ABSTRACT

LAY VICTIMS’ CONCEPTIONS OF ENVIRONMENTAL AND ENVIRONMENTAL INJUSTICE: A CASE STUDY OF THE CHEM-DYNE SITE

by Emmanuel Abiodun Ogundipe

This thesis explores lay victims’ conceptions of and environmental injustice through in-depth interviews with a snowball sample of people affected by, and former employees of, the Chem-Dyne Superfund site in Hamilton, Ohio. Open coding and qualitative content analysis revealed that participants used the following criteria to define both environmental crime and environmental injustice: illegality, intentionality, harm and safety, and unfairness. These findings have important implications for studies of environmental crime and environmental injustice. In the context of the Chem-Dyne Superfund site, (1) lay victims’ conceptions of environmental crime and are multidimensional concepts; (2) lay conceptions of environmental crime and environmental injustice are mostly anthropocentric; (3) there is significant conceptual overlap between environmental crime and environmental injustice in lay victim accounts; and (4) lay victims’ conceptions of environmental crime and environmental injustice are both similar to, yet distinct from, official definitions. LAY VICTIMS’ CONCEPTIONS OF ENVIRONMENTAL CRIME AND ENVIRONMENTAL INJUSTICE: A CASE STUDY OF THE CHEM-DYNE SUPERFUND SITE

Thesis

Submitted to the Faculty of Miami University in partial fulfillment of

the requirements for the degree of Master of by Emmanuel Abiodun Ogundipe Miami University Oxford, Ohio 2019

Advisor: Dr. Ryan Gunderson Reader: Dr. Jonathan Levy Reader: Dr. Nishani Frazier

©2019 Emmanuel Abiodun Ogundipe This thesis titled

LAY VICTIMS’ CONCEPTIONS OF ENVIRONMENTAL CRIME AND ENVIRONMENTAL INJUSTICE. A CASE STUDY OF CHEM-DYNE SUPERFUND SITE IN HAMILTON

by

Emmanuel Abiodun Ogundipe

has been approved for publication by

The College of Arts and Science and The Institute for the Environment and

Dr. Ryan Gunderson

Dr. Jonathan Levy

Dr. Nishani Frazier Table of Contents

Table of Contents ………………………………………………………………………. iii List of Tables …………………………………………………………………………… v List of Figures …………………………………………………………………………. vi Dedication ……………………………………………………………………………… vii Acknowledgements …………………………………………………………………… viii Chapter 1: Introduction ………………………………………………………1-10 Chapter 2: Methods ………………………………………………………….11 Study Area …………………………………………………………………..10 Data Collection ……………………………………………………...... 11 Data Analysis ………………………………………………………………..12 Chapter 3: Results …………………………………………………………...13 Interviews ……………………………………………………………………11 Demographics ……………………………………………………...... 11 Chapter 4: Discussion ………………………………………………………..13-30 Chapter 5: Conclusion ………………………………………………………..31-32 References ………………………………………………………...... 33-41 Appendices …………………………………………………………………...41-44 Appendix A: Consent Form ……………………………………...... 42-43 Appendix B: Interview Guide ………………………………………………...41-44

iii List of Tables

Table 1: Demographics of lay victim public participants ………………………………….11

iv List of Figures

Appendix A: Consent Form ………………………………………..42-43 Appendix B: Interview Guide ……………………………………….41-44

v Dedication

To my faculty, family and friends for their indescribable and unrelenting support to make this research a reality.

vi Acknowledgements

This study would not have been conceivable without an inspiration from the director of the Institute for the Environment and Sustainability, Dr. Jonathan Levy who introduced Chem-Dyne superfund documentary to me - thank you so much for everything. I am most fortunate to have met Dr. Nishani Frazier who gave me a ride for my first visit to the Chem-Dyne Superfund site in Hamilton. I am grateful for your interest in this research. My most profound appreciation goes to my wonderful thesis advisor Dr. Ryan Gunderson for his intellectual support, patience and understanding to make this research a reality. I think I am very lucky to have you as my thesis advisor. Thank you so very much for your encouragement. I also extend my appreciation to Miami University’s Graduate School for granting me funding through the Thesis and Dissertation Research Award to support this study. For all those who have supported me in various ways to complete this study, thank you so much

vii 1. Introduction

The goal of this research was to explore lay victims’ conceptions of environmental crime and environmental injustice. By “lay victims” I mean victims of environmental and injustice who are part of the non-expert public. By “conceptions of environmental crime and environmental justice” I mean the criteria used to judge an event as an environmental crime and/or environmental justice. I examined how people affected by a historic Superfund site - the Chem-Dyne hazardous site - defined environmental injustice and environmental crime, focusing on the criteria implicitly and explicitly used to evaluate criminality and unjustness. The project engaged larger questions in environmental justice, environmental crime, and the social- scientific study of social justice, including: What are the social and social-psychological dimensions of conceptions of environmental injustice and environmental crime? How do non- experts construct meanings about environmental injustice and environmental crime? How do lay victims’ conceptions of environmental crime and environmental injustice relate to official (academic, legal, and policy) definitions? The following specific objectives were developed to investigate these questions:

1. Explore the conceptions of environmental crime among lay victims of Chem-Dyne.

2. Explore the conceptions of environmental injustice among lay victims of Chem- Dyne. 3. Examine if those affected by Chem-Dyne view people and/or the environment as victims of Chem-Dyne. 4. Examine if those affected by Chem-Dyne believe that Chem-Dyne was sited justly or unjustly. Section 2.4 returns to these objectives in the form of focused research questions.

1 In what follows, I first put these specific objectives and broader research questions in the context of the current literature on environmental crime, environmental justice, and lay victims’ conceptions of crime and justice (Section 2). I then summarize the environmental impacts and social dimensions of the Chem-Dyne site (Section 3). After summarizing the research design and methodology (Section 4), results concerning lay victims’ conceptions of environmental crime (Section 5) and environmental injustice (Section 6) are given. The implications of these results for the fields of and environmental justice are explained in Section 7. Section 8 concludes with the study’s limitations and suggestions for future research.

2. Literature Review

After summarizing the environmental-scientific dimensions of hazardous waste management, this section provides a conceptual overview of environmental crime and environmental justice and summarizes research on lay conceptions of crime and justice.

2.1. Hazardous Waste Management

The US Environmental Protection Agency’s National Priority List (NPL) (2007) identified 1240 hazardous sites with federal facilities. The Environmental Protection Agency (2007) claimed that about 41 million people in the US reside within a 4 mile-radius of this NPL sites. In Europe, 342,000 contaminated sites with nearby residents living around these sites were identified (EPA, 2007). Based on data from the World Health Organization in 2006, a one-third of the diseases in Africa have been linked to environmental risk factors like hazardous

2 wastes and that 20% of the wastes in African urban centers were disposed in landfills. Hence, the need for hazardous waste management (Fazzo et al., 2017). The study of hazardous waste management is a relatively new field that is sometimes considered under the umbrella of environmental science (American Chemical Society, 2019). A good number of industries are now appreciating and conducting research in hazardous wastes management with the belief that thorough scientific research can produce sustainable solutions to environmental problems in the society. As a result of the stricter environmental laws and policies from the governments, these companies now seek the help of chemists and environmental compliance officers who possess requisite knowledge to provide modalities of complying with these laws (ibid). One goal of this thesis is to show the relevance of environmental social science to hazardous waste management, especially the social and justice dimensions of hazardous waste management failure.

