Environmental
justice: A new movement to restrict your movement
Washington
Times
http://times247.com/articles/39environmental-justice-part-i-how-civil-rights-can-control-a-transit-project5#ixzz1wZV5bpboTimes247
by: Katherine Timpf
Thursday, May 31, 2012
First in a series
When most people talk about President Obama's influence on America, they
mention reforming health care, repealing "don't ask, don't tell" or ending
the war in Iraq.
But a nearly unknown executive order could have a greater impact on the future
of America than all of those things combined, potentially giving the federal
government power to control every project in the country.
The obscure memorandum of understanding, based on a long-forgotten executive
order signed by President Clinton in 1994, marries the issues of
environmentalism and social justice. The federal government can use the laws
from one to control the other.
Seventeen federal agencies signed the Aug. 4, 2011, memorandum — a clear
indication of its widespread implications. By signing it, “Each Federal agency
agrees to the framework, procedures, and responsibilities” of integrating
environmental justice into all of its “programs, policies, and activities.”
This integration was the topic of the State of Environmental Justice in 2012
Conference held April 5 in Crystal City, Va. The low-key conference featured
speakers who are key players in the movement, offering a rare glimpse into how
the federal government intends to use this new tool as an instrument of power
and control over the lives of every American.
Environmental justice has already stopped transportation projects in their
tracks by using Title VI, the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibits racial
"discrimination under any program or activity receiving Federal financial
assistance."
Mr. Obama explicitly suggests using Title VI to achieve environmental justice
in his memorandum.
“This is all about integrating environmental justice into the transportation
decision-making process,” said conference speaker Glenn Robinson, director of
the Environmental Justice in Transportation Project at Morgan State University
in Baltimore.
The president had taken steps to integrate environmental justice into
transportation even before he wrote the memo. In 2009, the Environmental
Protection Agency joined with the Department of Housing and Urban Development
and the Department of Transportation to create the HUD-DOT-EPA Partnership for
Sustainable Communities.
This partnership, according to the "Environmental Justice and
Sustainability Reference Deskbook," “marks a fundamental shift in the way
the federal government structures its transportation, housing, and
environmental policies, programs and spending” to include environmental justice
concerns.
James Cheatham, director of the Office of Planning at the Federal Highway
Administration, is listed as an environmental justice contact in this book,
which EPA published in December 2010. At the conference, he explained that the
movement's early focus on transportation was no accident.
“Transportation is that vital link that moves our economy one way or another,”
he said.
But what do civil rights have to do with transportation projects? When combined
with environmentalism, they can stop almost anything.
Last year, an environmental justice claim prevented the state of Virginia from
installing express toll lanes to help alleviate traffic congestion on
Interstate 395 in Arlington County. The county alleged that the state had
violated a series of laws that Mr. Obama suggested as enforcement tools for
environmental justice.
First, emissions from vehicles operating in the toll lanes would have violated
the Clean Air Act. And, since the lanes would have run mostly through a
low-income minority community, they also violated Title VI by discriminating
against residents who live there.
The lanes also would have violated the National Environmental Policy Act,
according to Arlington County Attorney Stephen A. MacIsaac.
“What NEPA requires is a study of traffic impacts, air quality impacts and
impacts on disadvantaged and minority communities … and we felt like that
wasn't an adequate review,” Mr. MacIsaac said.
Mr. MacIsaac insisted that the county's lawsuit did not allege racial
discrimination, even though traffic studies projected that mostly affluent
white people would use the HOT lanes, which he referred to as “Lexus lanes.”
But conference speaker Sharlene Reed, community planner at FHWA, suggested
conferees adopt exactly that strategy for filing project-stopping lawsuits.
“If environmental justice is looking at minorities and low income," she
asked, "can you actually afford to utilize this road, or are you being
disadvantaged as a result of them having a price associated with it?”
Like Mr. Cheatham, Ms. Reed is listed as an environmental contact in the
HUD-DOT-EPA Partnership. She helped develop "EPA's Action Development
Process: Interim Guidance on Considering Environmental Justice During the
Development of an Action," published in July 2010.
All told, the HOT lanes lawsuit cost Arlington County taxpayers about $2
million, Mr. MacIsaac said. Fearing a long, expensive court battle, the
Virginia Department of Transportation dropped Arlington from the project and
began an intensive environmental review.
