Ending Environmental Injustice

By Roger Clegg Copyright 1998 Investor's Business Daily December 15, 1998

Environmental and civil-rights bureaucrats have long plagued businesses. The offspring of their unholy marriage - ''environmental justice'' - is even worse. But the mischief-making days of this young miscreant may be numbered.

The premise of the environmental-justice movement is that minority neighborhoods suffer more than non-minority neighborhoods from pollution.

But where are the data? Brookings Institution scholar Christopher H. Foreman Jr., author of a recent book, ''The Promise and Peril of Environmental Justice,'' concludes that the facts just aren't there.

Facts or no facts, the White House backs an odd definition of ''discrimination.''

A '94 executive order and a follow-up ''interim guidance'' issued earlier this year lay out the administration's policy. The law is broken if local pollution will have a disproportionate effect on a particular racial or ethnic group. That's true even if there is no evidence that minority neighborhoods in general are more likely to suffer from pollution, and even if there is no evidence that they're deliberately targeted for pollution.

Of course, no neighborhood is a perfect microcosm of every racial and ethnic group. Pollution of any kind will always have a ''disproportionate effect'' on some group, somewhere.

The government's current approach only discourages businesses from locating in poor, predominately minority areas. No business means no jobs -exactly what those areas need most.

Mayor Clarence Harmon of St. Louis, a Democrat, says that the Clinton administration's policy ''will mean the loss of an opportunity to develop (inner-city) communities.''

A businessman, whose company recently moved a $ 700 million plant and its 255 jobs from a black, rural area to a majority white one, agreed. The policy, he said, ''inhibit(s) companies from looking to develop near minority areas.''

In short, the policy encourages businesses and bureaucrats to make decisions based on race and ethnicity.

It may be true that poorer neighborhoods are more likely at times than others to suffer the effects of pollution. After all, it's cheaper for businesses to buy property there, and poor neighborhoods often have little political clout. But does that mean development should be stopped completely?

If a neighborhood poses significant health threats, especially for children, then government intervention makes some sense.

But not every level of pollution presents a health threat. When it doesn't, it's best to let people vote with their feet. Will it be more jobs or less grime?

It's a tradeoff. And such tradeoffs say nothing about race. There are rich and poor white people, and rich and poor minorities. Pollution doesn't become less objectionable because it meets some racial or ethnic quota. Focusing on skin color and ancestors - as environmental justice does -adds nothing useful to the discussion of environmental law.

The good news is that the environmental-justice movement may be losing steam. Foreman's book pulls its punches. But it was published by America's premier liberal think tank and its findings are clear: The movement lacks empirical support and actually hurts poor people, since it distracts them from real health threats, such as smoking, drinking and bad diets.

Businesses, led by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, are arguing aggressively that the administration's policy will kill private investment in poor communities.

The '99 federal budget includes a provision suspending the Environmental Protection Agency's authority to pursue new complaints filed under this year's interim guidance. And the U.S. Conference of Mayors, the National Association of Black County Officials and the Environmental Council of the States are unanimous in attacking the policy.

A Michigan state official reports that EPA Director Carol Browner and the director of the EPA's civil rights office said in a November meeting that they would be limiting their review of environmental-justice complaints. EPA already dismissed one complaint on Oct. 30.

The environmental-justice movement still has the support of those, such as the Congressional Black Caucus, who prefer racial demagogy to facts and who like the politics of victimization better than economic development. But for everyone else, whatever appeal the movement had is quickly evaporating.

Roger Clegg is general counsel of the Center for Equal Opportunity in Washington, D.C. He has served as a deputy in both the Civil Rights and the Environment divisions at the U.S. Justice Department.

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