2.2. Environmental Crime

It is a difficult task to assign a universally accepted definition to the term “environmental crime” (Barclay and Bartel 2015) because green criminology is a relatively new field (Wiernik 2006), there are regional variations in definitions of environmental crime (Eman et al. 2011), and the causes of environmental crime are diverse (White 2007; Barclay & Bartel 2015). Pecar (1981: 33–45) defines environmental crime as: every permanent or temporary act or process which has a negative influence on the environment, peoples’ health or natural resources, including building, changing abandonment and destruction of buildings; waste processing and elimination of waste, emissions into water, air or soil; transport and handling of dangerous substances; damaging or destruction of natural resources; reduction of biological diversity or reduction of natural genetic resources; and other activities or interventions, which threatens the environment.

3 For Clifford and Edwards (1988: 25, "environmental crime is applied to behaviors that contravene statutory provisions enacted to protect the ecological and physical environment.” Environmental crime has also been defined as “an action perpetrated with an intent to cause damage or intentionally to damage the environment with an intent to make or accumulate profit” (Brisman 2008: 738-739) and as acts that protect the interests of some individuals or corporations, harmful to human and environmental safety, and prohibited by law and with sanctions prescribed (Situ and Emmons 1996, 2000; Gibbons 2005; Eman et al 2009). Similarly, environmental crime is committed when individuals or groups fail to comply with the criminal law in order to protect the objectives of their organization for the purpose of economic or pecuniary benefit or award (Shover & Routhe, 2005). Summarily, there are diverse meanings of the concept of environmental crime. Legalistic definitions are most common though some adopt broadly environment- or economic-focused definitions without a strong legal component.

2.3. Environmental Injustice

While definitions of environmental justice have been thoroughly debated and discussed (e.g., Schlosberg 2004), the concept of environmental injustice has received less attention. The concept of environmental injustice is defined as segregating a group of people on the basis of race, color, religion, income and even geography from taking part in the environmental decision- making, implementation, monitoring and evaluation of environmental programs and projects and fairness in the distribution of environmental needs and burdens (Baabereyir, 2009). According to Gilbert (2019), environmental injustice is prevalent in the and worldwide today. He noted that in the US, preponderance of hazardous waste dumps are located in or near low- income minority communities. The sociologist Stella Čapek noted that “environmental injustice

4 is not just a disproportionate explosion to hazards; but also involves access to decision-making capabilities, democratic process, and power” (Brehm and Pellow 2013: n.p.). For Shutkin (1995: 579), environmental injustice is “the exclusion and unequal treatment of low-income and minority communities in matters concerning the distribution of environmental benefits and burdens.” According to Lewis, (2012), environmental injustice is an unfair distribution of an environmental harm without considering the just system and process for sharing and compensating the unfairly affected group. The conceptualizations of environmental injustice have developed to include other concerns in addition to core distributive and procedural issues (Schlosberg 2004). According to Schlosberg (2004: 517-540), “a thorough notion of global environmental justice needs to be locally grounded, theoretically broad, and plural – encompassing issues of recognition, distribution and participation.” This view implies that environmental justice is a multifaceted concept.

2.4. Lay Conceptions of Crime and Justice

Past research has explored the social and psychological dimensions of non-expert/public conceptions and implicit theories of crime (e.g., Furnham and Henderson 1983; Campbell et al. 1990; Roberts et al. 2002) and social justice (see Sabag and Schmitt 2016). The meaning of crime and social justice is not only a normative question decided by experts; the study of everyday understandings of crime and social justice is of social-scientific significance and practical significance. To our knowledge, only one previous study has explored lay victims’ conceptions of environmental crime: Barclay and Bartel’s (2015) research on environmental incidents that

5 negatively affected farmers, who surveyed impacted farmers to see if they would define the problem as “environmental crime.” No previous research to date has examined lay victims’ conceptions of environmental crime and environmental injustice. To accomplish the goals of this study, the following research questions are explored: 1. What are the social and social-psychological dimensions of lay victims’

conceptions of environmental injustice and environmental crime?

2. How do non-experts construct meanings about environmental injustice and environmental crime? 3. How do lay victims’ conceptions of environmental crime and environmental injustice relate to official (academic, legal, and policy) definitions? 4. Do lay victims of environmental crime and environmental injustice consider people and/or the environment as victims of environmental crime and injustice? How do lay victims of environmental injustice evaluate the justness of the siting of environmental hazards? Because this is a preliminary and exploratory study, these questions will be examined in the context of a particular case: the Chem-Dyne hazardous waste site in Hamilton, OH. The following section summarizes this case and summarizes evidence documenting environmental injustice and environmental crime in the Hamilton community.

3. The Chem-Dyne Hazardous Waste Site as a Case Study

The Chem-Dyne Corporation was established by William Kovacs and Bruce Whitten in Hamilton, Ohio along the Great Miami River in the mid-1970s. Chem-Dyne collected, stored, and disposed, via landfill or recycling, industrial wastes such as acids, caustics, pesticides,

6 chlorinated and unchlorinated solvents, laboratory wastes oils, , resins, and cyanide sludge (Ohio EPA, 2000). An August 24, 1979 fire explosion on the site from a tanker carrying poisonous chemical wastes, polluted the surrounding community with offensive odor and fumes, and spilled into the Great Miami River, killed more than a million fish as well as other aquatic animals and left the river contaminated (US EPA, 1985). This disaster was preceded by another fire in 1976 and at least four other fish kills (US EPA 2019). Further, prior to the 1979 explosion, employees were seen draining poisonous substances into the river (Chorlton 1982). Some community members argued that Chem-Dyne site was responsible for various severe illnesses, including cancer and reproductive disorders, asthma and other respiratory problems a few years after the disaster (Poje & Reilly, 1986). Upon ending operations in 1980, Chem-Dyne left behind “30,000 drums of waste and 300,000 gallons of bulk waste materials” (US EPA 2019) and was declared a Superfund site (US EPA, 1985).