Arlington County government considers this a victory, but James Corocan, head
of the chamber of commerce in neighboring Fairfax County, has a different take
on it.
“It's businesses and citizens that are going to pay for this government's
decision not to move forward with the HOT lanes,” Mr. Corocan said. “It's a shame
for Arlington, because other areas are going to leave them behind when it comes
to moving traffic around. … When businesses are looking at where do they want
to locate, obviously access is key.”
He said he had talked to several Arlington business leaders who would have
welcomed HOT lanes in their county.
Paul Driessen, senior policy fellow at the Center for Defense of Free
Enterprise, said one of the dangers of environmental justice is that it gives
the federal government power to make decisions that should be made by the
people affected by them.
“There's a huge element within the environmental community, … within the
various government agencies and so forth, of desire to control what people can
or can't do,” Mr. Driessen said.
Mr. Driessen said he lamented the fact that environmental regulations placed
“so many controls” over “free markets that have advanced us in so many ways.
We're really holding back entrepreneurship. People are not investing because
they don't know what the next round of regulations is going to do.”
But conference speakers lauded the use of Title VI in this way.
“File a complaint under the Title VI Administrative Enforcement Profess if you
cannot get the results that you want in other ways,” advised Marc Brenman, a
former senior policy adviser to the U.S. Department of Transportation.
Mr. Brenman recounted how he did just that to stop a train route from being
extended from downtown Oakland, Calif., to Oakland International Airport. He
alleged that the project violated Title VI because it better served whites than
minorities since the trains would pass by so many low-income minority
neighborhoods along the way.
And, as environmental contractor Alexander Bond reminded the group, there are
plenty of other laws people can use the same way as Title VI.
“The American Disabilities Act, the National Restorative Preservation Act for
some visually impaired people, … [there is] lots of room built into this
process for bringing environmental justice to the table,” said Mr. Bond, a
senior associate at energy and environmental contractor ICF International in
Fairfax.
Mr. Corocan disputed environmentalists' claims that HOT lanes would worsen air
quality in Arlington, since the same number of cars will be on the road anyway,
only now they will travel at a slower pace. That, if anything, will increase
pollution.
David Almasi, executive director of the National Center for Public Policy
Research, did not find this surprising at all. Environmental justice claims
very rarely have anything to do with actually helping anyone, he said.
“They're not thinking about economic consequences to the everyman, but they're
pushing environmental justice not in my opinion as a way to help a minority
community but as a way to play the race card and make their arguments harder to
fight,” Mr. Almasi said.
Another thing that makes environmental justice hard to fight is the vague terms
EPA uses to define it, according to Mr. Driessen.
“The EPA's agenda is so broad, it's used to advance any new regulation that
they have conceived of over this little bit in the past administration,” he
said.
Conference speaker Eloisa Reynault, transportation, health and equity program
manager at the American Public Health Association, described public health and
transportation as issues married by environmental justice.
Ms. Reynault said the combined cost of four chronic problems — traffic deaths
and injuries, obesity, lack of physical activity, and air pollution — cost
taxpayers an estimated $478 billion per year. She assured conferees that
environmental justice could offset those costs by addressing health and safety
issues "connected to transportation."
She said that while "car travel is sedentary travel," getting to the
bus or train stop often requires walking. She also asserted that a lack of
public transit in low-income communities causes greater air pollution and, in
turn, more lung disease. Another example? Car accidents, since minorities are
often "overrepresented" in traffic fatalities and injuries.
Under these definitions, members of a low-income or minority community could
file a Title IV complaint by claiming that lack of access to public
transportation made them fat and sick — and win.
The wide scope of environmental justice also makes it easier for government
offices to share funds to achieve it.
Just ask conference speaker Kim Lambert, environmental justice coordinator for
the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.
“Because there’s no resources for most federal agencies, you’ve got to go to
someone who has money," Lambert told conferees. "I’ve got to beg for
their resources, I’ve got to show there’s a nexus between environmental justice
and the community."
If Ms. Lambert wants money from a well-funded project to go toward her cause,
all she needs to do is show a relevant link to the admittedly broad category of
environmental justice. She said she does this often with her department, the
Bureau of Fish and Wildlife.
"I work directly with the director of Fish and Wildlife," she said.
"At my level I shouldn’t be. But I make sure I am getting right to him.
"Fish and Wildlife — which is one of the smaller bureaus — that’s the job
that pays me. My passion, though, is civil rights.”
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