Flint crisis shows environmental injustice

Some people like their water with crushed ice or a twist of lemon. Nobody I know chooses to add a dash of lead, though.

Residents of Flint, Michigan, didn’t have the luxury of choice when it came to their city’s contaminated water. Instead, they were at the mercy of political leaders who chose monetary benefits over their constituents’ health and safety.

This power-powerless dynamic shows what is happening in Flint should and will have an impact beyond the lives that it has taken from those living there. Systemic, environmental injustices must produce a national response.

Following a cost-saving plan to switch the city’s water source from a Detroit water supply to the Flint River in 2014, Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder’s administration ignored mounting complaints and concerns about the water’s quality.

After more than a year of Flint River’s polluted water running through the city’s taps, lead found in the blood of residents finally forced city officials to concede that complaints were warranted. What’s more, the city was now in the midst of a public health emergency.

This isn’t an isolated case of “oopsie” policies. It’s another instance of environmental injustice ravaging poor, minority communities.

Flint embodies how sociodemographic lines determine disparities in exposure to pollutants. According to the 2010 U.S. Census Bureau, Flint’s population is 56.6 percent black or African-American. Between 2009 and 2013, 41.5 percent of Flint’s population lived below the poverty level.

Flint is your typical case study — but it’s more than that. It’s a city made up of people preparing to spend the rest of their lives dealing with the long-term effects of lead contamination.

It’s also a city that should inspire us to think about the consequences of ignoring environmental justice and ways we can prioritize it in the future.

Flint isn’t alone. The United States is dotted with primarily poor, minority communities that can’t break through hanging clouds of pollution.

Mary Collins of the State University of New York’s College of Environmental Science and Forestry, along with Ian Munoz and Joseph JaJa from the University of Maryland in Annapolis and College Park, respectively, recently published a paper detailing a study of “hyper-polluters” using an analysis of Environmental Protection Agency data. According to the study, about 5 percent of “heavy-polluters” generated 90 percent of studied toxins — but those facilities were more likely to be located close to poor, minority communities.

Environmental injustice isn’t new.

This has been a widely accepted fact since President Bill Clinton issued an executive order in 1994 that pushed federal agencies to integrate environmental justice within their respective core missions.

His executive order spurred a 2003 report by the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights to determine how effective the executive order had been at achieving its goal.

The report came to the conclusion that — among other neglects — federal agencies failed to incorporate environmental justice or establish accountability and performance outcomes for initiatives.

Communities remained shut out from environmental decision-making processes. Research on the ties between environmental pollutants and health statuses remained inadequate.

Some things have changed since then. We have a broader picture of the inequalities that arise from a failure to achieve environmental justice.

A 2014 article published by Lara P. Clark, Dylan B. Millet and Julian D. Marshall from the University of Minnesota detailed patterns of environmental injustice and inequality for exposure to nitrogen dioxide (NO₂).

The NO₂ concentration for non-white populations was 38 percent higher than that for white ones. This discrepancy had major health implications. Researchers estimated that lowering the NO₂ concentration for non-whites to match the level of whites would result in 7,000 fewer deaths due to Ischemic Heart Disease.

Environmental inequality is a powerful aggressor — inequality for NO₂ concentration was greater than income inequality.

Right now, presidential candidates are traveling the country touting policies to eradicate income inequality, but only Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton have named environmental justice as a priority. Yet, when environmental inequalities outrank those caused by income, shouldn’t we require candidates to propose a substantive solution?

If we fail to hold officials accountable, environmental injustice will continue to destroy neighborhoods without the resources to fight back. We all share this planet — the poorest of us shouldn’t be the only ones answering for how we treat it.

Bethel Habte is a Senior Columnist at The Pitt News who primarily writes about social issues and current events. Write to Bethel at beh56@pitt.edu.