3.1. Legal Actions Against Chem-Dyne

In June of 1976 after the first tanker explosion, Chem-Dyne filed a 30-million-dollar lawsuit against the City of Hamilton and Butler County officials for interfering in their business activities. In response to this, the City filled a counter suit against Chem-Dyne for zoning and building code violation (Poje et al., 1986). In July 1979, Chem-Dyne agreed with Ohio EPA and Ohio Department of Natural Resources (ODNR) to pay $75,000 for fish kills and cleaning up the site. However, on August 24th the same year, there was a major fire incident on the Chem-Dyne site, which ultimately led to the declaration of Chem-Dyne as a Superfund site (US-EPA, 1985). In 1980, Butler County Common Pleas Court placed Chem-Dyne on receivership and a receiver was appointed to evacuate and clean up the site. United States Justice Department filed a suit on

7 behalf of the Ohio EPA for failure to clean up the . The court case suffered setbacks because the federal, state, and local governments argued over their respective areas of responsibilities regarding who should provide funds for the process (Poje et al., 1986). This litigation process continued until September 1983 at the US Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit when the State of Ohio appealed against the previous court injunction on the stay of the State Court proceedings and bankruptcy claim by Chem-Dyne owners (William Lee Kovacs, Dba B & W Enterprises, et al.state of Ohio, Ex Rel., William J. Brown, Attorney Générale al., Plaintiffs, Appellants, v. William Lee Kovacs, et al., Defendants, Appellees, 1983). On October 11, 1983 the federal government also filed a suit at US the District Court for the Southern District of Ohio against Chem-Dyne to reimburse the fund used for clean-up. The court ruled that the defendant (Chem-Dyne owners) were liable for the reimbursement of the clean-up costs at Chem-Dyne (United States v. Chem-Dyne Corp., 1983). The case finally reached the Supreme Court on October 10, 1984 and, on January 9, 1985, it was ruled that: 1. “The fact that the Army Corps of Engineers, using funds recovered from those concerns that generated the wastes in question, has removed the wastes from the site does not render the case moot. The State still has a stake in the outcome of the case based on its claim that the removal of the wastes did not satisfy all of respondent's obligation to clean up the site since the ground remains permeated with toxic materials that must be removed to avoid further ” (United States v. Chem-Dyne Corp., 1983). 2. “Respondent's obligation under the injunction is a "debt" or "liability on a claim" subject to discharge under the Bankruptcy Code. Contrary (Page 469 U. S. 275) to the State's contention, there is no indication in the language of 101(4)(B) that the right to

8 performance cannot be a claim unless it arises from a contractual arrangement. Moreover, it is apparent that Congress desired a broad definition of a "claim" and knew how to limit the application of a provision to contracts when it desired to do so. Where it is clear that what the receiver wanted from respondent after bankruptcy was the money to defray cleanup costs, the Court of Appeals did not err in concluding that the cleanup order had been converted into an obligation to pay money, an obligation that was dischargeable in bankruptcy.” (Ohio v. Kovacs, 1985). In line with legalistic definitions of environmental crime (see above), the action by Chem-Dyne is clearly an environmental crime because Chem-Dyne criminally violated section 112 of the Clean Air Act (CAA) and Federal Control Act (FWPCA) of 1970. According to conceptions of environmental justice common in the literature (see Section 2.3), the Chem-Dyne Superfund site would be studied as an environmental injustice because, for one, the company failed to provide safety wears and breathing apparatus for many of its employees, including ex-convicts undergoing rehabilitation at a training center in Hamilton, according to an interview with a former city official. However, rather than examining the Superfund site in light of official definitions of environmental crime and environmental injustice, I am more interested in whether those affected by the hazardous waste site interpret Chem-Dyne’s actions as environmental crimes and/or an environmental injustice and, more importantly, what criteria they use to make sense of environmental crime and an environmental injustice.

4. Methods

The study was carried out in southwest Ohio in the city of Hamilton. The target population of this study comprised the community members around the site and all those who

9 have been impacted by Chem-Dyne’s actions through snowball sampling, a non-probability sampling technique employed to collect research subjects by referral process (Blackstone, 2012). Snowball sampling was ideal for this study because it was difficult to reach those who might have been impacted by Chem-Dyne occurring four decades ago. I located a religious leader in the Hamilton community who agreed to refer us to people affected by Chem-Dyne. Participation in the study was conditional on the subject’s signing of a consent form that indicated that he or she could decline to answer questions, withdraw from the study, be exposed to sensitive content, and are over the age of 18 years old (see Appendix A). 14 in-depth interviews were conducted, 9 of which were determined to have met the criteria for the “lay victim” – non-expert (e.g., not in government or law at the time of Chem-Dyne’s actions) – who lived near the Chem-Dyne site and/or stated that they were affected by the site. These interviews were conducted from October 2018 through April 2019. Demographics of the sample are reported in Table 1. Of the lay participants, most subjects were white (7), while two (2) subjects were Native Americans. Three participants identified as Appalachian or stated that one or both parents were Appalachian (one participant, who was not labeled Appalachian, stated, “No [I am not of Appalachian descent], but my parents were [Appalachian]”). The median age range survey response of the participants was 55 - 64 and the median income range at the time of Chem-Dyne’s actions was $10,000 - $29,999. Eight of the lay respondents were living around the Chem-Dye plant while one respondent was living about 10 miles from the explosion site. Two of the subjects were former Chem-Dyne workers. While the goal of this study was not to compare how demographic backgrounds influence lay victims’ perceptions, the demographics of the participants are given in Table 1.

10 Table 1: Demographics of lay victim participants

S/N Demographic Total 1. White (not of Appalachian decent) 4 2. White (Appalachian descent) 3 3. Native American 2 4. Male 7 5. Female 2 6. Income at time of Chem-Dyne’s actions (not $10,000 - $29,999 (Median) inflation adjusted) 7. Education High school degree (Median) 8. Age 55-64 (Median)

I conducted in-depth, semi-structured interviews, asking participants about their conceptions of environmental justice and environmental crime. Pilot interviews were conducted to test the efficacy of the data collection instruments. The interview guide consisted of 41 questions (see Appendix B). Along with closed-ended questions concerning demographic and related information, 25 open-ended questions explored participants’ views on the hazardous waste site and their beliefs and conceptions of issues surrounding environmental crime and environmental justice and injustice. Some subjects had time to answer an additional 10 extra in- depth questions concerning community response to Chem-Dyne’s actions and feelings of normalcy following the disaster. The questions most relevant to this project are described in Sections 5 and 6. Probes where frequently employed to elicit more information. The interviews were recorded on a phone and transcribed. Interviewees were asked for their consent to record the interviews with a digital recorder. Most of the interviews were conducted within the homes of the respondents and each interview lasted for about 30 to 45 minutes. One subject cut the interview off early for unknown reasons. After the completion of the interviews, all recordings were first transcribed using Otter Voice Notes version 1.4

