“Environmental justice essentially means that everyone—regardless of race, color, national origin, or income—has the right to the same environmental protections and benefits, as well as meaningful involvement in the policies that shape their communities. But rarely has this been the reality for people of color and those with low incomes. That’s because virtually all environmental injustice is shaped by the same patterns of racism and inequality that have existed in the United States since its founding and continue to influence every facet of our society, from education to housing to health care.

“For example, to this day, majority-white and wealthy communities are where investments into infrastructure are more likely to be made, where environmental laws are more likely to be properly enforced, and where polluters are more likely to be held accountable or kept away entirely. By comparison, the most marginalized communities are routinely treated as the areas where highways can be built, waste can be stored, industrial warehouses and facilities can be concentrated, and where natural resources can be readily exploited or destroyed.

“What’s worse, the most affected communities often experience multiple environmental threats at once. A single resident may drink lead-contaminated tap water and go to school near a soot-producing, coal-fired power plant. When such threats compound, and are exacerbated by other social and economic vulnerabilities, residents face even higher health risks.” […]

“The story of how the environmental justice movement became a national one can generally be traced back to Warren County, North Carolina. In the late 1970s, the state’s government was deliberating where it could store 6,000 truckloads of soil laced with toxic PCBs. It decided on rural, poor, and overwhelmingly Black Warren County. That quickly became the focus of national attention. Residents were furious that state officials had dismissed concerns over PCBs leaching into drinking water supplies….

“The people of Warren County ultimately lost the battle, and the toxic waste was deposited in that landfill. But their story—one of ordinary residents driven to protect their homes from a toxic assault—fired the imagination of many across the country who had lived through similar injustices. These events even inspired a new faction within the Civil Rights Movement….

“Several studies in the late 1980s and early ’90s gave … accounts of environmental racism new credibility…. A GAO study was published in 1983 and revealed that three-quarters of the hazardous waste landfill sites in eight southeastern states were located in primarily low-income, Black, and Latine communities.

“More evidence of widespread environmental racism soon followed. In 1987, the United Church of Christ’s Commission for Racial Justice (CRJ) … published the landmark Toxic Wastes and Race in the United States report…. [T]he report showed that race was the single-most important factor in determining where toxic waste facilities were sited in the United States…. And in 1990, sociologist Dr. Robert Bullard published … Dumping in Dixie: Race, Class, and Environmental Quality, which underscored the importance of race as a factor in the siting of unwanted facilities that produce toxic chemicals.

“By 1990, leaders of the growing environmental justice movement, who had chiefly relied on coalition building and community empowerment, began to look for allies among the traditional, primarily white—and more well-resourced—environmental organizations….

Environmental justice leaders also pushed their agenda within the government. In 1990, a meeting between a group of prominent academics and advocates within the movement and a top official in the first Bush administration led to the creation of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Environmental Equity Workgroup. The following year, the First National People of Color Environmental Leadership Summit brought together hundreds of environmental justice leaders from around the world to Washington, D.C., to network and strategize for the first time….

“[In 1992, President] Bill Clinton … appointed two [environmental justice] leaders, [Benjamin] Chavis and [Robert] Bullard, to his natural resources transition team, where they helped make environmental justice an important part of the president’s stated environmental policy. And then, on February 11, 1994, Clinton signed Executive Order 12898—a groundbreaking order directing federal agencies to identify and address the disproportionately high adverse health or environmental effects of their policies or programs on low-income people and people of color. It also directed federal agencies to look for ways to prevent discrimination by race, color, or national origin in any federally funded programs dealing with health or the environment.”