental Justice pointed out that although jobs, and consequently the development of new industry, is very important to our struggling economy, it is not the people living in these environmental justice communities who are reaping the economic benefits of the factories and refineries that are poisoning their children. The city of Detroit has the highest density of polluting industry in the state, and also the highest rate of unemployment. This doesn’t add up.
• Donele also made an example of the conflict between the economy and human rights: hundreds of years ago the dismantling of slavery was the same struggle; between the thriving economy and basic human rights. A dramatic comparison perhaps, but relevant in that the same basic principles still stand, that all people, regardless of race or class, deserve to live safe and healthy lives.
As straightforward as a concept like “environmental justice” may seem, it often takes the folks that deal with the issue every day to point out the obvious and hard-hitting truths. So what’s the moral of the story? As Rhonda explained, we needed an Executive Order yesterday. The state needs some mandate, with more legal standing than an executive directive, to really integrate the idea of environmental justice into our governmental agency’s culture. And it is an idea that needs to be embraced by every agency, from the Department of Community Health to the Department of Agriculture to the Department of Transportation. And perhaps most importantly, the current governor and the incoming governor need to be leaders on the issue of Environmental Justice. It appears that once again we’ve reached the resounding conclusion: whom we elect matters!
Submitted by Hannah Smith, Policy and Programs Associate