11 transcription software (AISense, 2018), then checked manually for errors and corrected where warranted. Data were analyzed using qualitative content analysis, a method used to identify and categorize central themes from a text focusing on understanding meaning and their relation to social context, with less interest in the prevalence of themes (Krippendorff 1980; Sandelowski 1995). In analyzing this research, I adopted an open coding process (Emerson et al. 1995), or “conventional” content analysis (Hsieh et al. 2005), where emergent themes are identified from the text data without pre-established categories. After the transcription, coding data was done in two stages. First, my advisor (Ryan Gunderson) and I independently identified emergent themes by reading through all the whole transcripts, focusing on (1) lay victims’ conceptions of environmental crime; (2) lay victims’ conceptions of environmental injustice; (3) whether participants interpreted victims as people and/or the environment; and (4) the participants’ interpretation of the justness in the siting of Chem-Dyne. By “conceptions” of environmental crime and environmental injustice, we examined the criteria implicitly and explicitly used by participants to evaluate criminality and justness. We reconvened to compare emergent themes and agreed upon four dominant themes for both conceptions of environmental crime and environmental injustice: illegality, intentionality, harm and safety, and unfairness. (As emphasized in Section 7, one of the notable findings is the significant overlap in conceptions of environmental crime and environmental injustice). As for conceptions of victims, the duo codes environment and people emerged (i.e., whether the victims of the Chem-Dyne tragedy were human beings and/or animals and the environment). It should be noted that I only discuss conceptions of crime and environmental crime, as well as injustice and environmental injustice, as separate categories when analyzing the

12 participants’ views concerning the victims of Chem-Dyne for reasons discussed in Sections 5.5 and 6.5. Finally, unique codes emerged for the question regarding whether the siting process of Chem-Dyne was just or unjust, as explained in Section 6.6. In the second stage of analysis, we coded the transcribed data with the categories described above. We met weekly to ensure inter-coder reliability, with 90% agreement. Most differences in coding arose due to overlaps between codes. For instance, a statement that argues that the siting of Chem-Dyne in a residential area was unjust because it is both harmful and unfair. These overlaps are clarified in the two Results sections (Sections 5 and 6).

5. Results I: Lay Victims’ Conceptions of Environmental Crime

Respondents were asked if (1) the Chem-Dyne disaster was a crime; (2) how they would describe a crime; (3) if the Chem-Dyne disaster was an environmental crime; and (4) how they would describe an environmental crime. Four codes related to conceptions of crime and environmental crime were identified while coding responses to these questions: illegality, intentionality, harm and safety, and unfairness. Harm and safety and intentionality were the most frequent codes, followed by illegality. As made clear below, these codes are not mutually exclusive, and many participants’ conceptions of environmental crime (and environmental justice) include two or more criteria. When two codes were equally present in one definition or statement, I included the passage in the section based on the code that is first mentioned. After presenting results on lay victim criteria for what constitutes an environmental crime, I summarize participant views on who or what is the crime victim in cases of environmental crime: people and/or the environment?

13 5.1. Illegality and Rule-breaking as Criteria of Environmental Crime

Many of the subjects held the belief that when federal, state and local environmental statutes are breached then an environmental crime has occurred. Along with illegality as the criterion of environmental crime, we also subsumed a less common sub-code under the wider illegality code: the breaking of other forms of rules (e.g., norms) that, while not necessarily illegal, imply criminality according to participants. I discuss each form of rule-breaking as the basis of environmental crime in turn. The belief that illegality is the primary criterion for evaluating an environmental crime is aptly represented in the response of a former Chem-Dyne employee: Nathan: Somebody has done something against the law…that is my thought about it.

Similarity, Pat, a female participant, stated that “You have to follow the rules” when describing criteria for environmental crime. A male participant agrees that illegality is the foundational criterion for environmental crime. Chuck: Oh yeah, definitely. I mean, there was enough red-light regulations that it should have been, you know, to monitor [the activities not to harm the people], these guys should have been charged.

All quotes demonstrate the conception of environmental crime as a breaking of laws or rules. The belief is that crime takes place once a law is broken.

5.2. Intentionality as a Criterion of Environmental Crime

Another common criterion used to evaluate Chem-Dyne’s actions as criminal and given in definitions of crime and environmental crime, was intentionality, or, whether the harmful actions of Chem-Dyne were intentionally, deliberately, or knowingly performed. For example, one of the participants defined environmental crime as follows:

14 Jane: Disastrous everyone. Everyone around that is affected by it. It's disastrous. Because you don't know if it's caused cancer, or anything like that. And things like that duplicate.

Like Jane, harm and safety of the disaster is her criteria for defining an environmental crime. But other participants found the intent of the corporate actor (Chem-Dyne) or actors (Chem-Dyne’s owners and/or management) to be an important consideration in judging if the disaster was an environmental crime. In response to the question of whether Chem-Dyne constituted an environmental crime, Zach provided another clear example of intentionality as a criterion for evaluating environmental crime: Zach: This is something we're aware of, that deliberately puts us in danger.

Similar to discussing other criteria along with illegality to define environmental crime (see Section 5.1), participants concurrently discussed other criteria along with intentionality. A pastor in the Chem-Dyne community gave the following as a definition of crime: Rev. Jake: Crime is when you intentionally do harm. What is it when you knowingly do? I'm a Wesley, John Wesley, founder of the Methodist Church. First rule first principle is do no harm, do no harm. Crime is whether it's on the legal book or not. A crime is when you knowingly do harm to the people around you or your community. Whether it's legal or whether it's on the book or not, okay, whether it's a written out in law, or if I do something that I know is knowingly going to harm someone, that is a crime. Chem-Dyne knew that those chemicals are hazardous that they were burying out there. They knew they were sitting on top of the aquifer, there is no excuse. I ‘m sorry, they knew it.

Other participants discussed intentionality and unfairness together as coupled criteria for evaluating environmental crime. For example, Zach: You know, there's different degrees…when you do something, that you know, eventually it's going to end up losing and losing badly extensively… the in Alaska was a huge disaster as we couldn't really call it a crime because they didn't do it intentionally, it was an accident. They said they were going to do something knowing fully well that they were not going to do it. They said what 15 they were going to take all these chemicals. They were going to clean them up so that they can be disposed of without any harm. But, first of all, we know they didn't do that. Second of all, we know they're capable of doing that, so they lied.

16 For example, I give you a puppy here I'll give you this puppy if you give me $50 but I don't give you the puppy, so they were going to do something for money, but they didn't do it. This is something that we are all aware of and deliberately puts us in danger. I think they knew there is a pollution but didn’t care.

One can detect a conceptual movement from intentionality as an important criterion of crime to unfairness as a criterion. For Zach, an accident cannot be an environmental crime. However, he implies that deceit and harming others for profit, both components of unfairness (see Section 5.4), may constitute criminal behavior. In short, intentionality was an important criterion for many participants when defining environmental crime.

5.3. Causing Harm and Undermining Safety as Criteria of Environmental Crime

Although harm and safety are criteria underlying all codes (e.g., intentionally causing harm, unfairly causing harm), some participants defined environmental crime and characterized Chem-Dyne as a crime based on harms done and the undermining of safety, regardless of whether the harm was done intentionally, unfairly, or illegally. A former Chem-Dyne employee’s definition of environmental crime exemplified the harm and safety conception of environmental crime: Greg: Environmental crime is anything that would harm the environment and the people.

