You!
Why would I lie?
Yes? No?
It was not a yes no question.
My apologies.
After the passing of the Toxic Substance Control Act, the disposal of polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) became very costly and many entities had sought less costly and less legal means of disposal. In the state of North Carolina, this meant that illegal road-side dumping of PCBs became prevalent. By the summer of 1978, approximately 240 miles of road shoulders had become contaminated with PCBs. The quickest solution that the state found was to construct a landfill in Warren County. Warren County is a rural county in the Northeastern part of the state. The site was located on a recently foreclosed farm. The citizens of this county fought a legal battle for three years against the stigma associated with having a hazardous waste facility. By 1982, construction had begun on the landfill.
Having exhausted all legal recourse, the citizens turned to protests and demonstrations. Their claim was that, beyond the possible dire consequences it will have to the economy, the PCBs have a strong likelihood of infiltrating the groundwater and possibly the drinking water. Furthermore, there were allegations that race was playing a part in the issue, as well (see Table 1.) Warren County is predominately African American and that this action on the part of the state was taking advantage of ?poor people of color.? It was this accusation that created and coined the term ?environmental racism.?
With this statement out in the open, state and national civil rights communities sprung into action. While the protests did not stop the construction, they did help forge the idea of environmental justice as it pertains to race. In particular, Warren County revealed that there were many similar communities of minorities that felt like they were unjustly and disproportionately burdened with pollution and environmental risk.
Bullard
During the same time, a neighborhood in northeastern Houston was fighting a similar battle. In 1979, African American homeowners began to fight over a sanitary landfill being placed in their neighborhood. Their attorney was Linda Bullard. Together with her husband, Robert Bullard, they forged the idea of environmental racism as a legal and civil rights issue. Robert Bullard, specifically, studied what was evidently an excess of environmental burden on the minority communities of Houston.