Journal: Environmental Justice
FREE ACCESS through November 2, 2017
By Mary Ann Liebert, Inc., 2017-10-21
The journal Environmental Justice (jEJ) is one of the most relevant pioneers in the field of Environmental Justice Research. The peer-review journal is published bimonthly, covering the impacts and environmental burdens that affect marginalized populations all over the world. Interdisciplinary repports on communities, industry, academia, government, and nonprofit organizations are considered in its editions including human health and the environment, natural science, technology, land use and urban planning, public and environmental policy, environmental history, legal history as it pertains to environmental justice, environmental sociology, anthropology of environmental, health disparities, and grassroots activities.

The jEJ is under the editorial leadership of Editor-in-Chief Sylvia Hood Washington, PhD, MSE, MPH, and senior Editor Kenneth Olden, PhD, ScD, LHD, among others. For the period of until 02 November 2017, the jEJ gives free online access to the following research pubications.

Articles

1. Bonds Eric and Martin Leslie: Treating People Like Pollution: Homelessness and Environmental Injustice

The abstract of the article reads as follows:

Achieving environmental justice does not only require the provision of clean air and water in all the places where people carry out their lives, it also necessitates access to the very spaces of the urban environment. Through our research based on interview and archival data in a small U.S. city, we demonstrate that homeless persons are often viewed as a kind of environmental contaminant that should be cleaned up or kept out, either through the passage and enforcement of “civility codes” that criminalize homelessness or through NIMBY movements that develop to prevent the establishment of homelessness services in particular areas. While such efforts fail to purge cities of the homeless, they do reduce the availability of homelessness services in certain areas and push homeless dwellings to the unseen fringes of communities. In this way, we show, when homeless people are viewed as a kind of pollution, city policies develop that diminish their access to the urban environment and the resources it provides.

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2. Katner Adrienne, Pieper Kelsey J., Lambrinidou Yanna, Brown Komal, Hu Chih-Yang, Mielke Howard W., and Edwards Marc A.: Water Justice and Food Sovereignty in Cotopaxi, Ecuador

The abstract of the article reads as follows:

The failure of the regulatory community to protect the residents of Flint, Michigan, from prolonged exposure to hazardous levels of lead in their drinking water has drawn public attention to long-acknowledged weaknesses in the implementation and oversight of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA's) Lead and Copper Rule (LCR). This rule defines the roles and responsibilities of water utilities in reducing consumer exposures to lead-in-water hazards. Despite this regulation, water-related lead poisoning cases have been documented in cities determined to be in regulatory compliance. This article presents preliminary results from an ongoing study that documents gaps and weaknesses in the rule and its implementation, oversight, and enforcement. We detail how the original intent of the LCR to protect public health has been undermined by inadequate lead-in-water monitoring and public education, as well as weak regulatory oversight and enforcement. We summarize how these issues contributed to the Flint debacle and are still being perpetuated today in other municipalities. Finally, we discuss how these factors may be thwarting the prevention of childhood lead poisoning in the United States, and contributing to disproportionate environmental burdens on low-income communities. This review is timely, in that it may prompt public involvement in the U.S. EPA's ongoing review and revision of the LCR.

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3. Sadler Richard Casey and Highsmith Andrew R.: Rethinking Tiebout: The Contribution of Political Fragmentation and Racial/Economic Segregation to the Flint Water Crisis

The abstract of the article reads as follows:

The water crisis that has embroiled Flint, Michigan, since 2014 is often explained via the proximate causes of government oversight and punitive emergency management. While these were critical elements in the decision to switch the city's water source, many other forces helped precipitate the crisis. One such force has been an enduring support for Charles Tiebout's model of interlocal competition, through which a region is presumed stronger when fragmented, independent municipalities compete for residents and investment. However, the Tiebout model fails to account for spillover effects, particularly regarding questions of social and regional equity. In this sense, the fragmentation of the Flint metropolitan region - supported through a variety of housing and land use policies over many decades - created the conditions through which suburbs were absolved of responsibility for Flint's decades-long economic crisis. Because of the Tiebout model's inability to address imbalances in population shifts arising from disparities in municipal services, Flint's more affluent suburbs continued to prosper, while Flint grew poorer and experienced infrastructure decline. Underlying this pattern of inequality has been a long history of racial segregation and massive deindustrialization, which concentrated the region's black population in the economically depressed central city. The Flint Water Crisis is thus a classic example of an environmental injustice, as policies were set in motion, which led to the creation of a politically separate and majority-black municipality with concentrated poverty, while nearby municipalities - most of them overwhelmingly white - accepted little responsibility for the legacy costs created by the region's starkly uneven patterns of metropolitan development.

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4. Brugge Doug, Patton Allison P., Bob Alex, Reisner Ellin, Lowe Lydia, Bright Oliver-John M., Durant John L., Newman Jim, and Zamore Wig: Developing Community-Level Policy and Practice to Reduce Traffic-Related Air Pollution Exposure

The abstract of the article reads as follows:

The literature consistently shows associations of adverse cardiovascular and pulmonary outcomes with residential proximity to highways and major roadways. Air monitoring shows that traffic-related air pollutants (TRAP) are elevated within 200-400 meters of these roads. Community-level tactics for reducing exposure include the following: 1) high-efficiency particulate arrestance (HEPA) filtration; 2) appropriate air-intake locations; 3) sound proofing, insulation; 4) land-use buffers; 5) vegetation or wall barriers; 6) street-side trees, hedges and vegetation; 7) decking over highways; 8) urban design including placement of buildings; 9) garden and park locations; and 10) active-travel locations, including bicycling and walking paths. A multidisciplinary design charrette was held to test the feasibility of incorporating these tactics into near-highway housing and school developments that were in the planning stages. The resulting designs successfully utilized many of the protective tactics and also led to engagement with the designers and developers of the sites. There is a need to increase awareness of TRAP in terms of building design and urban planning.

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5. Butler Lindsey J., Scammell Madeleine K., and Benson Eugene B.: The Flint, Michigan, Water Crisis: A Case Study in Regulatory Failure and Environmental Injustice

The abstract of the article reads as follows:

The Flint water crisis highlights numerous regulatory failures related to federal drinking water regulation, interpretation, and enforcement. The events that unfolded in Michigan, from the initial utilization of a corrosive water source to provide Flint's drinking water to the inadequate response of numerous regulators, demonstrate how the Safe Drinking Water Act (SDWA) can be wrongly interpreted, implemented, and weakly enforced, leading to dangerous exposure to unsafe drinking water. Our objective is to discuss these regulatory failures in Michigan in 2014-2015 in the context of other reported incidents of U.S. cities with high levels of lead in drinking water. Like the people of Flint, many of the affected residents are living in economically depressed areas with high rates of racial minorities. The recurring trend of unsafe drinking water in communities with this demographic profile qualifies this as an issue of environmental injustice.

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Image: © Mary Ann Liebert, Inc.