Harms to human health were of central concern. A woman had this to say when asked about her definition of environmental crime: Jane: [Whatever is a] disastrous everyone. Everyone around that is affected by it. It's disastrous. Because you don't know if it's caused cancer, or anything like that. And things like that duplicate. If you go over there, they have things on the ground and there are some kinds of gases or something coming up from over there and they are captured with all the pipelines they put in up there.

17

To provide another example of human health as a focal concern in conceptions of environmental crime: Michael: If it’s causing harm, that’s an [Environmental] crime. If you turn around, you live in a facility that you think is safe. And you bring your family and your family ends up getting sick, unquestionable, unexplainable, why they get sick. And you turn around you, you don't know what's going on around you? Don’t you investigate? Causing damage to humans, animal wildlife …

The theme of harm to human health is returned to in section 5.7.

Like the other criteria, harm and safety sometimes overlapped with other codes, especially illegality. For example, a local pastor stated the following: Father David: Even there were chemicals that were declared safe but later found to be carcinogenic because of the new research. I think nowadays it would be considered a crime. … I will say it [a crime] is violation of the public health and safety of the people. … Anything that affects the safety and health of the people [is an environmental crime]. I think there should be a standard for all chemical companies. If we have to use a chemical to control weeds, we have to be sure that it is safe for the people.

Two notable points can be explicated from the above passage. First, the assumption that a chemical would be illegal if there was sufficient knowledge of its harmfulness. This is more evidence that there is a symbiotic relationship between illegality and harm and safety in lay victims’ definitions of environmental crime (see also section 5.1). Second, he clarifies that, even if it is not illegal, a violation of harm and safety still constitutes an environmental crime. Like illegality and intentionality, causing harm and undermining safety were common criteria of environmental crime.

5.4. Unfairness as a Criterion of Environmental Crime

18 Unfairness as a criterion of environmental crime refers to the harming of people or the environment for personal/corporate gain; an unfair distribution of harms; citizens unfairly paying

19 for the harms done; and those at fault not paying for harms done. Emphasizing unfairness in definitions of environmental crime was most often discussed as an unfair distribution of harm (usually against the Hamilton community) and gain (usually profits for the company). For example: Michael: [The Chem-Dyne disaster] would be [a crime] if you owned it. Why wouldn't it be if they owned it? You see what I'm saying? I mean, you're taking an individual's livelihood and life and jeopardizing it for your own gain. I'm sorry if you line somebody's pocket and you're taking from individuals that really need to, I mean, these people work every day, just to have what they have. But you come along as …oh, we're providing this, we're doing this. They provide nothing if it's a harmful, if they're benefiting our health and well-being that's one thing. But you're jeopardizing people's health. They've been wanting to redo this area for years. I don't know. I mean, yes, we got old houses. And yes, we bring them up. But I don't know.

Similarly:

Zach: [If] you're doing it just for the money, you don't have any attention for your environment, that is a crime.

For Michael, Zach, and others, making a profit at the expense of human health is an environmental crime. Distributive dimensions of conceptions of environmental crime were also framed as citizens, rather than Chem-Dyne, paying for the harms done in the past. For example: Reverend Jake: So yeah, to me, it's crime. because we're still paying for it. We are taxpayers, we're still paying for the pump to run out. You know, we're still paying for that cleaner.

A similar theme was non-reparations for the harm done as a criterion for environmental crime. For example: Jane: Environmental crime should be seen as them not taking care of the situation and the proper and timely manner. [For example], someone gets injured and you 20 take care of them. The neighbor left in the neighborhood must also be treated. They must take care of everyone that was involved. If you don’t take care of them, then it’s a crime and you should be sued appropriately to make them take care of what happened.

21 To summarize, unfairness in the form of harming others for personal gain or for not repairing past harms through reparations was an important criterion of environmental crime according to some participants.

5.5. The Victims of Environmental Crime: People and/or the Environment?

To review, I first asked participants if the Chem-Dyne disaster was a crime and how they would define a crime and, following, if the Chem-Dyne disaster was an environmental crime and how they would define an environmental crime. I was interested if: (1) subjects would mention the Chem-Dyne disasters’ impact on the environment without initially explicitly specifying environmental crime and (2) if subjects who did not mention the environmental impacts of the disaster under the label “crime” would do so under the more specific label environmental crime. I found that few subjects mentioned the environment or specific components of the environment, even under the narrower heading of environmental crime, and even fewer went into detail about environmental impacts in the context of the environmental crime frame. Although most participants focused on crimes done to humans in the case of Chem-Dyne, there were some participants who drew attention to the environment. For example, Michael commented that “Environmental crime is causing damage to humans, animal wildlife, causing harmful decay in the fact of existence.” One participant even made connections between harms done to the environment and harms done to humans in the context of environmental crime (more participants did in the context of environmental injustice; see Section 6.5).

Chuck: Then, there were cases of people who think from breathing the fumes, you know, had some as a type, a lot of your reactions.

22 Although there were exceptions, anthropocentric conceptions of environmental crime were the norm.

6. Results II: Lay Conceptions of Environmental Injustice Victim

This project also explored lay victims’ conceptions of environmental injustice. The themes that emerged while coding responses to these questions were the same as those for environmental crime (illegality, intentionality, harm and safety, and unfairness). Unfairness was the most frequent theme, followed by harm and safety and intentionality. Like conceptions of environmental crime, conceptions of environmental injustice were multidimensional. Some of the passages had up to three overlapping codes. In these cases, I followed the same rule for categorizing passages as I did for environmental crime (see Section 5). Also like the section on environmental crime, I present findings concerning the victim of injustice in the case of Chem- Dyne: people and/or the environment? A final distinct subsection concerns the siting of Chem- Dyne: participants were asked to share their opinion on whether Chem-Dyne’s siting was just or unjust.

6.1. Illegality as a Criterion of Environmental Injustice

As one would expect, citing illegality as a criterion was much more common in definitions of environmental crime than environmental injustice. Only one participant defined injustice in legalistic terms, and his definition of injustice is intertwined with the codes unfairness and harm and safety. Father David: One [sense of injustice] is things that are against the established laws and customs of the community, second, something that negatively impacts the neighbor without due consideration of their rights and I think people have right to safe water, safe food, safe living. If your business interferes with those

20 things, then you have to be accountable. So, if you are Chem-Dyne and found to be polluting the environment then you have to make restitution and you have to provide for future disposal. Part of the law is that the company will be responsible for part of the clean-up.

Although much less prominent, it is still important to highlight that there is continual overlap between lay victims’ conceptions of environmental crime and injustice (see Section 7).

6.2. Intentionality as a Criterion of Environmental Injustice

As in the case of lay victims’ conceptions of environmental crime, intentionality was an important criterion for defining environmental injustice. Those citing intentionality as a criterion for what constitutes environmental injustice believe that the perpetrator of an injustice only acts unjustly when they know their actions will cause harm. In response to the question about his definition of injustice, one of the former employees of Chem-Dyne stated: Greg: Injustice was that the city [of Hamilton] was aware of it and turned a blind eye to it. Because of their own pockets, they did not care about the people that lived in the area or far. They did not care about the people that were affected by the contamination here and then downstream. That the City authorities were aware of what was going on but didn't care about the health of the people is an injustice. Injustice is not care about the impact that it had on the people that live around it and downstream.

