From the Ground Up CRITICAL AMERICA General Editors: RICHARD DELGADO and JEAN STEFANCIC White by Law: The Legal Construction of Race Ian F. Haney López Cultivating Intelligence: Power, Law, and the Politics of Teaching Louise Harmon and Deborah W. Post Privilege Revealed: How Invisible Preference Undermines America Stephanie M. Wildman with Margalynne Armstrong, Adrienne D. Davis, and Trina Grillo Does the Law Morally Bind the Poor? or What Good’s the Constitution When You Can’t Afford a Loaf of Bread? R. George Wright Hybrid: Bisexuals, Multiracials, and Other Misfits under American Law Ruth Colker Critical Race Feminism: A Reader Edited by Adrien Katherine Wing Immigrants Out! The New Nativism and the Anti-Immigrant Impulse in the United States Edited by Juan F. Perea Taxing America Edited by Karen B. Brown and Mary Louise Fellows Notes of a Racial Caste Baby: Color Blindness and the End of Affirmative Action Bryan K. Fair Please Don’t Wish Me a Merry Christmas: A Critical History of the Separation of Church and State Stephen M. Feldman To Be an American: Cultural Pluralism and the Rhetoric of Assimilation Bill Ong Hing Negrophobia and Reasonable Racism: The Hidden Costs of Being Black in America Jody David Armour Black and Brown in America: The Case for Cooperation Bill Piatt Black Rage Confronts the Law Paul Harris Selling Words: Free Speech in a Commercial Culture R. George Wright The Color of Crime: Racial Hoaxes, White Fear, Black Protectionism, Po- lice Harassment, and Other Macroaggressions Katheryn K. Russell The Smart Culture: Society, Intelligence, and Law Robert L. Hayman, Jr. Was Blind, But Now I See: White Race Consciousness and the Law Barbara J. Flagg The Gender Line: Men, Women, and the Law Nancy Levit Heretics in the Temple: Americans Who Reject the Nation’s Legal Faith David Ray Papke The Empire Strikes Back: Outsiders and the Struggle over Legal Education Arthur Austin Interracial Justice: Conflict and Reconciliation in Post–Civil Rights America Eric K. Yamamoto Black Men on Race, Gender, and Sexuality: A Critical Reader Edited by Devon Carbado When Sorry Isn’t Enough: The Controversy over Apologies and Reparations for Human Injustice Edited by Roy L. Brooks Disoriented: Asian Americans, Law, and the Nation State Robert S. Chang Rape and the Culture of the Courtroom Andrew E. Taslitz The Passions of Law Edited by Susan A. Bandes Global Critical Race Feminism: An International Reader Edited by Adrien Katherine Wing Law and Religion: Critical Essays Edited by Stephen M. Feldman Changing Race: Latinos, the Census, and the History of Ethnicity Clara E. Rodríguez From the Ground Up: Environmental Racism and the Rise of the Environmental Justice Movement Luke W. Cole and Sheila R. Foster Luke W. Cole and Sheila R. Foster FROM THE GROUND UP ENVIRONMENTAL RACISM AND THE RISE OF THE ENVIRONMENTAL JUSTICE MOVEMENT a New York University Press New York and London NEW YORK UNIVERSITY PRESS New York and London Copyright © 2001 by New York University All rights reserved Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Cole, Luke W., 1962– From the ground up : environmental racism and the rise of the environmental justice movement / Luke W. Cole and Sheila R. Foster. p. cm. — (Critical America) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-8147-1537-0 (pbk.) — ISBN 0-8147-1536-2 (cloth) 1. Environmental justice—United States. 2. Environmental policy—United States. 3. Minorities—United States—Political activity. I. Foster, Sheila R., 1963– II. Title. III. Series. GE180 .C65 2001 363.7'0089'00973—dc21 00-010595 New York University Press books are printed on acid-free paper, and their binding materials are chosen for strength and durability. Manufactured in the United States of America 10987654321 For Ralph Santiago Abascal LUKE W. COLE For My Family SHEILA R. FOSTER CONTENTS Acknowledgments xi Preface: We Speak for Ourselves: The Struggle of Kettleman City 1 Introduction 10 ONE A History of the Environmental Justice Movement 19 TWO The Political Economy of Environmental Racism: Chester Residents Concerned for Quality of Life 34 THREE Environmental Racism: Beyond the Distributive Paradigm 54 FOUR Buttonwillow: Resistance and Disillusion in Rural California 80 FIVE Processes of Struggle: Grassroots Resistance and the Structure of Environmental Decision Making 103 SIX In Defense of Mother Earth: The Indigenous Environmental Network 134 SEVEN Transformative Politics 151 Appendix 167 Notes 185 Index 231 About the Authors 244 |ix| ACKNOWLEDGMENTS This book is the product of the work and input of many people over the past six years. We particularly thank Maricela Alatorre, Bineshi Albert, Bradley Angel, Jerome Balter, Francisco Beltran, Lydia Beltran, Arnold Cohen, Joseph Della Fave, Juanita Fernandez, Lorenzo