Gary Wilson
What’s it like to be on the point in the fight for environmental justice? To live in a company town that’s home to a large tar sands oil refinery?
Whiting, Indiana resident Carolyn Marsh will tell you.
Marsh speaks with conviction about the environmental and political travails of life in Whiting, home of the BP refinery that can process 400,000 barrels of oil a day.
It’s a place she loves but also one where she feels shut out of the processes that impact two essentials for life — clean air and water. A citizen activist, Walsh is one of those dogged people willing to take on the giants like BP, and it’s not easy.
Whiting activist Carolyn Marsh. Image: Gary Wilson
“The mayor of Whiting is a former BP employee. The mayor and city council are on the side of BP” at the expense of citizens, according to Walsh.
She spoke recently at an environmental journalism workshop I attended and that was sponsored by the non-profit Institute for Journalism and Natural Resources.
BP declined to meet with the visiting reporters.
Marsh didn’t limit her criticism to BP and Whiting officials.
She also said that environmental groups like the Alliance for the Great Lakes were too cozy with BP at the expense of Whiting citizens when negotiating water pollution permits.
Olga Bautista, Southeast Chicago activist. Image: Gary Wilson.
A few miles from Whiting in southeast Chicago, activist Olga Bautista told the same journalists about her fight to rid her community of pet coke — the byproduct of that tar sands oil production in Whiting.
Residue from the pet coke piles can blow through the community, exposing residents to potential health risks and reducing the quality of life.
Bautista and others have pressured Chicago officials and owners of the storage facility, KCBX Terminals, to end pet coke storage in their neighborhood.
Some progress has been made, but Bautista said Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s plan to eliminate pet coke storage has failed.
KCBX executives, in a briefing with reporters, highlighted their efforts to monitor and contain particulate matter from the pet coke piles. They said the community’s complaints were essentially about the quality of “urban air.”
The issues in Whiting and on Chicago’s southeast side are classic examples of our unwillingness to properly prioritize environmental justice, something that the U.S. EPA defines as “the fair treatment and involvement of all people… with respect to the development, implementation, and enforcement of environmental laws, regulations, and policies.”
We’re not there yet.
Simply put, if you live in areas like Whiting or on Detroit’s industrial south side, you’ll struggle to achieve the quality of environmental life available to others. The forces of big business, government and even big environmental groups may not be aligned with you.
Political expediency and economic development may trump your health and quality of life.
I wanted to understand how environmental justice fits with the establishment folks who work on issues like air and water quality. So I asked around.
First stop, the U.S. EPA’s Great Lakes National Program Office in Chicago. While not directly involved in the issues in Whiting, it administers the multi-billion dollar Great Lakes region restoration program.
Surely it must have environmental justice opportunities.
Cameron Davis, who oversees the program, said they don’t use the term or its EJ acronym.
“Instead of using the label EJ, we support work that simply has the effect of helping promote equity,” Davis wrote in an email.
That’s a curious response.
The EPA has an Office of Environmental Justice and the Great Lakes Restoration Initiative’s advisory board has recommended environmental justice improvements. And EPA is currently working on an “EJ 2020 Action Agenda.”
Davis did say the EPA’s work to clean up toxic legacy sites “helps largely post-industrial communities by priming neighborhoods for local economic redevelopment…”
A stone’s throw from the EPA office is that of the Army Corps of Engineers Chicago District, an agency with a penchant for restoration projects in wealthy areas.
It’s spending $2.8 million of that Great Lakes restoration money to create an eco-tourism site for the Chicago Park District on Northerly Island. That’s a spit of a peninsula in Chicago’s prestigious Museum Campus. It’s also home to a revenue-generating rock concert venue. It’s a stretch to justify spending scarce restoration money on a site that the park district has said is already “dedicated to nature.”
Journalists interview KCBX executives. Pet coke piles are in background. Image: Gary Wilson
And the Corps just completed a multi-million dollar beach restoration project in partnership with the city of Highland Park. On Chicago’s elite North Shore, Highland Park is one of the wealthiest communities in Illinois. It’s the summer home for the Chicago Symphony, not pet coke storage. You get the picture.
But does the Army Corps have an environmental justice program?
Spokesperson Lynne Whelan told me she didn’t know but followed up saying that the Corps reviews environmental justice as part of the process required by the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA).
Over to the Alliance for the Great Lakes — the group Whiting activist Marsh mentioned — whose Chicago headquarters is between the EPA and Army Corps’ office.
Does it have formal environmental justice programs or initiatives?
I was directed to a diversity statement on the organization’s website for an answer. It’s always a red flag when in response to a question you’re told to check the website. There was standard diversity fare there but no environmental justice mention.
On follow up, I got this:
“Environmental justice is an expansive term and can mean quite a few different things to different people,“ Alliance spokesperson Jennifer Caddick said in an email.
“I’m not sure how you are intending to use the term. Our focus is on ensuring that our on the ground stewardship programs and advocacy priorities are reflective of the communities we serve.”
In response to Marsh’s earlier criticism on water permit negotiations,Caddick said “we no longer have anyone on staff who was deeply involved in the negotiations…. I don’t have enough information to comment on the specifics you are requesting.”
The Natural Resources Defense Council’s Chicago office plays both sides of the street on environmental justice.
It can be engaged with citizen groups by providing technical and legal support, as it was for residents in their fight to rid the neighborhood of pet coke.
Or it can opt to negotiate with polluters and government agencies behind the scenes when it needs to make the best of a tough situation — minimize the damage in a done deal. That can incur criticism from those excluded from the process as happened with fracking regulations in Illinois.
At least environmental justice is on the priority list of Henry Henderson who directs NRDC’s Chicago office. Henderson frequently talks about “sacrifice zones” — communities like Southeast Chicago that are written off.
I’ve been tough on some of the respondents to my inquiries. Their responses are tepid and couched in vague and sanitized language that can be interpreted as a crutch for inaction.
But I also suspect they care.
I know from direct experience that Davis considered environmental justice when he ran the Alliance for the Great Lakes before going to work for the U.S. EPA. And the EPA is a tough place to effect change. There’s pressure to show results, deadlines loom and you’re locked in a web of bureaucracy.
And the locals in disadvantaged communities aren’t always the easiest for government agencies and environmental groups to work with. They can be uncompromising to their detriment and unwilling to accept that maybe small steps are the best that can be made.
Environmental justice today exists primarily in obligatory mission statements and oblique policy pronouncements. That’s where it will remain until we have the political will and courage to make it a priority.
We’re not there yet.