Here, intentionality is cited as a criterion along with greed and a lack of care for others. Explaining further why the Chem-Dyne disaster was an injustice. Although a less commonly cited criterion in the frame of environmental injustice than in that of environmental crime, intentionality was still an important dimension of environmental injustice for participants.

21 6.3. Causing Harm and Undermining Safety as Criteria of Environmental Injustice

Causing harm and undermining safety were consistent themes in lay victims’ definitions of environmental injustice. This was a separate code because participants often cited harms as the basis of environmental injustice, regardless of illegality, intention, and unfairness, though the latter codes were often a dimension of the definition. As Michael put it in response to the question if the Chem-Dyne disaster was an environmental injustice: “Yes, because it's causing harm, it’s causing harm to individuals somehow some way.” Jane accused Chem-Dyne of harming residents, with a focus on local cancer cases and deaths.

Jane: Yes, [the Chem-Dyne disaster was an injustice] because the chemicals leaked into the groundwater and you know, the soil. It could be what caused my neighbor cancer. She died of cancer after we moved in here. So, how many people in this neighborhood have actually died of cancer caused from chem dyne, from all the chemicals. Do you say that is not what caused me to have cancer? … My thoughts on [injustice is] that is it’s an injury. Anytime you have like a chemical company in a residential area to where disasters like that happened, it affects the whole community, you know what I mean? It affects everybody in that community. … It [environmental injustice] is what causes hardship on everybody around. Where the facility was placed from the accident from the chemical leakage. You know, it causes hardship on everybody.

As with other themes, concerns of harm and safety overlapped with other criteria. Father David, for example, connected the undermining of safety to illegally: Father David: I think in the larger scheme of things yes, anytime we injure one another, it is an injustice. But on the basis of the laws and the situation at the time, I don't think that they were exceptional in any way. I think it is the responsibility of the site owners to make sure that the site is safe for the people. They should know it is not a good thing to injure the people and the environment.

22 In summary, most of the participants identified harm and safety as a basis for injustice.

6.4. Unfairness as a Criterion of Environmental Injustice

23 As it was for environmental crime, unfairness refers to the harming of people or the environment for personal/corporate gain; an unfair distribution of harms; citizens unfairly paying for the harms of the past harm; and non-reparations for harms done. In lay victims’ conceptions of environmental injustice, unfairness was usually framed as the unequal treatment of people or groups. Unfairness was the most prominent criterion in accounts of what constitutes an environmental injustice. A clergyman near Chem-Dyne made the following statement when asked to define injustice: Reverend Jake: When people are not treated equally. People are not handled as equals within the society.

Then he added:

Reverend Jake: The basic tenets of our justice system say that you will have your day in front of a peer … [a] jury of your peers. The justice is equal, regardless of race, religion, ethnicity, and gender.

A former Chem-Dyne worker focused on socio-demographic factors to explain his view of unfairness. Greg: Yes, I mean, this neighborhood is not a rich neighborhood. And most people who live in this neighborhood, you know, they're just final working-class people… Chem-Dyne came to add to hit on peoples’ homes for values, health and livelihood. You know, it was it was a lose-lose all the way round for the people around except for [the Chem-Dyne owner’s name], and other Chem-Dyne owners.

Greg interprets Chem-Dyne’s arrival as reducing the well-being an already underprivileged area. Chem-Dyne deepened existing economic problems and underdevelopment. He also saw injustice in the ability of Chem-Dyne owners to remain unpunished without cleaning up the site, and then leaving the community wallowing in the pollution problems. He emphasized it was a win-win situation for the Chem-Dyne owners and lose-lose for the community.

24 Others stressed unfairness in taking advantage of residents with low levels of education, making them susceptible to environmental injustice. Pat had the following to say when asked if Chem-Dyne disaster was an injustice: Pat: I mean I believe it could be absolutely. The positioning of putting it there in people who have maybe not enough college or education to know may be that’s dangerous. So, let’s put it there. And nobody around there is going to question you just put it there.

She added:

Pat: Not being as fair as you could be. You know, if you are offering something to one group of people, you should offer to everyone who comes in. Siting a dangerous chemical plant where the uneducated people are living is an example of injustice. Siting a company like that in the neighborhood with low or no education is an injustice. Other people with more experience and college degree will not allow such company here. [See also section 6.6]

She closed this line of thought with the following:

Pat: If you offer something to a group of people, the same should be given to others.

For Pat, treating people with less education unfairly is what mad the Chem-Dyne disaster unjust.

Michael’s conception of environmental injustice overlaps with Reverend Jakes’, Greg’s, Pat’s, though it is unique as he stresses non-disclosure as a key dimension of “taking advantage of people” (unfairness). Michael: Injustice is like taking advantage of people …. That's an injustice to me. Okay if I handed you this phone and it has a shocker in it and I don't tell you beforehand, that's injustice even though … some people play it as a joke you know the shocker bands and stuff that's harmless, but it's still to me an injustice. 25

He went further;

Michael: Okay, I invited you to my house I told you I have four dogs and two poor tenants, I gave you a warning beforehand, you came, and nothing changed from what I told you, that means am not hiding anything, Chem-Dyne is hiding something.

26

When asked for his definition of environmental injustice, he stated:

Michael: I mean, if there's a chemical running down the canal, it will kill something. That's a that's an environmental injustice.

Michael’s case that non-disclosure of safety information is an important component of unfairness is related to intentionality. He believes that when someone purposefully withholds information to take advantage of the other person, then there is an injustice. However, he believes environmental injustice takes place when the health and safety of the environment is endangered. One respondent, Father David, mentioned payments for harms done in a unique account of environmental injustice, unique because it is the only one to tie environmental justice to human rights discourse: Father David: I think people have right to safe water, safe food, safe living. If your business interferes with those things, then you have to be accountable. So, if you are Chem-Dyne and found to be polluting the environment then you have to make restitution and you have to provide for future disposal.

Concern over the irresponsibility of the plant owners in undermining safety and the need for restitutions was important to other participants, as shown above. In summary, unfairness, specifically the unequal treatment of groups, was the most consistent criterion for what constitutes environmental injustice.

6.5. The Victims of Environmental Injustice: People and/or the Environment?

I asked participants what environmental injustice is and how they would define it after asking the same about injustice without the qualifier “environmental.” As with the case of environmental crime (see Section 5.5), the goal was to discover who the victims of environmental injustice are in lay victim consciousness, though the results are, of course, limited

27 to the Chem-Dyne case. As with conceptions of environmental crime victims, I found that most participants were much more concerned about humans than the environment. Even though the majority of respondents focused on human victims of environmental injustice, there were exceptions. Greg had this to say about the environment being a victim as well: Greg: ... But not directly where I live…but right around this area and the downstream, it affected plants and stuff, I mean, we couldn’t get fruit trees to grow around this area. The big population, all disappeared. Then, it was what it was not uncommon to go fishing over here in the canal or in the river and find weird anomalies like two-headed fish. You find strange fish that has eyes that looked like it had giant bubbles. So, you don’t need to be told that these fish are deformed and that this is the effect caused by the chemicals spill into the river.

