http://socialistviewpoint.org/mayjun_16/mayjun_16_08.html
Racism is Toxic
The Flint River lead poisoning catastrophe in historical perspective
By Tom Stephens
By now the main facts of the Flint River lead poisoning are pretty well
known and essentially undisputed. A spectacular regulatory failure by
all levels of government—enabled by Michigan Governor Snyder’s
unprecedented “emergency management” policies for African-American
majority cities. The big remaining question is why this disaster happened?
The Snyder administration and investigators have focused on gross
incompetence of many officials, especially state and federal
environmental regulators. That is clearly part of what happened, but why?
Historical context may help us understand. Some 20 years ago, the
issues of environmental racism and environmental justice—the
disproportionate adverse exposure of people of color communities and the
poor to pollution and other environmental dangers—were addressed by
environmental agencies and courts in two major cases that arose in
Flint: 1) The Genesee Power Station (GPS) case; and 2) The Select Steel
case.
The GPS case involved a wood-burning incinerator sited near Flint’s
impoverished north end, a community already swamped with other toxic,
heavy industrial sources of pollution. Negotiations with the
incinerator resulted in an agreement to significantly reduce the amount
of lead paint-contaminated construction and demolition wood the
incinerator was allowed to burn. (They originally described their
business to state environmental officials as “burning demolished Detroit
crack houses.”)
After that partial settlement, the Michigan Department of Environmental
Quality (DEQ) under Governor John Engler and Director Russell Harding
insisted on a historic environmental justice trial of the allegation
that they violated Michigan’s Elliott-Larsen Civil Rights Act by
permitting the GPS, the first such trial ever. The Genesee County
Circuit Court, Honerable Archie Hayman, entered an injunction against
granting more air pollution permits in Genesee County after a 1997 trial
that included lots of evidence of increased lead poisoning in Flint
because of the GPS; the injunction was subsequently reversed on appeal
for a procedural technicality.
The Plaintiffs in the GPS case had also filed the first administrative
Title VI environmental racism claim with the U.S. Environmental
Protection Agency (EPA) in 1992. After initially losing the file, EPA
later found it and opened an investigation, but they have never issued
any decision. Meanwhile, three of the four plaintiffs died.
A second major environmental justice case arising in Flint was decided
adversely after a bogus, pro forma investigation in 1998, by EPA—the
infamous Select Steel decision. In Select Steel, the same plaintiffs
complained about a proposed (never built) steel recycling facility that
would further pollute their already overburdened community. EPA came
under heavy political pressure in both Michigan and Washington, DC,
including explicit threats to zero out the budget of their Office of
Civil Rights. EPA rendered a decision against environmental justice
that abandoned any meaningful attempts to remedy environmental racism,
refusing to use their power to bring public health and environmental
quality in Flint up to standards enjoyed in white suburban communities.
In significant part as a result of the Flint Select Steel precedent,
environmental racism has found no legal remedy at EPA.
Why did these regulators ignore the pleas of Flint residents who were
forced to drink smelly, foul and discolored water for a
year-and-a-half? Because that was the policy of allowing substandard
environmental and public health conditions in communities like Flint,
conditions that would never be allowed in whiter, more affluent
communities. And that precedent was largely established in Flint in the
1990s. The ongoing Flint River scandal was the result of emergency
management and the Snyder administration’s depraved indifference to
health of people in Flint, as well as longstanding, established de facto
environmental policy to allow such pollution in these communities.
The Flint River’s lead poisoning is just an extreme case.
U.S. congressional delegate Stacey Plaskett (D-Virgin Islands)
eloquently addressed the history of environmental racism nationally at
the recent Flint River congressional hearing on February 3, 2016. My
colleague Mark Fancher of the Michigan ACLU recently explained the
racist colonial roots of this issue:
“Michigan state government’s arrogant, callous indifference to both the
plight of the people of Flint and the weight of outraged public opinion
is explained quite simply by the fact that some officials regard Black
Michigan as their own little Africa. With the mentality of colonizers,
they created and wielded the mighty weapon of Michigan’s emergency
manager law, and they set out to dominate and exploit predominantly
Black cities with breathtaking indifference to the rights and the
welfare of those who live there.”
The above is merely a summary of complex historical legal issues and
facts, recounted more fully in the Petition to Re-Open the Select Steel
Investigation filed by Sugar Law Center, California Rural Legal
Assistance and others, which can be read at the Detroiters Resisting
Emergency Management site.
The exhaustive chronology of the Flint River Catastrophe published by
Bridge Magazine on February 4, 2016 (“Bridge Disaster Day by Day: A
Detailed Flint Crisis Timeline”) emphasizes how the documents revealed
so far show the regulators “trying to endure the Flint River water
situation, regardless of the risks, until the Karegnondi Water Authority
comes online in late 2016.” This was a clear example of the policy of
environmental racism established in the 1990s in and around Flint. The
policy goes well beyond the gross incompetence displayed by many in the
Snyder administration in this case.
Tom Stephens had the honor of serving as trial counsel for the
Plaintiffs Flint-Genesee United for Justice, Flint NAACP Chapter, the
late Janice O’Neal, Lillian Robinson and Sr. Joanne Chiavarrini; and the
sole surviving Plaintiff representative Fr. Phil Schmitter, in the
Genesee Power Station case.
—Black Agenda Report, February 16, 2016
http://www.blackagendareport.com/history_flint_river_enviro_racism
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