Original Articles
ENVIRONMENTAL JUSTICE Volume 3, Number 1, 2010 ª Mary Ann Liebert, Inc. DOI: 10.1089=env.2009.0025
Don’t Waste Us: Environmental Justice through Community Participation in Urban Planning Diane Sicotte
ABSTRACT
This article examines environmental justice lessons from the Eastwick community, a group of 11 racially diverse urban neighborhoods in industrial Southwest Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA. Although suffering from high unemployment and poverty and seeking more commercial businesses, Eastwick residents must constantly field proposals for waste disposal and other polluting businesses due to its industrial zoning and its proximity to major transportation routes. Eastwick’s long history of dedicated, racially unified neighborhood activism has won residents the right to partner with Philadelphia authories in making land-use decisions in the community. With this power, residents have successfully resisted many attempts to cite unwanted polluting facilities in the community, while striving to enhance safety, economic development, and quality of life. Despite many important successes, environmental justice in Eastwick has been undermined by flawed local, state, and federal policies that fail to take into consideration the cumulative impact of the citing of new environmental hazards. Suggestions for policy interventions that would improve environmental justice in Eastwick and elsewhere are discussed.
hazards, residents must constantly contend with proposals for new hazardous and polluting land uses. (See Figure 1).
INTRODUCTION
U
rban residents in industrial neighborhoods must often fight pollution while trying to attract employment-generating businesses. This study traces the history of such an area, the Eastwick neighborhoods of Southwest Philadelphia, focusing on the process through which residents gained the power to make land-use decisions; how they used that power to prevent the siting of polluting businesses in their community; and the factors that limited their power. The name Eastwick refers to a group of 11 racially diverse, working-class neighborhoods served by the Eastwick Project Area Committee (EPAC). EPAC acts as social-service provider, city planner, and liaison to City agencies.1 Eastwick is close to Philadelphia’s major rail, highway, and air transportation corridors. About 60% of the land in Eastwick is zoned for industrial use, and it is located in the largest industrial district in Philadelphia; thus, despite many preexisting
METHODS I became aquainted with Eastwick through my role as an invited guest at EPAC’s monthly Community Planning meetings in 2004 and 2005, at which I helped Eastwick residents gather information about land-use proposals that might bring environmental risks to the community. I had seen and read of many environmental justice struggles, but had never seen an instance in which neighborhood residents had a formal, legally binding role in decisions about land uses in their community. To investigate Eastwick’s history, I gathered historical materials about Eastwick and about 70% (all that remain in existence) of community minutes from EPAC’s Community Planning and Board Meetings from 1980–1995 from the Temple University Urban Archives. More recent minutes of meetings were obtained from the EPAC office. I also conducted interviews with key organizers and founding members of EPAC (and received historical documents not available elsewhere from them). My purpose for attending the meetings was to aid the community; consequently, I did not record events at meetings as an observer.
Dr. Sicotte is Associate Professor of Sociology in the Department of Culture and Communication at Drexel University in Philadelphia, PA. The author is grateful to Maggie Powell, Joseph Warren, L.S., and Regina Eichinger for their participation and assistance.
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FIG. 1. Eastwick neighborhoods.