A couple of participants expressed some links between the negative impacts of the environmental injustice on both the people and the environment. For example, Jane: [A]ll the chemicals that caused the leak [leaked] into the groundwater and the soil. And may be that was what caused my neighbor cancer. She died of cancer after we moved in here. So, how many people in this neighborhood have actually died of cancer caused from Chem-Dyne, from all the chemicals. Do you say that is not what caused me to have cancer? Anytime you have like a chemical company in a residential area to where disasters like that happened, it affects the whole community, you know what I mean? It affects everybody in that community.

However, most accounts focused on injustice done to humans in the context of Chem-Dyne environmental injustice.

6.6. Injustice in the Siting of the Chem-Dyne Plant

Participants were asked if the siting of Chem-Dyne was just. Two codes emerged: (1) 28 injustice in siting (usually on the grounds that it was sited in a residential area) and (2) justice in siting (usually on the grounds of fit for an industrial area). The following questions were asked to

29 elicit participant views of the justice dimensions of Chem-Dyne’s location: (1a) How do you feel about the location of the site in the community, (1b) with a leading probe, Do you think it was sited fairly? and (2) What are the factors responsible for siting the company in the North End? The data show that residents were split in their views on justice in siting. The most common reason for objecting to the siting of Chem-Dyne was due to the nearby residential community. For example, Michael: Yes, I do have problem with the location of this plant. They should have put it out where it’s not a contaminant to the area around it. I mean, if you go over there and you look, there's kids playing in that ball field, which is actually less than 300 feet. If he was doing dope at a school or round a school, 500 feet, you're arrested, correct? Same contamination, only difference is there’s harmful. … [O]ur federal government stipulated within 500 feet. Why are they able to get by within300 feet? And we got kids playing hundred 50 feet away from the building.

Other participants made the case that the siting of Chem-Dyne was fair on the grounds that it was in an industrial area. Father David: Hamilton was an industrial town and the Chem- Dyne site was an industrial site too. The workers living there especially those who are not wealthy wanted to be close to their place of work. So, it was not out of place. There papermills companies there before people started living there. Chem dyne was located close to the rail and highway which is more beneficial to their business more. Like the warehouse that they used was previously occupied by a different industry. … So, given the circumstances at the time, the citing of the chem dyne plant was probably fair because there was nothing like don’t put this here, don’t put that there. Hamilton has an history if industrial plants.

Similarly, Zach stated that following when asked how he felt about where Chem-Dyne was sited:

Zach: Well, yeah, that's fine because where they were located was an industrial area, still is. And what they did, they took over or moved into a plant that was already there. They didn't create anything. It was a big plant used to be owned by Ford Motor Company. They made wheels for Model T's. Then, Bendix Aviation 30 was in there during World War II, then Nimrod Campers were in there early 60s, and then this Scotch Coolers[?]. There's a big building there. So, Chem-Dyne didn't do anything but stored stuff. Therefore, what they just had to do was get barrels, bring in people who brought in barrels that's what they do. The bad thing was that it turned out where they're located is kind of in a watershed near the river and to the canal.

31

In short, although all participants agreed that Chem-Dyne disaster was an environmental injustice, there were mixed views on whether the siting of Chem-Dyne was unjust.

7. Discussion

There are four significant implications this study brings to literature on environmental crime and environmental injustice, though all should be strictly interpreted as results from a specific case. In the context of those affected by Chem-Dyne, (1) lay victims’ conceptions of environmental crime and environmental justice are multidimensional concepts; (2) lay victim’s conceptions of environmental crime and environmental injustice are mostly anthropocentric; (3) there is significant conceptual overlap between environmental crime and environmental injustice in lay victims’ accounts; and (4) lay victims’ conceptions of environmental crime and environmental injustice are both similar to, yet distinct from, official definitions. Each point is discussed in turn. First, the findings from this study suggest that environmental crime and environmental injustice are multidimensional concepts in as the consciousness of victims of Chem-Dyne. Respondents often used between two to three different criteria to describe environmental crime and environmental injustice. This is consistent with the results reported by Barclay and Bartel’s (2015) study of lay conceptions of environmental crime: it is an arduous task to assign a specific and universal definition to the concept of environmental crime. In a similar manner, though not in the context of lay victims’ conceptions, environmental justice is also considered a multidimensional concept in official accounts (e.g., Hofrichter 1993; Brisman 2008; Schlosberg 2004).

32 As the data in our study suggest, the conceptions of environmental crime and environmental injustice among victims of Chem-Dyne are mostly anthropocentric. Participants focused on the human impacts of the Superfund site rather than environmental impacts and the interrelations between environmental and human impacts. Even though I switched from asking about “crime” and “injustice” to “environmental crime” and “environmental injustice,” most participants continued to only discuss human impacts of Chem-Dyne. In other words, with some notable exceptions, the “environmental” in environmental crime and environmental injustice is largely unnoticed. As explained below, anthropocentrism is consistent with official definitions of environmental justice yet inconsistent with official definitions of environmental crime. A third implication relates to the significant overlap between the lay victims’ conceptions of environmental crime and environmental injustice in the context of Chem-Dyne. The codes were consistent across both. Indeed, for those affected by Chem-Dyne, “environmental crime” and “environmental injustice” are nearly synonymous. The only significant difference identified was the higher prevalence of the unfairness code in conceptions of environmental injustice. On the one hand, this finding makes sense due to common relations between crime and injustice in official accounts of crime (e.g., Ambrose, et al. 2002; Scheuerman 2013; Agnew & DeLisi, 2012; Barn & Tan, 2012; DeLisi, 2011). Our research confirms that there is a conceptual nexus between crime and injustice in lay victim consciousness, at least in the context of Chem-Dyne. On the other hand, this implication is surprising because official (i.e., academic and policy/legal) accounts of environmental crime and environmental injustice have distinct histories and definitions (see Sections 2.2 and 2.3). For example, there is “a dearth of criminological attention” to environmental justice concerns despite overlapping themes (Zilney et al. 2006: 47; Lynch et al. 2015).