Garcia, Tom Goldtooth, June Kruszewski, Mary Lou Mares, Lupe Martinez, Esper- anza Maya, Joe Maya, Zulene Mayfield, Dora Montoya, Eduardo Mon- toya, Saul Moreno, Sylvia Moreno, Dennis Palla, Juan Reyes, Rosa Solorio-Garcia, Tiwana M. Steward-Griffin, and Jackie Warledo for their help in the case studies found in the Preface and chapters 2, 4, 6, and 7, and for teaching us about environmental justice. Judith Lurie and Miriam Montesinos conducted field interviews for chapter 4; Henry Ko- mansky provided invaluable research for chapter 2 and parts of chapter 7; Jen Gadbow and Sergio Garza helped transcribe interviews. Ralph Abascal, Skip Cole, Giovanna Di Chiro, Michel Gelobter, Nancy Shelby, and Katie Silberman provided insightful feedback and editorial advice. Charles Lee, himself a one-person history of the Environmental Justice Movement, has been an invaluable colleague and source of information. Dana Alston, Carl Anthony, Robert Bullard, Deeohn Ferris, Tom Gold- tooth, Vernice Miller, and Richard Moore have all provided important direction both to the Movement and to us at various stages of our think- ing about environmental justice. Our editors, Richard Delgado and Jean Stefancic, have been unwavering in their support of this project during its long gestation period. Rutgers University School of Law-Camden also provided crucial support, both tangible and intangible, toward the completion of this book. Parts of this book were adapted from the following previously pub- lished articles: Luke W. Cole, The Theory and Reality of Community- Based Environmental Decision-Making: The Failure of California’s Tan- ner Act and its Implications for Environmental Justice, 25 Ecology Law Quarterly 733 (1999); Luke W. Cole, Environmental Justice and the |xi| Acknowledgments Three Great Myths of White Americana, 3 Hastings West-Northwest Journal 449 (1996); Luke W. Cole, Macho Law Brains, Public Citizens, and Grassroots Activists: Three Models of Environmental Advocacy, 14 Virginia Environmental Law Journal 687 (1995); Luke W. Cole, Civil Rights, Environmental Justice and the EPA: The Brief History of Ad- ministrative Complaints under Title VI, 9 Journal of Environmental Law and Litigation 309 (1994); Luke W. Cole, Environmental Justice Litigation: Another Stone in David’s Sling, 21 Fordham Urban Law Journal 523 (1994); Luke W. Cole, The Struggle of Kettleman City for Environmental Justice: Lessons for the Movement, 5 Maryland Journal of Contemporary Legal Issues 67 (1994); Luke W. Cole, Empowerment as the Key to Environmental Protection: The Need for Environmental Poverty Law, 19 Ecology Law Quarterly 619 (1992); Luke W. Cole, Remedies for Environmental Racism: A View from the Field, 90 Michi- gan Law Review 1991 (1992); Sheila Foster, Justice from the Ground Up: Distributive Inequities, Grassroots Resistance, and the Transformative Politics of the Environmental Justice Movement, 86 California Law Review 775 (1998); and Sheila Foster, Impact Assesment and Public Participation in The Law of Environmental Justice: Theories and Procedures to Address Disproportionate Risks (Michael B. Gerrard, ed., 1999). | xii | PREFACE We Speak for Ourselves The Struggle of Kettleman City El pueblo unido jamas sera vencido (“The people united shall never be defeated”) —Chant and slogan from the farm-worker justice movement Stories are one way we transmit our history, share our successes, and learn from our losses. Stories are also an important part of the movement for environmental justice, which has as one of its central tenets the idea “We speak for ourselves.” This book tells the stories of ordinary men and women thrust into extraordinary roles as community leaders, grassroots experts, and national policymakers. We invoke these stories to illustrate the human reality behind the numerous studies that chart the dispro- portionate distribution of environmental hazards, and the burgeoning grassroots movement for environmental justice that has sprung up around the country. The first story is about Kettleman City, one of the defining struggles of the early days of the Environmental Justice Movement. The story is a classic David-and-Goliath tale, in which a small farm-worker town took on the largest toxic waste dumping company in the world—and won. Kettleman City is a tiny farm-worker community of 1,100 residents in Kings County, in California’s San Joaquin Valley.1 Ninety-five percent of Kettleman residents are Latino, 70 percent of the residents speak Span- ish at home, and roughly 40 percent are monolingual Spanish speakers. They are primarily farm-workers who work in the fields that spread out in three directions from Kettleman City. Kettleman City is much like many other rural communities in the Southwest, and few people would know about it