Catastrophe: Law, Politics, and the Humanitarian Impulse

5. Environmental Right-to-Know and the Transmutations of Law

 5 Environmental Right-to-Know and the Transmutations of Law Kim Fortun Law does more than codify, regulate, and control; it also catalyzes and transmutes, provoking cascading social and cultural effects, particularly when the force of law is informational.1 Consider the case of Diane Wilson , mother of five, fourth-generation shrimp boat captain in Calhoun County on the Texas Gulf Coast. In 1989, she was forty years old, had more than enough to do, and had more than enough to worry about. Shrimping had never been an easy way to make a living, but it was getting harder. The catch was down and game warden surveillance was up, and there was a brown algae creeping across the surface of San Antonio Bay.2 The fish suffocated and the shrimpers went further into debt. Environmental regulations were not a shrimper’s friend, however. Indeed, a fair amount of energy and creativity went in to efforts to avoid game warden surveillance. Local fish houses where the catch was held for sale had subtle systems for alerting shrimpers if wardens were lingering on the docks or were parked around the corner. Environmental regulations directed at local industry did not have many supporters either. The local chemical industry was the place to work if you really wanted to earn money. Union Carbide had a plant in Calhoun County, as did DuPont, BP, Alcoa, and Formosa Plastics. On a hot afternoon in 1989, Diane was in her brother’s fish house, which she managed with a friend. A shrimper brought in a local newspaper reporting that Calhoun County, population 15,000, was the most polluted county in the United States. (See figure 5.1.) The news was based on the first year of reporting from the U.S. Toxic Release Inventory (TRI), mandated in 1986 as part of the so-called Community Right-to-Know Act, which was bundled into a reauthorization of the Superfund in response to the Bhopal disaster.3 The TRI is the centerpiece of what has been become known as environmental right-to-know legislation, now considered a criti-  environmental right-to-Know cal part of environmental governance around the world4 even as it is rolled back in the United States.5 At first, Diane joked about the news, but then it got under her skin, animating an extraordinary process of discovery and transmutation. With time, Diane not only learned about the pollution in her beloved San Antonio Bay, but she also learned about the way government and business Figure . cha Pter F i V e  “work” and about the way environmental politics is entangled with information politics. She also learned to make connections that others easily miss, moving from Calhoun County, Texas, to Bhopal, India, to Baghdad, Iraq, all the while insisting that she is “nobody in particular.”6 Diane Wilson’s story illustrates how environmental right-to-know legislation works, beyond its effects on corporate behavior and despite problems with information accuracy, completeness, and circulation. My argument responds both to those who applaud and to those who criticize right-to-know initiatives. It also responds to accelerating interest in reducing vulnerability to disaster, evident in response to Hurricane Katrina and the 2006 Indian Ocean tsunami, for example, and among people concerned about global warming.7 Critiques of right-to know initiatives tend to focus on problems with the information made available. Analysis reveals that information is often incomplete, unaudited, inaccurate, and delayed in its circulation. This way of thinking about how environmental right-to-know works underestimates the way people actually work with information and around information gaps, often with keen awareness that “transparency” is not the same as “full disclosure.” It is thus critical to pay attention to information practices downstream of disclosure as well as to what information—even if imperfect—can reveal and motivate. Information, it turns out, is not only of substantive value (valuable because of its potential truth content) but also because of what can be called semiotic value. Any piece of information—even if partial or lacking verification —can draw people into processes of inquiry, driven by recognition of potential but unrealized information density, of interests undergirding information gaps, and of varied ways information, even if questionable, can be used, such as for comparisons across space and time.8 Information thus creates capacity to understand and respond to problems, routine and catastrophic.9 Those who applaud right-to-know legislation...