I discovered that the power of Eastwick residents to make land-use decisions was more than just cosmetic. At EPAC’s Planning Committee meetings, parties seeking a zoning change within Eastwick are required by the City to present proposals to neighborhood residents, who then vote on the proposals. The Planning Committee then conveys the decision to the Philadelphia Zoning Board, City Council, or whatever regulatory body applies. Because of EPAC’s bureaucratized role in land-use planning, City agencies nearly always abide by the community’s wishes in these matters. A total of 167 cases were recorded; in 35 of these, no decision was recorded either because the proposal was withdrawn or because the planning committee decided to table the proposal until they were provided with adequate information (sometimes both). Deducting these cases left 132 ‘‘yes’’ or ‘‘no’’ decisions. HISTORY OF EASTWICK: GAINING COMMUNITY POWER Eastwick lies at the confluence of the Schuykill and Delaware Rivers, a low-lying marshy area that attracts many species of birds and other wildlife. The first homes were built in the 1920s, close to industrial workplaces such as the Hog Island Shipyards, Baldwin’s, GE, and Westinghouse.2 By 1951, 19,300 low- and middle-income residents had moved there, attracted by the affordable detatched housing, and by the green, leafy character of the area. Despite its liveability, environmental problems including frequent flooding, inadequate sewer services, and the siting of factories too close to homes plagued Eastwick.3 At two dumps upstream of Eastwick, household and hospital garbage was burned, and waste oil and liquid chemical waste were poured on the ground.4
Nonetheless, residents of Eastwick were deeply attached to their neighborhood. Eastwick was racially integrated to a degree that was highly unusual in Philadelphia in the 1950s; commentators remarked upon ‘‘Negro and white living together without friction, but as neighbors and friends.’’5 Social life in Eastwick was so close-knit that for decades annual reunions of former Eastwick residents were held.6 Life was disrupted in 1955 by the Philadelphia Redevelopment Agency’s urban renewal plan, which included the designation of areas in Eastwick as blighted. Throughout 1957 and 1958, residents staged racially mixed protests, demanding better lighting, streets, sewers, and schools instead of bulldozers.7 But over the next ten years, the City purchased or used eminent domain to take possession of whole blocks of homes, displacing about 12,800 people, many of whom complained that they were not paid fair market value.8 Land thus cleared was left vacant for decades, attracting trash dumpers. Transit and other services to the area were cut, degrading the quality of life for remaining residents. By the late 1960s, outraged Eastwick residents were confronting City Council members relentlessly. Joseph Warren, longtime resident of Eastwick and a founding member of EPAC, described this: … City Council could not deal with 20 or 25 groups coming down to them every month. Having rallies. Getting in the newspapers. Because that’s what was happening … City officials would come out and they would be afraid to go out to their cars. People were, you know, very, very angry.9 Relations with City Hall were streamlined when all of Eastwick’s neighborhoods were united into one umbrella group, EPAC, in 1972.13 But in 1982, Philadelphia’s
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DON’T WASTE US Redevelopment Authority needed to revise the outdated Eastwick Project Area Urban Renewal Plan in order to obtain federal funding. City officials avoided timeconsuming wrangling with Eastwick residents by designating EPAC one of four partners (in addition to the Redevelopment Authority of Philadelphia, HUD, and the City of Philadelphia) in land-use decisions within the Eastwick project area.10 Thus, EPAC’s formal role as partner in community development resulted primarily from the efforts of neighborhood activists, but secondarily from the City of Philadelphia’s need to make these activists a part of the city planning bureaucracy. ENVIRONMENTAL JUSTICE AND LAND USE IN EASTWICK By 2000, Eastwick had become a predominantly black area of Philadelphia, with higher unemployment and poverty rates than in the City overall.11 Eastwick residents, like those of most environmentally burdened urban communites, saw crime, poverty, education, and pollution as quality of life issues that must all be worked on simultaneously.12 EPAC continued to pressure the City to improve public transit and services, ran a job databank, fought pollution, and cooperated with police to reduce crime. Toxic chemical leachate from the Clearview and Folcroft Landfills seeped into homes in Eastwick each time nearby Upper Darby Creek flooded.13 In 2001, residents won a 30year fight to get the landfills listed as high-priority cleanups through Superfund.14 Sources of air pollution in Eastwick included a large regional highway, Interstate 95 (which bisects Eastwick); the Philadelphia International Airport to the south; and the Sunoco gasoline refinery complex to the east. Air sampling conducted by resident volunteers in 2002 and 2003 at the refinery’s fenceline revealed that the toxic chemicals benzene, ethylbenzene, tolulene, hexane, xylene, and MTBE had been emitted from the