33 Relatedly, the final implication of the study relates to the similarities and differences between scholarly and lay victims’ definitions of environmental crime and environmental injustice in Chem-Dyne’s context. In relation to scholarly definitions of environmental crime, the most striking difference is that lay victims’ conceptions are more anthropocentric. Official definitions of environmental crime focus on the legal dimensions of environmental impacts (see Section 2.2). In contrast, participants focused on the human impacts of Chem-Dyne. There are also similarities between lay victim and scholarly definitions of environmental crime. Many of the respondents’ conceptions of environmental crime touched on illegality and harm and safety, themes consistent with scholarly definitions. For example, Pecar (1981: 33–45) defines environmental crime as “an action perpetrated with an intent to cause damage or intentionally to damage the environment with an intent to make or accumulate profit.” This is consistent with the legal definitions of environmental crime in Eman et al (2009) and Situ and Emmons (1996, 2000), who view environmental crime as an act against the law which protects an individual or group’s interest and constitutes a threat to human and environmental safety. Participant conceptions of environmental injustice can also be usefully compared to scholarly and social-movement definitions of environmental (in)justice. One similarity between lay victims’ conceptions and scholarly and social-movement conceptions of environmental injustice, in contrast to environmental crime, is an anthropocentric focus. With exceptions, most of the social-movement definitions of environmental justice are anthropocentric (Walker 2012). A key difference between lay victims’ conceptions of environmental injustice and scholarly and social-movement definitions relates to racial inequality. In the United States, environmental injustice historically developed out of claims of “” and there is still a focus on the disproportionate impact of environmental harms faced by racial minorities (Walker 2012).

30 Although unfairness was the prominent theme in our interviews, only one participant briefly mentioned race or racism in our interviews. This difference is likely due to the area of study, which is predominantly white.

8. Conclusion

This study explored lay victims’ conceptions of environmental crime and environmental injustice through in-depth interviews with people affected by the Chem-Dyne hazardous waste site in Hamilton, Ohio and former Chem-Dyne employees. Nine participants were recruited through snowball sampling. Respondents were asked to define crime, environmental crime, injustice, and environmental injustice. Through an open coding process, I found that respondents used the following criteria to define both environmental crime and environmental injustice: illegality, intentionality, harm and safety and unfairness. The findings have important implications for studies of environmental crime and environmental injustice, though all should be interpreted within the specific case of the Chem-Dyne case: (1) lay victims’ conceptions of environmental crime and environmental justice are multidimensional concepts; (2) lay victims’ conceptions of environmental crime and environmental injustice are mostly anthropocentric; (3) there is significant conceptual overlap between environmental crime and environmental injustice in lay victims’ accounts; and (4) lay victims’ conceptions of environmental crime and environmental injustice are both similar to, yet distinct from, official definitions. The limitations of this study include non-random sampling, a small sample size, and the focus on one case. All three limitations severely limit generalizability. This study lays a preliminary foundation for future research that could compare conceptions of environmental crime and environmental injustice between non-victims and victims, experts and the public,

31 and/or lay victims in different cases, social locations, and localities. Future studies of lay victims’ conceptions of environmental crime and environmental injustice should use random sampling methods, recruit a larger sample, and compare results across cases. The latter is especially important because conceptions are likely place-based (Barclay and Bartel 2015) and vary internationally (Eman et al., 2011). Along with the academic contributions of this thesis, the practical significance is giving a voice to the voiceless. I agree with the participants that justice was never served in the case of Chem-Dyne and those affected by the hazardous waste site should be given the opportunity to at least speak about their experiences, beliefs, and concerns. Before they are institutionalized as laws, operationalized definitions, organizational reports, agencies, etc., conceptions of justice and crime, and environmental injustice and environmental crime in particular, are rooted in lived experiences. Lay victims of environmental crime and environmental injustice sit in a unique social location for elevating our understanding of the weight of the meanings of environmental crime and environmental injustice. They should be heard.

32 References

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39 APPENDIX A: Consent form

Consent to Participate in Research

Dear Participant:

I am Emmanuel Ogundipe, a second-year graduate student at Miami University’s Institute for the Environment and Sustainability. My research is on the social aspects of environmental problems with focus on Chem-Dyne environmental disaster in Hamilton.

You are invited to participate in a study of the social aspects of the Chem-Dyne disaster. I will ask you few questions about your experience and how you view the Chem-Dyne disaster in Hamilton. Your answers will be kept confidential and will not be used for any other purpose except this research. Your responses will be tape recorded or jotted down in a notebook, however, either in the tape or notebook, your name will not be associated with your responses.

This exercise should take approximately 45 minutes. Your participation is voluntary, and you may withdraw from the session at any time or decline to answer any questions that make you uncomfortable. You will not be asked to do anything that exposes you to risks. The benefit of the study, scientifically, is it will help us understand more about the Chem-Dyne disaster in Hamilton.

If you have further questions or concerns about the study, please contact the Miami Research Ethics and Integrity Office at (513) 529-3600) or [email protected]. If you have questions about your rights as a research participant, please call the Office of Advancement of Research and Scholarship at 529-3600 or email: [email protected].

40 Thank you for your participation. We are grateful for your help and hope that this will be an interesting session for you. You may keep this portion of the page.

……………………………………………………………………………………………………

Cut at the line, keep the top section and return the bottom section.

I agree to participate in the study of the social aspects of the Chem-Dyne disaster. I understand my participation is voluntary and that my name will not be associated with my responses in anyway. By signing below, I acknowledge that I am 18 years or older.

Participant’s signature Date:

40 APPENDIX B: Interview Guide

Overall Experience and Rapport Building

• What was your experience of Chem-Dyne?

• When did you hear about the disaster?

• How did you hear about it?

• How do you feel about Chem-Dyne disaster in Hamilton?

Environmental Crime

• In your opinion, was the Chem-Dyne disaster a crime?

• How would you describe a crime? (probe)

• In your opinion, was the Chem-Dyne disaster an environmental crime?

• How would you describe an environmental crime? (probe)…

• Do you think the Chem-Dyne disaster had an environmental impact?

41

Environmental Justice/Injustice

• How do you feel about the location of the site in the community? (probe)

a. Probe: Do you think it was sited fairly?

• What are the factors that you think were responsible for siting the company in North End? • In your opinion, was the Chem-Dyne disaster an injustice?

41 • How would you describe injustice? (probe)

• How would you describe justice? (probe)

• In your opinion, was the Chem-Dyne disaster an environmental injustice?

• How would you describe an environmental injustice? (probe)

• How would you describe environmental justice? (probe)

More Specific Experiences

• How far away did you live from where the disaster happened?

• Do you think it had any effect on your garden, animals, or fruits?

• Did you move because of the disaster?

• Do you think the disaster affected your health?

• Do you think the Chem Dyne disaster facilitated illness like headache, cancer, nausea, etc. • Do you think the disaster contaminated your water?

• Do you think the disaster contaminated the River?

• Do you think the disaster killed fish? 42

Extra Questions (if there is time)

Tell me about some of the problems you saw Butler County faced when overcoming these impacts? • Did people come together?

• Did you see anyone help others? How so?

43 • Did you help anyone? How so?

• Was there any conflict amongst community members? If so, what kind?

Do you think things are “back to normal”?

• What does “normal” mean to you?

• Is there a “new normal”?

• If so, when do you think it went “back to normal”?

• How long did it take to clean up the spill?

44