Confronting Ecological Crisis in Appalachia and the South: University and Community Partnerships

7. Environmental Justice from the Roots

131 7 Environmental Justice from the Roots Tillery, North Carolina Mansoureh Tajik Most rural communities in eastern North Carolina are underdeveloped and confront a multitude of environmental, economic, and sociopolitical problems linked to how local lands are used. Decisions about land use, however, frequently are made without local citizen input. Often unrepresentative of the local population and operating under the rubric of economic development, decision makers on local, state, or regional boards introduce and enact public policies that are heavily influenced by powerful economic interests and that often have perverse public and environmental health effects. While the authors and beneficiaries of such policies mostly live in locations far removed from the harm caused by their actions, local populations suffer. This disconnect between who decides and who benefits or is harmed by a given development policy has forced many rural communities to make a journey that begins with an underdeveloped economy and ends with the loss of any reasonable hope for development of a sound, healthy, or sustainable local economy. Some local communities, however, have resisted loss of the economy and environment upon which their livelihoods and well-being depend . These communities have rebuffed unsound development through grassroots participation, formation of strong local community-based organizations, and collaborative relationships with university researchers . In some cases these local organizations have been instrumental in affecting relevant public policies by engaging in various policy-related 132 Tajik activities, such as building effective partnerships, raising public awareness , and educating policy makers about critical issues. This chapter presents a narrative of a partnership between Concerned Citizens of Tillery (CCT), a community-based organization in eastern North Carolina, and researchers in the School of Public Health at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (UNC). It builds on results from a W. K. Kellogg Foundation–funded study conducted in 2004 as well as more recent communications with key community and academic partners to examine the community-based organization’s roles and the research partnerships that had an impact on policies related to the spread of industrial hog operations in North Carolina. The chapter begins with a brief account of such operations in North Carolina , followed by a short history of CCT. It then explores the partnership that developed between CCT and one UNC researcher. In exploring this partnership, the chapter draws on data obtained from a set of semistructured, open-ended interviews and focus group discussions with various partners and key community members. The key community partner, Gary Grant, and the academic partner, Steve Wing, offered the most in-depth look into the partnership, mostly due to the deep and expanded dimensions of their involvement. The focus group was conducted with key community members and longtime residents and addressed their participation and role in the policy-making process. On the policy side, additional interviews were conducted with two county commissioners who were actively involved in policy changes at the county level. The objective of the latter two interviews was to understand from the policy makers’ perspectives the level of influence that CCT partnerships and activities had on specific local outcomes in regard to industrial hog operations. In addition, published articles, reports , photographs, video records, and documents produced and collected by CCT over the past twenty-five years also were examined as part of a larger study.1 Industrial Hog Operations in North Carolina Between 1980 and 1997 the state of North Carolina moved from fifteenth to second in hog production among U.S. states, a position it continued to hold through 2009. This growth occurred with a significant national restructuring of farming practices in general that effectively transformed raising hogs from a family farm activity to industrial- Environmental Justice from the Roots 133 corporate production. Owen Furuseth explains this transformation as an “explosion-implosion” phenomenon: at the same time that the swine population expanded rapidly (exploded), it collapsed within certain geographical bounds (imploded). In other words, the transformation resulted in the production of millions more hogs in very few, large corporate facilities while eliminating thousands of small farms throughout the state and region. This explosion-implosion pattern led to very highdensity corporate hog production in the Black Belt of eastern North Carolina, which generated massive quantities of wastes that threatened groundwater and surface water. It also exposed surrounding populations and workers to potential environmental hazards, adverse health risks, and diminished quality of life.2 This explosion and implosion exhibited both geographic and population patterns...