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TRANSPORTATION CONFERENCE STEERING COMMITTEE

 

Susana Almanza, Southwest Network for Environmental and Economic Justice
Rose M. Augustine, Tucsonians for a Clean Environment
Robert D. Bullard, Environmental Justice Resource Center (Clark Atlanta University)
Frank Danchetz, Georgia Department of Transportation
Jim De La Loza, Los Angeles Metropolitan Transit Authority
Deeohn Ferris, Washington Office on Environmental Justice
Tom Goldtooth, Indigenous Environmental Network
Hazel Johnson, People for Community Recovery
Wayne Kober, Pennsylvania Department of Transportation
Charles Lee, UCC Commission for Racial Justice
Vernice Miller, Natural Resources Defense Council
Fred Skaer, Federal Highway Administration
Gail Small, Native Action
Dave Tannehill, Metropolitan Transportation Commission (San Francisco-Oakland area)
Connie Tucker, Southern Organizing Committee
Beverly Wright, Deep South Center for Environmental Justice (Xavier University)

This document is disseminated under the sponsorship of the U.S. Department of Transportation in the interest of information exchange. The United States Government assumes no liability for the contents or use thereof.

Prepared for :
Federal Highway Administration
Federal Transit Administration
Federal Railroad Administration
Grant Number: HEP-32

Prepared by:

Environmental Justice Resource Center
Clark Atlanta University

January 1996

Environmental Justice Resource Center
Clark Atlanta University
223 James P. Brawley Drive
Atlanta, GA 30314
Phone (404) 880-6911
Fax (404) 880-6909

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PREFACE

 

The issuance of Executive Order 12898 in February 1994, "Federal Actions to Address Environmental Justice in Minority Populations and Low-income Populations," ushered in new expectations for improving the way federal agencies address environmental and public health concerns. The Executive Order issued by President Clinton is not a new law or new federal mandate. The Order is a restatement of existing law and an admission at the highest level of government that federal actions are needed to identify and address disproportionate and adverse human health and environmental problems in low-income and minority communities. Executive Order 12898 has far-reaching implications for improving transportation planning,decision-making, and compliance with the nation's environmental, public health, and civil rights laws, some of which have been on the books for several decades.

The impetus for the recent environmental justice initiatives did not originate with government, but emerged out of grassroots groups, networks, and community leaders who are demanding an end to unfair and discriminatory policies, practices, and activities at the federal, state, and local level.

A major goal of the May 1995 "Environmental Justice and Transportation: Building Model Partnerships Conference" was to facilitate networking and communication among grassroots groups, federal officials, statewide transportation planners, and individuals from metropolitan planning organizations (MPOs). A multi-stakeholder Conference Steering Committee was selected to plan and coordinate the conference agenda, solicit speakers, and design outreach to identify a diverse audience to discuss key issues associated with Executive Order 12898 and DOT's Environmental Justice Strategy.

In keeping with the "Principles of Environmental Justice," the Conference Steering Committee was sensitive to the issue of stakeholder inclusion. The Conference Steering Committee sought to achieve maximum participation and stakeholder balance from impacted communities, transit-dependent populations, grassroots groups, non-governmental organizations, and government transportation agencies. Many of the grassroots leaders who attended the conference have been working for decades to ensure that the nation's civil rights, environmental, and transportation laws are enforced in a fair and non-discriminatory way. The conference provided an avenue for diverse community stakeholders and government leaders to offer new planning paradigms and model partnerships to improve transportation services available to all Americans.

Robert D. Bullard, 1995
Chair, Conference Steering Committee

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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This report was prepared by Robert D. Bullard, Director of the Environmental Justice Resource Center, with the assistance of Lisa Sutton, Ruth Neal, DeLane Garner, Christopher Weldon, April Allen, Mary Colbert, and Lisa Benson. We would like to thank all of the presenters and participants in this conference, and the volunteers who helped to make the conference a success. We wish to gratefully acknowledge the Federal Highway Administration, Federal Transit Administration, and Federal Railroad Administration for their sponsorship and support of the conference.

We extend special thanks to the Conference Steering Committee members whose patience and hard work guided us through a torturous planning process. Similarly, we owe special thanks to Gloria Jeff, Fred Skaer, and Eugene Cleckley at the Federal Highway Administration for their assistance.

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION:

Environmental Justice and Transportation, Robert D. Bullard 1

CHAPTER 1: BUILDING PARTNERSHIPS

Conference Overview, Robert D. Bullard 6
Welcoming Address, The Honorable Mayor Bill Campbell 6
Greetings from the Religious Community, Reverend Dr. Susan Newman 7
Greetings from the Networks, Teresa Cordova 7
Keynote Address, Administrator Rodney Slater 7
Summit Archive Ceremony, Charles Lee and Bernice Powell Jackson 8

CHAPTER 2: ENVIRONMENTAL JUSTICE PRINCIPLES IN TRANSPORTATION

Greetings from the Office of the Secretary, Antonio J. Califa 9
Reflections from the Deep South, Beverly Wright 10
Commitment of FTA, Administrator Gordon Linton 11
Georgia DOT's Action Plan, Commissioner Wayne Shackleford 12
Programs of FRA, Deputy Administrator Donald Itzkoff 13

