A judge recently ruled that the EPA had improperly delayed investigating toxic pollutants from power plants that were affecting minority communities all over this country. It’s what’s commonly referred to as environmental racism. Ring of Fire’s Mike Papantonio and Farron Cousins discuss this.
Transcript:
Mike Papantonio:
A judge recently ruled that the EPA had improperly delayed investigating toxic pollutants from power plants that were affecting minority communities all over this country. It’s what’s commonly referred to as environmental racism. When I saw this article on this, Farron, the thing that startled me the most is these environmental racism kinds of cases, they surround so many parts of our society.
In other words, in our town, in Pensacola, Florida for example, they built a sewage plant right in the middle of an area where it’s the highest minority populations. They do this all over the country, whether it’s a Superfund site. They will build right next to high minority population, whether it’s a power plant, that’s spewing all types of chemical in the environment, whether it’s an oil refinery. This is not just our town. Probably if somebody’s watching this and they drove around, they would find the same thing exists in their city. When you read this, what was your reaction?
Farron Cousins:
Absolutely. I think this issue of environmental racism is something people don’t understand. They don’t understand that it is the minorities that are most affected by these corporate pollutants. It is the poor communities of any color as well, but this particular case was brought because the EPA has a duty, according to the Supreme Court, to investigate any kind of claim of environmental racism or any kind of pollutant. They only have a matter of days to do it.
Mike Papantonio:
180 days.
Farron Cousins:
180 days. 20 years in some of these cases that were just heard. 20 years it had been going on before the EPA even, well they never looked at it. They’d been sitting there for 20 years, so the judge in this case says, “No, you absolutely have to do this.” This is, they said it was environmental racism under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act, a violation of the Civil Rights Act because they were essentially targeting, the corporations targeting these communities and then the EPA turning a blind eye towards it because they don’t want to have to look into it.
Mike Papantonio:
Okay.
Farron Cousins:
This stretched, Clinton, Bush and Obama.
Mike Papantonio:
Yeah those were the administrations. Republican, Democrat, you know I get so tired. God Almighty, I get so tired of getting these emails from these emails from these Democrats who believe or Republicans who believe that their party is the solution. It’s both sides.
Farron Cousins:
Yeah.
Mike Papantonio:
Obama was just as bad as Bush. Bush was just as bad as Reagan. Reagan was just as bad as Clinton on this. 25 years this has been going on. Now look, there’s nothing equivocal about this statute. The statute addresses this. It says, look, when we look at how, where we’re putting these problematic type issues, oil refineries, sewage plants, Superfund sites, power plants, what we’re finding, and this is what, this is why this started. They were finding cancer clusters. They were finding asthma and respiratory clusters all around these kinds of places. They’re finding neurological clusters.
They were finding, they were finding leukemia, non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma around these kinds of areas, so they said this is more than just environmental racism. This is absolute medical health racism. The thing that struck me about this story, to me that struck me the hardest was the EPA comes back and says, “Well, you know we didn’t do anything because they were moot issues. We took care of them.” Well they didn’t take care of them sometimes for a decade.
Under the law, you have something called a writ of mandamus that we’ve talked on this show about. Writ of mandamus or writ of provision is when you file a lawsuit and say this agency isn’t doing what they’re supposed to do, and as a result, we got to do something about it.
Farron Cousins:
It is again, the EPA is ordered to do these. During the Bush administration, the EPA was, much like it is now, not doing their job at all.
Mike Papantonio:
Yeah.
Farron Cousins:
At least under Obama they gave us a little kind of appearance of doing their job. They did it enough to not get in trouble basically, but during the Bush years, they weren’t doing anything. They weren’t investigating anything. They weren’t enforcing Clean Air or Clean Water Act rules, so the Supreme Court, under Republican rule, ruled that hey, you have to do your job. You have a constitutional authority, ability and duty to go out there and enforce the rules of your agency and to fulfill them to the best of your ability.
Here, we’ve seen that, that decision came out while all of this was going on and the EPA still did nothing. I mean some of these are from 1994, is how far back these environmental racism cases go. It’s for, these wood-burning factories that just spew pollutants into the air. You’ve got coal ash facilities that are highly toxic and nobody is even talking about the effects of toxic coal ash.
Mike Papantonio:
Right.
Farron Cousins:
They target these communities. They really do. You’re not seeing this in the gated communities. Look at Flint, Michigan.
Mike Papantonio:
I was just going to go to Flint, Michigan. Why did it happen in Flint, Michigan? Why did they get the poisoned water? Because they had no political clout, because they couldn’t go meet with the mayor. They couldn’t meet with the City Council. They couldn’t meet with the House of Representatives or the Senate. These folks can. Exxon can go do that. Monsanto can go knock on the governor’s door and say I want to talk to you about this. What is the access of these … What’s the possibility of that kind of access? Here’s one disappointment to this case.
To me the case really was about pattern in practice, okay. Because you could take what happened in any one of these cases, whether it was Flint, whether it was Texas, California, didn’t make any difference. This plays out all over the country, and it always ends up that it’s about access. It’s about influence. It’s about affluence.
For us to look at it and say, oh gee. There was absolutely no reason why Obama, of all people, in that last administration couldn’t have taken this, because there’s still a ton of these cases still out there and the EPA is still taking no action on it. It just … You know a crazy thing? Now, full disclosure. I’m not Republican. I’m not Democrat. I’m an Independent, have been for 35 years, okay?
There was a time though, think of who put in place the EPA? Richard Nixon, of all people. I mean, Tricky Dick gave us the EPA, all right. Ronald Reagan took it away, but the point is, you can’t look at parties and say, “Oh this party’s better than the other party,” because it simply doesn’t work out like that. The math doesn’t work.
Farron Cousins:
That’s really interesting to point out too, because there was a time when Republicans were the, the conservation party. I mean, Teddy Roosevelt was huge.
Mike Papantonio:
Right.
Farron Cousins:
On preserving and protecting the environment. Nixon came along, gave us this. Gave us the Endangered Species Act. But today, it’s what can we give the corporations? Where can they put their toxic sites? They do it a lot of times, too, they offer them big tax breaks.
Mike Papantonio:
Yes.
Farron Cousins:
To go put it in the poor …
Mike Papantonio:
To put more pollution there.
Farron Cousins:
Yeah, yeah. Keep it away from the wealthy folk, and you put it over here, and we’ll give you money.
Mike Papantonio:
Yeah.
Farron Cousins:
To build in these communities.
Mike Papantonio:
Yeah, pretty interesting twist on politics there.