Sunoco refinery in ambient air in concentrations exceeding health standards.15 In addition, two electric power plants, a sewage treatment facility, the former U.S. Naval Yard, and many other large- and small-scale manufacturers are located in Eastwick. This collection of environmental hazards has troubling implications for the environmental health of residents. A study of hazardous air pollutants in several South and Southwest Philadelphia neighborhoods (including Eastwick) revealed pollution health risk scores 3–5 times the national average, and mortality rates well above the national average.16 Despite the need for a cleaner environment, Eastwick’s location and history of industrial land use and zoning meant that residents continually faced the intrustion of new polluting land uses. For predominantly black communities such as Eastwick, structural racism and social class disadvantage give rise to the continued concentration of unwanted hazardous facilities.17 Even an increase in environmentally responsible behavior such as recycling has often brought waste processing facilities and their attendant problems to such neighborhoods after they are successfully resisted by more affluent neighborhoods.18
In many U.S. communities, activists have lost battles against unwanted waste facilities when confronted with local regulatory officials whose job it is to find places to put hazardous wastes.19 Michael Arno, Executive Director of the Philadelphia Redevelopment Authority from 1970– 1978, stated that he believed Eastwick seemed a convenient place for wastes and polluting activities: A lot of the penalties that the whole Eastwick area pays are because people just didn’t care [about environmental problems]. They used Eastwick as a place where you can put things.20 Residents of low-income communities often feel they must choose between hazardous industry and no industry at all, a situation Robert Bullard has characterized as ‘‘economic blackmail.’’21 But in many cases, poor communities have resisted landfills, hazardous waste facilities, and factories.22 They do so for health and economic reasons: polluting industrial land uses lower property values for homeowners living closest to them, while making the area unappealing for non-industrial businesses.23 COMMUNITY DECISIONS ABOUT INDUSTRIAL LAND USE IN EASTWICK Proposals for land-use changes received by the Community Planning Board were grouped into Commerical, Industrial, Residential, or Social Institutional land uses according to classifications set out by American Planning Association.24 Sixty-nine percent of Commercial proposals were approved (while only 17% were rejected); 55% of Industrial proposals were accepted, while 26% were rejected.25 This suggests that, while Eastwick’s preferred economic strategy was to gear development toward commercial businesses and the sales and service jobs they tend to generate, most of the land in Eastwick had been used for industrial use and was still zoned Industrial. In cases where the lot proposed for commercial development was occupied by an abandoned factory or had become a ‘‘brownfield’’ due to soil contamination left behind by prior industrial use, developers were required to undertake cleanup after purchasing the property but before seeking a land-use change from residents (thus, they also risked the community’s rejection of their project after they spent money on cleanups). This made ‘‘upzoning’’ land from industrial to commercial more costly for developers, insuring that proposals for industrial use would still predominate. To provide a more detailed look at decisions on industrial land uses in Eastwick, industrial land use proposals were broken down into six categories (see Table 1). Warehouses had the highest acceptance rate, followed by repair facilities, freight and shipping companies, and factories. Eastwick residents may have felt that these facilities would at least provide some jobs; but nine of ten waste disposal facilities were rejected. Considering the 14 rejected industrial facilities, it is evident that without EPAC’s power to act as land-use gatekeeper, Eastwick’s environmental burdens would have worsened.
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SICOTTE Table 1. Industrial Land-Use Proposals Accepted or Rejected by Eastwick Residents (Number of Facilities)
Accepted (n ¼ 29) Repair facilities (automotive, electric motor, air conditioner, refrigerator) (8) Warehouses, distributors or wholesalers (10) Freight=shipping=terminals=transfer stations (2) Factories (plastic utensils, textiles) (3)
Rejected (m ¼ 14)
Environmental Concern
Repair facilities (auto painting) (1)
***Post Office depot (1) Factories (meat processing, asphalt plant) (2) Waste=recycling (yard debris) (1) Waste=recycling (9) construction recycling Household recycling *Nuclear waste storage Office trash Sewage sludge incinerator Sewer sludge compost **Solid waste transfer station *Toxic waste incinerator Other: airport expansion (3), self-storage facilities (2) Other: coin-operated car wash (1)
Diesel trucks, air pollution
Blowing dust, truck traffic Garbage Radiation Air pollution Smells Dioxin
*Proposed, not presented at EPAC Planning Meeting. **Rejected by residents, permitted by state environmental protection agency (PADEP). ***Rejected by residents, permitted by federal government agency (FAA).
