The Wrong Complexion for Protection: How the Government Response to Disaster Endangers African American Communities

5. The Wrong Complexion for Protection: Response to Toxic Contamination

100 | 5 The Wrong Complexion for Protection Response to Toxic Contamination The federal Superfund program was created in 1980 when Congress enacted the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act (CERCLA). This law imposed a tax on the chemical and petroleum industries that went into a trust fund to be used for cleaning up abandoned or uncontrolled hazardous-waste sites and allowed the federal government to respond to releases or potential releases of hazardous wastes that might harm people or the environment. CERCLA was amended by the Superfund Amendments and Reauthorization Act (SARA) on October 17, 1986. The Superfund program was designed to clean up the nation’s uncontrolled hazardous-waste sites. Under the Superfund program, abandoned, accidentally spilled, or illegally dumped hazardous waste that poses a current or future threat to human health or the environment is cleaned up. This chapter examines how government responds to toxic contamination in African American communities and the health consequences for the residents of those communities. Legacy of Unequal Protection In 1992, the National Law Journal uncovered glaring inequities in the way the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency enforces its Superfund laws. The authors wrote: “There is a racial divide in the way the U.S. government cleans up toxic-waste sites and punishes polluters. White communities see faster action, better results and stiffer penalties than communities where blacks, Hispanics and other minorities live. This unequal protection often occurs whether the community is wealthy or poor.”1 The Wrong Complexion for Protection | 101 These findings suggest that unequal protection is placing African Americans and other communities of color at a special risk. The National Law Journal study supplements the findings of earlier studies and reinforces what many grassroots leaders have known for generations: not only are black people differentially impacted by industrial pollution, but also they can expect different treatment from the government.2 In October 2009, environmental justice leaders representing more than a dozen environmentally impacted communities from six southern states (Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Mississippi, South Carolina, and Tennessee) met in Atlanta with EPA Region IV acting administrator A. Stanley Meiburg and senior staff. The meeting, convened by the Environmental Justice Resource Center, allowed leaders of impacted communities and their representatives to present documentation of environmental injustice, unequal protection, and failures on the part of EPA Region IV and state environmental agencies to protect the health and environment of communities that were home to African Americans and other people of color.3 This was the first meeting of this type at Region IV in more than a decade. The meeting between EPA officials and EJ leaders was held at the same time as and just a few blocks from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) National Environmental Public Health Conference—where thousands of federal, state, tribal, and local public and environmental health professionals, academic researchers, physicians, nurses, other health-care professionals, representatives from communities and organizations, and policy and decision makers were “exploring new research and innovative practice in ecosystems and public health, healthy places and communities, sustainability, public health and chemical exposures.” The CDC’s National Center for Environmental Health (NCEH) and the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry (ATSDR), headed by Dr. Howard Frumkin, was the next target to which these environmentally impacted communities turned their attention. Many environmental justice leaders view ATSR and EPA Region IV as “evil twins” that have historically provided unequal protection and a “Katrina response” in response to toxic health threats to communities of low-income people and people of color long before that deadly storm ravaged the Gulf Coast. Ironically, it was NCEH/ ATSDR’s lethargic and inept response to the formaldehyde-laden FEMA trailers provided to homeless people after Hurricane Katrina that figured largely in getting Frumkin reassigned in 2010 to a position with less authority , a smaller staff, and a smaller budget. Frumkin, who inherited many of the 102 | The Wrong Complexion for Protection problems noted in the report from previous ATSDR directors, had led the embattled agency since 2005. A 2008 congressional report concluded that the failure of ATSDR’s leadership “kept Hurricane Katrina and Rita families living in trailers with elevated levels of formaldehyde . . . for at least one year longer than necessary.” In the wake of a congressional inquiry, the majority staff of the Subcommittee on Investigations and Oversight of the Committee on Science, Space, and Technology released a report in 2009 that revealed other...