Andrew Hurley: Environmental Inequalities

ISS 310

Spring 2002

Prof. Alan Rudy

Thursday, April 9th

Review of Last Thursday

Ch.7: The Social Geography of Pollution and the Politics of Sand

Spatial DimensionsPollutionSocial GroupsPower

– Quote at top of page 55.

US Steel’s obstructionism– noncompliance– courts

Ch.7: The Social Geography of Pollution & the Politics of Sand II

Air Pollution– Visible

• Soot• Addressed fairly well

– Invisible• Sulfur Dioxide• Toxics• Slower regulation/resolution

– Unintended consequences of partial technological fixes applied to post-production waste disposal in a holistic system. (Quote at the bottom of 156.)

– This is what happens when the production of pollution is not the problem but the disposal is.

Ch.7: The Social Geography of Pollution & the Politics of Sand III

Water– Grand Calumet

• Solid Waste• Cyanide, Ammonia, Chlorides and Sulfates • Gradual improvement

– Lake Michigan• Larger, slower to decline• Slower draining, larger, slower to recover• PCBs, PHAs, heavy metals, toxics

Ch.7: The Social Geography of Pollution & the Politics of Sand IV

Social Geography of Pollution Middle Class Blacks – Industrial West Gary

– Prevailing winds, good for them; bad for S. Chicago’s Latino population

– Irregular winds bad for them– Polluted Calumet River flows through

Middle Class Whites – Residential Miller– Dominated lakefront housing near, now,

multiracial shoreline parks

Ch.7: The Social Geography of Pollution & the Politics of Sand V

Perhaps the key, in Hurley’s account, is that the social geography of pollution is largely a result of the social geography of resistance to pollution.

Where resistance was strong and regular more was done than in places where resistance was weak or sporadic.

Also, plants and pollution not placed in white middle class areas with strong resistance were placed in black middle class and lower income areas with weaker traditions of resistance.

Not In My Backyard = In Someone Else’s Yard

Ch.7: The Social Geography of Pollution & the Politics of Sand VI

WATER and AIR improvements offset, or overcome, by increased LAND pollution of even greater racial distributional inequality.

Solid waste dumped in “holes in the ground,” when there was no regulation and illegally in holes in the ground when there was weak enforcement of existing regulations

Ch.7: The Social Geography of Pollution & the Politics of Sand VII

Solid waste: dumped on corporate grounds or in private dumps in black residential areas or illegally in black neighborhoods.

Further, the new chemical companies feeding the new, more economically efficient, steel industry produced much more toxic wastes than the old industrial plants.

Steel’s solid wastes don’t travel in the watershed, exotic/toxics do travel.

Ch.7: The Social Geography of Pollution & the Politics of Sand VIII

PCBs, lead, ethylbenzene, strontium, aresenic.

Distribution in part economic (cheaper land in industrial/black residential areas) and in part political (less resistance and enforcement – which also means less expensive).

Note how the end of sand mining in/near Miller led to toxics dumping in West Gary.

Ch.7: The Social Geography of Pollution & the Politics of Sand IX

Also, note how the city built low income housing in the industrial areas where the most toxics were produced and dumped.

Again, not only race is important as poor whites also failed to successfully protest dumping.

And it was difficult for the city to catch, prosecute and close illegal dumpers and dumps – for budgetary reasons, due to court delays, and because you don’t know an illegal dump is there until after the fact.

Ch.7: The Social Geography of Pollution & the Politics of Sand X

Toxic drinking water, dumps as playgrounds, lagoons as swimming holes.

An absolute key is Hurley’s point from Joel Tarr on p. 172.

So long as disposal is the key rather than not producing pollution what happens is that the solution is to change the form of the pollution from gas to liquid, from liquid to solid, from solid to gas (burning…)

This leaves you with the stuff but puts it somewhere else – where would that be?

Ch.7: The Social Geography of Pollution & the Politics of Sand XI

Also key, the availability/access to information and scientific studies (knowledge) about the dangers and warning signs of toxics/pollution.

The middle class and more highly educated folks have this kind of access much more than the poor and less comprehensively educated middle income people.

Conclusion: Epilogue

“Gary’s history crystallizes an important truth: the domination of nature involves and necessitates the control of human beings.” (182)

“[W]hat we call Man’s power over Nature turns out to be a power exercised by some men over other men with Nature as its instrument.” (C.S. Lewis, p. 182)