Civil Rights Report Calls Out EPA’s Chronic Failure to Protect Most Vulnerable Communities
By: Waterkeeper Alliance
Confirms impacts and cost of coal ash pollution are borne disproportionately by nation’s most vulnerable populations
NEW YORK, NY — September 23, 2016 — In a sweeping report to Congress and President Obama, today the United States Commission on Civil Rights (USCCR) blasted the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) for chronic failures to protect low-income communities and communities of color from dangerous pollution. The Commission specifically criticized EPA’s 2014 decision to regulate coal ash as a “nonhazardous” waste, despite the long list of carcinogens and other toxic chemicals that have leaked out of hundreds of aging coal ash dumps across the country. The report cites voluminous evidence that EPA’s failure to adequately regulate coal ash disproportionately affects America’s most vulnerable populations.
The USCCR report substantiates the years of work by Waterkeeper Alliance and partner organizations to spur EPA to strengthen its Title VI policies and protect people from the toxic impacts of pollution from coal ash and industrial meat production.
“The Commission’s report confirms what we’ve known for years: government is failing to protect America’s most vulnerable communities from dangerous pollution,” said Pete Harrison, an attorney for the Clean and Safe Energy Campaign at Waterkeeper Alliance. “Whether it’s arsenic leaking out of unlined coal ash dumps into drinking water supplies or noxious fumes from factory farms making people sick, the Commission found a chronic failure by EPA to protect people. The Commission blasted EPA for deciding not to regulate toxic coal ash as the hazardous waste it is. Hopefully this will give officials at all levels of government pause to consider that their chronic avoidance of effective safeguards for coal ash dumps continues to put people in harm’s way, especially people in communities of color or low-income areas.”
According to the report, the costs and harms of coal ash pollution are borne disproportionately by African-American, Latino and Native American communities in our country. Half of the 1,400 coal ash dumps in the United States have no liners to prevent chemicals from leaking into the environment, and 70 percent of the dumps are situated in low-income communities.
A recently passed U.S. Senate bill would allow states to make utility-friendly changes to the EPA rule if they choose to adopt their own enforcement programs. The USCCR report makes clear that EPA needs to establish its own enforcement authority and that citizens should not have to bear the brunt of coal ash and other toxic waste dumped in their communities.
While the Commission’s report focused on environmental justice issues surrounding coal ash pollution, the findings have broader implications. In North Carolina, more than 2,200 factory hog operations housing more than 10 million hogs are concentrated in the southeastern part of the state, and in disproportionately close proximity to communities of color.
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About Waterkeeper Alliance
Waterkeeper Alliance is a global movement uniting more than 300 Waterkeeper Organizations and Affiliates around the world and focusing citizen advocacy on issues that affect our waterways, from pollution to climate change. Waterkeepers patrol and protect more than 2.4 million square miles of rivers, streams and coastlines in the Americas, Europe, Australia, Asia and Africa. For more information please visit: www.waterkeeper.org.