Communities in Action

Many Americans believe that poverty and geography are the main factors that determine where hazardous industries such as landfills, industrial farms, and pipelines are located, but there is mounting evidence that race, and not poverty, is the greatest predictor of where these industries will be sited. In North Carolina, landfills are disproportionately located in or near low-income communities of color, Black and Brown renters are more likely to have higher concentrations of heavy metals in their soil and live near superfund sites than their White counterparts, and Concentrating Animal Feeding Operations (CAFOs) are clustered around high poverty nonwhite communities in the eastern part of the state.

Environmental justice, or the fair treatment and meaningful involvement of all people in the development, implementation, and enforcement of environmental laws, regulations, and policies, was first addressed by the federal government in 1994 with an executive order from then-President Clinton that ordered federal agencies to identify and address the disproportionately high and adverse human health or environmental effects of their actions on minority and low-income populations. Although the federal government continues to support environmental justice, most recently with investments from the American Rescue Plan Act, the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, and President Biden’s Justice40 Initiative, the burden for communities to prove discrimination based on race is still difficult to meet. Defenders of these siting decisions often argue that they are based on where land is cheap and abundant, not the race of the people that live there, but the historical racialization of class and geography often means these decisions disproportionality affect communities of color, whether they were explicitly targeted or not. There are also disparities in the speed of clean-up efforts of superfund sites, with low-income communities often waiting longer for authorities to address hazardous industrial pollution.

With federal and state agencies slow to address public concerns and inequities, community organizers have emerged. North Carolina has a strong tradition of organizers who have taken their communities’ health and safety into their own hands, proving harm and discrimination through research and quality testing, and pushing regulators to do more to prevent communities of color from becoming the dumping grounds for the waste products of modern society. 

Afton and Warren County 

Local groups across the country have long protested unwanted land uses in their communities, but it wasn’t until protesters in Afton, North Carolina fought to stop PCB-contaminated soil from being delivered to their landfill in 1982 that community of color saw their struggles as connected in a fight for environmental justice.

Afton, located in rural Warren County, which to this day has one of the highest proportions of black residents in the state, was selected to receive the contaminated soil in 1978 after the state discovered a local trucker had been illegally dumping PCBs. Community leaders who were concerned about the harmful effects of potential PCB exposure on the community formed the Concerned Citizens group to organize residents in opposition to the landfill. Activists built credibility by demonstrating that the science of preventing chemical waste from contaminating groundwater was at best uncertain and sustained momentum by appealing to the residents’ shared economic struggles and identity as an agricultural community with strong ties to the land.

In 1982, as landfill construction began, the United Church of Christ, the Southern Christan Leadership Conference, and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People sent organizers to assist residents with massive protests that garnered media attention and made the explicit connection between the siting of the landfill and environmental racism. That connection was further solidified when the United Church of Christ released a report in 1987 that provided concrete evidence that race, more than any other factor, contributes to the placement of hazardous-waste facilities.

Although Afton ultimately failed to stop the toxic chemicals from being relocated to their landfill, the protests inspired a movement and have served as a template for how to organize communities against environmental injustice. 

Snow Hill and Sampson County 

Forty years after the Warren County protests, many of Eastern North Carolina’s Black and Brown communities are still fighting staggering environmental injustices – this time with the help of organizations like the North Carolina Environmental Justice Network (NCEJN) and the Environmental Justice Community Action Network (EJCAN) that are dedicated to helping communities of color organize and build political power to protect public health. 

Snow Hill, a Black community in rural Sampson County, has been trying to call attention to the toxic burden heaped on their town from the Sampson County Disposal Landfill and factory farming. Two of the landfill’s dumping sites are unlined – meaning there is no barrier between the waste’s leachate and the community’s soil and groundwater. Duplin and Sampson counties are also home to most of the state’s hog and poultry concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs) that use huge lagoons to store fecal waste and are a major source of toxic air pollutants. There are also efforts to construct a biogas pipeline and a likely transfer of contaminated soil from the Kerr-McGee Superfund site to the Sampson County landfill. Taken together, residents fear using their well water and hardly leave their homes in the summertime because the odor outside is so bad. 

Due to lax state testing regulations and networks, residents have little access to information about potential contaminants in their air or water. But that could soon change thanks to the home-grown and statewide organizers, scholars, and scientists who are calling attention to Snow Hill’s toxic hazards. Snow Hill local Ellis Tatum Sr. is one of the lead organizers for the Noth Carolina Environmental Justice Network’s work in the community and has been working with the Environmental Justice Community Action Network to help residents demand more accountability and advocate for themselves. A partnership with Appalachian State University to test well water could soon give residents more information about their water quality and CleanAIRE NC is set to help Sampson County establish a citizen-led air quality monitoring program to help residents publicly report data on major pollutants and demonstrate an inequitable burden on their community.

While activists in Snow Hill and Sampson County are gaining momentum, including electing a County Commissioner that campaigned on improving access to clean water, there are still many challenges activists face including figuring out how to coordinate action across such a large, rural county.

Organizing Against Environmental Injustice 

The activism in Afton and Snow Hill underscores important elements of community-led environmental justice. First, it is important to build a shared sense of identity, whether it is through shared economic hardship, connection to the land, or a faith community. This shared identity is what helps bind the community together, particularly in rural areas that can be isolated. It creates a shared sense of purpose for the work the community wants to do. Second, local activists can build capacity and political power with the help of a network of wider organizers. This network allows once-isolated communities to share what they have learned from organizing so they can accomplish more together than they could on their own. Third, researching and testing the quality of local air, water, and soil plays a critical role in proving harm. To be sustainable, testing efforts must be community-led and organizers and partners should help community members understand what readings mean and how they can communicate what they find to regulators and the wider community. 

References 

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