Grantee Research Project Results
1997 Progress Report: A National Evaluation of Equity in Hazardous Waste Sites
EPA Grant Number: R823185Title: A National Evaluation of Equity in Hazardous Waste Sites
Investigators: Anderton, Douglas L.
Institution: University of Massachusetts - Amherst
EPA Project Officer: Chung, Serena
Project Period: July 1, 1995 through July 1, 1997
Project Period Covered by this Report: July 1, 1996 through July 1, 1997
Project Amount: $263,470
RFA: Socio-Economics (1995) RFA Text | Recipients Lists
Research Category: Environmental Justice
Objective:
The purpose of this project is to assess plausible inequities or biases in the disproportionate siting of hazardous waste facilities and hazardous material handlers in neighborhoods characterized by a high percentage of minority or socio-econmically disadvantaged residents.Progress Summary:
(a) This project included a longitudinal evaluation of demographics within communities with TSDFs to determine the potential historical siting biases and/or site impacts. Published results from the project did not find hazardous waste industries to have any specific siting biases nor longitudinal impacts beyond those found for industrial areas in general. Abutting neighborhoods nearby these industrial residential areas do tend to have greater proportions of minority residents.
(b) This project also extended these findings to Superfund (NPL) sites and CERCLA candidate sites. Again in published findings, an analysis of CERCLIS/NPL sites did not find substantial evidence of environmental inequities in the population composition near such sites. The findings of this analysis did, however, provide prima facie evidence of potential, although slight, bias working against minority neighborhoods in the prioritization process which moves sites from CERCLIS to NPL designation.
(c) This project also surveyed all RCRA governed sites to collect additional information and verify geocoding information which was used in an analysis of equity in the distribution of these facilities. In results currently under review and accepted for conference presentation, RCRA governed facilities as a whole do not display significant racial or ethnic siting bias. As with TSDFs, the neighborhoods within which RCRA facilities are found tend to be working class, predominantly white, neighborhoods. However, as with TSDFs the abutting neighborhoods near these industrial residential areas do tend to have greater proportions of minority residents. Some specific environmental inequities are identified for RCRA subgroups in these analyses and merit further research and policy concern. Commercially owned large off-site waste handlers evidence some potential inequity in their distribution across social groups. And, rural southern industries similarly merit attention. However, these plausible inequities are substantively small when compared to the more general pattern of such facilities simply being located in established industrial areas.
(d) This research has also extended these concerns to the more general distribution of manufacturing industries in the largest metropolitan areas using Dun and Bradstreet data files on related manufacturing industries. In findings both published and under peer review this research finds that industrial segregation underlies and reinforces residential segregation patterns in major metropolitan areas. Evidence suggests that in many cases minority communities are more segregated from facilities which provide greater employment opportunities while more likely near to potentially more burdensome manufacturing industries.
(e) Finally, this research has explored a variety of methodological comparative designs in drawing environmental equity conclusions, in measuring industrial segregation and in assessing cumulative, i.e. multiple facility, environmental burdens. These methods are integrated within published research findings and several have been discussed in two published methodological commentaries arising from the project.
Future Activities:
This project has also generated a significant amount of material which is being prepared for possible publication in the form of a monograph. The project is seeking to expand the focus of the analysis to incorporate the effects of zoning governance on siting and the demographic composition of communities near industrial areas. Analysis of the RCRA data is continuing beyond the termination of project funding.Journal Articles on this Report : 1 Displayed | Download in RIS Format
Other project views: | All 14 publications | 6 publications in selected types | All 5 journal articles |
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Type | Citation | ||
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Anderton DL. Methodological issues in the spatiotemporal analysis of environmental equity. Social Science Quarterly 1996;77(3):508-515. |
R823185 (1997) R823185 (Final) |
not available |
Supplemental Keywords:
Environmental Justice; Race, Class, Ethnicity and Environmental Burdens; Quality of Life, RFA, Economic, Social, & Behavioral Science Research Program, Scientific Discipline, environmental justice, Economics, decision-making, Ecology and Ecosystems, Economics & Decision Making, Social Science, census tract characteristics, hazardous waste siting, Superfund sites, hazardous environmental exposures, commercial TSDFs, environmental equity, RCRA sites, environmental values, bias, hazardous waste facilities, environmental policy, ethnicity, hazardous waste siting decisions, community based intervention, equity of distributionProgress and Final Reports:
Original AbstractThe perspectives, information and conclusions conveyed in research project abstracts, progress reports, final reports, journal abstracts and journal publications convey the viewpoints of the principal investigator and may not represent the views and policies of ORD and EPA. Conclusions drawn by the principal investigators have not been reviewed by the Agency.