Last August, there was a tremendous fire here in Phoenix. The plume of smoke was visible from just about every point in the Valley - probably more than a 50 mile radius. The building that burned was an industrial plastics warehouse, so, needless to say, some fairly unpleasant chemicals found their way into the atmosphere. Since the fire happened during rush hour, and since the warehouse was right next to the freeway, a fair number of people, myself included, had to drive through the smoke. And I will vouch for the fact that there was a definite chemical taste and smell to the smoke (almost like nitrogen fertilizer).
Now, as seen in this article from the local paper (which may not be there for long if I know the AZPub’s site), residents in the area are suing… whom? The company who owned the warehouse? Well, yes, but also… the city. For zoning the area in such a way that a warehouse that stored industrial chemicals was able to move in. Basically, they’re saying that rezoning the area constitutes environmental racism because the residential areas close by are lower-income housing and house mostly minorities. Now, mind you - this warehouse was just a mile from the airport, which has been there for quite a while, and which is, itself, a tremendous producer of pollution. To me, it seems logical that the area surrounding the airport would have industrial or commercial zoning, and that seemed to have been the thrust of the rezoning initiative. In addition, there are more affluent areas close by, as well. Two miles to the south are new, large homes (the area, interestingly, is turning over). Less than a mile to the east is Tempe. Each of these areas (which, like most of Phoenix, are predominantly white) experienced a fair amount of fallout from the fire. None of the residents of these communities seem to be joining this suit. Nor is the resort hotel that sat right next to the plume.
So - is this a legitimate case? I tend to say “no.” While it is unfortunate that there are poor people who live near industrial facilities (as anyone who’s ever played SimCity can attest), and that a large proportion of them are indeed minorities, I don’t believe that the city acted maliciously toward them. The industry had to go somewhere - near the airport and freeways seems like a logical choice to me.
I assume by “pollution” here you mean air pollution, i.e. smog. Is it the airplanes at the airport that produce the air pollution, or the cars going in and out of the airport’s parking lots that produce the air pollution? (Seriously, I didn’t know that airports produced air pollution any more than, say, sports arenas did.)
IANA lawyer, but it seems that the way these kind of lawsuits have been going lately, they don’t have to prove that the city acted maliciously, only that the city did something. “We’ve got to blame someone, so let’s blame the city…”
It seems clear that the city did allow the industry in question to build near where people could breathe its toxic fumes, should it ever be so unfortunate as to catch on fire. I mean, the Mayor didn’t go out there with loaded pistols and wave the bulldozers away immediately after the ground-breaking ceremony. So clearly, with 21st Century litigious logic, the city must be to blame. I predict many, many years of lucrative lawsuits. “Come on, come on, Baby needs new shoes…” :rolleyes:
Although it sounds silly, envirnomental racism, as you call it, does exist. Racism is structured into our class system, and a lot of times the white man lives and the black man dies.
On a personal level, I used to live in an area that was a dumping ground for my cities undesireable facilities. There is a reason why you don’t see power plants, halfway houses and methadone clinics in nice areas. The city puts them in bad areas, where the citizens do not have enough political clout (try going to a city hall meeting in between your two jobs and raising your kid) to fight back. This is real and it does happen. It is a pretty bad thing to do on all levels, and it just ends up making the ghettoes even worse.
There was a case a few years ago in Louisiana – IIRC New Orleans. A railroad tank car was leaking ammonia or some toxic chemical. The car was hauled to a poor Black neighborhood and parked on the tracks. The local resident were temporarily moved away to protect them. A lawsuit was filed alleging that the seleciton of the site was racist. Even though nobody was actually harmed by the ammonia, I remember huge amounts of money being discussed – in the hundreds of millions or billions of dollars.
In this Arizona case, if the lawyers have filed a class action suit, they may well get a huge settlement. Of course, the lawyers would keep the lion’s share of any settlement.
I would not make that assumption. In recent years I’m sure standards have improvied, but in the old days lots of dumping of fuel or oil occurred, and fuel tanks may have leaked.
See Moffett Field Clean-up for an example of an airport (Moffett Naval Air Station) that is a huge pollution source.
I would liken the pollution to 100 gas stations all in various states of disrepair in the same square mile.
douglips makes a very valid point. Major airports, such as O’Hare, have multiple underground storage tanks for petroleum products (and may well have USTs for storing other chemicals such as wing de-icer, IIRC). Due to leakage from those USTs over the years, spills, overfills, et cetera, they can result in heavy impact to the soil and groundwater. Environmental consultants and contractors compete heavily for contracts to work on airport sites, as they can be large multimillion-dollar sources of work. In addition, closed Air Force bases and airfields can also be large sources of environmental impact for the same reason - USTs for the storage of fuel oil, used oil, gasoline, etc. etc. etc.
In addition to the soil and groundwater impact from USTs, there is also the matter of air pollution. Think about it - jets are arriving and departing every minute of every day. In addition, many jets are on the runways awaiting departure (especially in this day of ridiculous airport delays), with their engines turning, resulting in the products of incomplete combustion being emitted to the atmosphere. An analogous situation would be a highway such as I-90 in Chicago - during rush hour when cars are immobile, the highway itself acts as a line source of air pollution. (Then again, the highway would also act as a slightly more diffuse line source when traffic is moving as well, but the effect is more concentrated during stop-and-go traffic.)