ENVIRONMENTAL JUSTICE AND THE LIMITS OF COMMUNITY POWER Two of the facilities rejected by Eastwick residents (the nuclear waste disposal facility and the hazardous waste incinerator) illustrated the genuine political power of residents to reject facilities that were particularly feared. A formal proposal was made for neither facility; instead, an announcement was made that a particular facility was being considered for Eastwick, and residents were advised to put pressure on City Council members to vote against it. The fact that Eastwick residents obtained inside information about these projects at an early stage in the process illustrates the adage that information is power: many other communities were unsuccessful in blocking similar projects because they found out about them too late in the game. But the power of residents was not without limits, as illustrated by three cases involving waste-related land uses rejected by Eastwick residents which were ultimately allowed to go forward. Residents had the power to withhold approval from projects subject to local regulations; but these projects were subject to state or federal regulations, and all were approved after their rejection by the community. The first was a household waste transfer station (which would bring not just trash, odors, and soil and water contaminants but also noise, truck traffic, and smog) which was approved by the state Department of Environmental Protection. Secondly, the U.S. Postal Service moved a huge Post Office Depot to Eastwick over the objections of residents. The third case involves plans for runway and terminal expansions at the Philadelphia International Airport. The plans have been blessed by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) as improvements needed to relieve air traffic congestion by allowing more flights to depart. All three projects will benefit Philadel-
phia residents by improving the efficiency of recycling, mail delivery, and air travel; yet health risks from increased trash, diesel trucks, and airplane traffic will be borne only by Eastwick residents. CONCLUSION Environmental justice in Eastwick has been enhanced by the determined activism of concerned residents, but has also been undermined by flawed policy that is blind to the health and economic impact of concentrated environmental hazards. The cumulative impact on residents should be considered by local officials in environmental and economic development planning. The expertise of Eastwick residents can be used to reform existing zoning to create greenspaces and non-industrial commercial zones, transforming the potential of transportation corridors to be magnets for shopping and recreation instead of waste disposal facilities. Local regulators should focus on enforcement of existing environmental health standards that apply to existing polluters, and help businesses to phase out environmentally harmful processes. But unless state and federal agencies are mandated to consider the impact of preexisting conditions in siting new facilities, and to allow local people a voice in the development of state- and federally-regulated polluting land uses, environmental inequalities will continue to be replicated. REFERENCES 1. Eastwick Project Area Committee (EPAC). Thirty Years of Service to the Community. (Brochure) (n.d.). 2. B. J. Eichinger, ‘‘The Taking of Eastwick’’ (Master’s Thesis, University of Pennsylvania, 1997). 3. Guian McKee, ‘‘Liberal Ends Through Illiberal Means: Race, Urban Renewal and Community in the Eastwick
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Section of Philadelphia, 1949–1990,’’ Journal of Urban History 27, 5 (2001): 547–583, pg. 551, 555. U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, NPL Listing Package for the Lower Darby Creek Area, Delaware and Philadelphia Counties, Pennsylvania ( June 2001). Helen Moak to Russell Lynes, Housing Association of the Delaware Valley, 1959. (Quoted in McKee, ‘‘Liberal Ends’’); Mindy Thompson Fullilove, Root Shock: How Urban Renewal is Tearing Up City Neighborhoods Hurts America, and What We Can Do about it (New York: Random House, 2005). Bruce Boyle, ‘‘Eastwick ‘Refugees’ Recall A ‘Great Place’ to Grow Up,’’ The Philadelphia Evening Bulletin, October 17, 1977. (Courtesy of Mrs. Regina Eichinger.) McKee, ‘‘Liberal Ends,’’ p. 555; J. Brown, ‘‘Citizens Scoff as Race Angle is Injected Into Eastwick,’’ The Philadelphia Independent, Aug. 17, 1957, 5; P. Fine, ‘‘Puzzled Eastwick Protests Home ‘Grab.’’’ The Philadelphia Daily News, Dec. 23, 1958, 3; A. Peters, ‘‘Negroes, Whites Fighting Together,’’ Philadelphia Tribune, March 22, 1958, 1–14; Joseph Warren. Interviewed by author, June 22, 2005. B. J. Eichinger, ‘‘The Taking of Eastwick;’’ K. Dyke, ‘‘Eastwick Residents Fight for Better Selling Prices As Eviction Day Nears,’’ The Philadelphia Evening Bulletin, July 19, 1970. (Courtesy of Mrs. Regina Eichinger.) Joseph Warren. Interviewed by author, July 29, 2005. Philadelphia City Planning Commission, Review of the Eastwick Urban Renewal Plan (1982). The 12 tracts within the EPAC Service Area were 52.4% black (compared with 41.8% citywide); unemployment had increased 61.6% in Eastwick since 1990 (but 12.4% citywide); and the proportion of Eastwick residents with incomes at 50–99% of the poverty line had increased 55.9% (but 12.9% citywide). U.S. Bureau of the Census, Decennial Census of the United States (Washington, D.C., 2004). Howard Gillette, Camden After the Fall: Decline and Renewal in a Post-Industrial City (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2006); Diane Sicotte, ‘‘Dealing in Toxins on the Wrong Side of the Tracks: Lessons from a Hazardous Waste Controversy in Phoenix,’’ Social Science Quarterly 89, 5 (2009): 1136–1152. ‘‘Toxic Waters.’’ 2000. [Videotape], University of California Extension Center for Media and Independent Learning, Berkeley, CA. (Courtesy of Mrs. Maggie Powell.) U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, NPL Listing Package for the Lower Darby Creek Area, Delaware and Philadelphia Counties, Pennsylvania ( June 2001). South and Southwest Philadelphia Bucket Brigade, What’s in Our Air? (Report, n.d.). M. A. Fox, J. D. Groopman, and T. A. Burke, ‘‘Evaluating Cumulative Risk Assessment for Environmental Justice: A Community Case Study,’’ Environmental Health Perspectives 110S (2002): 203–209.
11 17. Rachel A. Morello-Frosch, ‘‘Discrimination and the Political Economy of Environmental Inequality,’’ Environment and Planning C: Government and Policy 20 (2002): 477–496, 491. 18. Robin Saha and Paul Mohai, ‘‘Historical Context and Hazardous Waste Facility Siting: Understanding Temporal Patterns in Michigan,’’ Social Problems 52, 4 (2005): 618–648; David N. Pellow, Garbage Wars (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2002). 19. Roger C. Field, ‘‘Risk and Justice: Capitalist Production and the Environment,’’ in D. R. Faber (ed.), The Struggle for Ecological Democracy: Environmental Justice Movements in the United States (London: The Guilford Press, 1998), 81–103. 20. Michael Arno. Interviewed by Bernadette J. Eichinger, June 10, 1977. (Quoted in B. J. Eichinger, ‘‘The Taking of Eastwick’’ (Master’s Thesis, University of Pennsylvania, 1997). 21. Robert D. Bullard, ‘‘Environmentalism, Economic Blackmail, and Civil Rights: Competing Agendas Within the Black Community,’’ in John Gaventa, Barbara Smith, and Alex Willingham (eds.), Communities in Economic Crisis (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1990), 190–199. 22. Richard Regan and Mac Legerton, ‘‘Economic Slavery or Hazardous Wastes? Robeson County’s Economic Menu,’’ in John Gaventa, Barbara Smith and Alex Willingham (eds.), Communities in Economic Crisis, (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1990), 146–157; Stephanie A. Bohon and Craig R. Humphrey, ‘‘Courting LULUs: Characteristics of Suitor and Objector Communities,’’ Rural Sociology 65 (2000): 376–395. 23. A. K. Reichert, M. Small, and S. Mohanty, ‘‘The Impact of Landfills Upon Residential Property Values,’’ Journal of Real Estate Research 7, 3 (1992): 297–314; P. C. Flower and W. R. Ragas, ‘‘The Effects of Refineries on Neighborhood Property Values.’’ Journal of Real Estate Research 9, 3 (1994): 319–338; T. J. Rephann, ‘‘The Economic Impact of LULUs,’’ Environment and Planning C: Government and Policy 18, 4 (2000): 393–407. 24. American Planning Association, Land-Based Classification Standards (revised August 18, 2003). Retrieved October 27, 2005 from . 25. Accepted and rejected facilities do not sum to 100%; the remaining proposals were either withdrawn by the proposer, or tabled until more information could be presented to the community.
Address correspondence to: Diane Sicotte Department of Culture and Communication Drexel University 3141 Chestnut Street, Building 47, Room 221 Philadelphia, PA 19104 E-mail:
[email protected]