CHAPTER 3: ENVIRONMENTAL JUSTICE, CIVIL RIGHTS, AND NEPA GUIDANCE

Reflections from Atlanta, Commissioner Emma Darnell 15
NEPA, Civil Rights Statutes, and Equal Protection, Deeohn Ferris 16
Civil Rights Remedies for Environmental Justice, Bill Lee 17
Making NEPA Responsive to Communities, Bradley Campbell 18
Environmental Justice Transportation: From Rhetoric to Reality, Eugene Cleckley 19

CHAPTER 4: TRANSPORTATION APPROACHES: GRASSROOTS INITIATIVES

Grassroots Approaches in James City, North Carolina, Paul Sonn 21
Public Transit in Los Angeles, Martin Hernandez 22
The Case of Macon; Bibb County, Georgia, David Oedell 23
Grassroots Initiatives in Chicago, Jacky Grimshaw 24

CHAPTER 5: EMPOWERMENT AND ENTERPRISE ZONES

Rebuilding Sustainable Communities, John L Perry 26
Building Partnerships through Communication, Barbara Smith 27
The Case of West Harlem, Vernice Miller 28
Detroit's Empowerment Zone, Elizabeth Toomer 29
Atlanta's Empowerment Zone, Hakim Yamine 30

CHAPTER 6: BREAKOUT GROUP SESSIONS - PART I

Group A: The Proposed DOT Order 31
Group B: Health and Community Impacts 34
Group C: Public Involvement and Outreach 38
Group D: Research Needs 41
Group E: NEPA, Environmental Justice, and Civil Rights 44
Group F: Transport of Hazardous and Radioactive Materials 49

CHAPTER 7: BREAKOUT GROUP SESSIONS: PART II

Group G: Empowerment and Enterprise Zones 53
Group H: Transportation Decision Making 55
Group I: Training Needs 57
Group J: Rural Transportation Needs 60
Group K: Native American and Indigenous Issues 63
Group L: Equity Implications of Pricing and Operational Strategies 67

CHAPTER 8: CONFERENCE CLOSING - THE ROAD AHEAD

Government Response, Gloria Jeff 70
Next Steps and Follow-up Actions, Robert D. Bullard 72

APPENDICES

A. Principles of Environmental Justice 76
B. Executive Order 12898 78
C. DOT Environmental Justice Strategy 84
D. Proposed DOT Order 90
E. Civil Rights Remedies for Environmental Injustice 99
F. Conference Evaluation 110
G. Attendee List 112

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INTRODUCTION

ENVIRONMENTAL JUSTICE AND TRANSPORTATION

Robert D. Bullard, Director
Environmental Justice Resource Center
Clark Atlanta University

Historical Context

Transportation has a profound impact on residential patterns, industrial growth, and physical and social mobility. The decision to build highways, expressways, and beltways has a far-reaching impact on land-use, energy policy, and the environment. Many of our transportation problems are rooted in civil rights. In 1896, for example, the U.S. Supreme Court wrestled with this question of different treatment accorded blacks and whites. In the case of Plessy v. Ferguson, the Supreme Court examined the constitutionality of Louisiana laws which provided reason for the segregation of railroad car seating by race. The court upheld the "white section" and "colored section" Jim Crow seating law, contending that segregation did not violate any rights guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution.

In 1953, nearly four decades after the Plessy decision relegated blacks to the back of the bus, African Americans in Baton Rouge, the capital of Louisiana, staged the nation's first successful bus boycott. African Americans accounted for the overwhelming majority of Baton Rouge bus riders and two-thirds of the bus company's revenue. On the other hand, all of the bus drivers were white. It is important to note that the successful Baton Rouge bus boycott occurred two years before the famous 1954 Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka U.S. Supreme Court decision that overturned Plessy and rendered the "separate but equal" policy unconstitutional.

On December 1, 1955, a black woman in Montgomery, Alabama ignited the modern civil rights movement. Mrs. Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat to a white man in defiance of local "Jim Crow" laws. Her action sparked new leadership around transportation and civil rights. Mrs. Parks summarized her feelings about resisting Jim Crow in an interview with sociologist Aldon Morris in 1981: "My resistance to being mistreated on the buses and anywhere else was just a regular thing with me and not just that day."

Transportation was also a central theme in the "Freedom Riders" campaign in the early 1960s, who rode across Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana. At the risk of death, the young Freedom Riders exercised their constitutional right of interstate travel. Greyhound buses were attacked and some burned in 1961. Nevertheless, the Freedom Riders continued their quest for justice on the nation's roads and highways.

Rediscovering Environmental Inequities

Urban environmental inequities, especially urban air pollution, were first documented more than two decades ago in a report prepared by the Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ). However, it took more than two decades for equity concerns to register on the national radar screen. Congress passed the Intermodal Surface Transportation Efficiency Act (ISTEA) of 1991 to improve "public transportation necessary to achieve national goals for improved air quality, energy conservation, international competitiveness, and mobility for elderly persons, persons with disabilities, and economically disadvantaged persons in urban and rural areas of the country." ISTEA also promised to build intermodal connections between people to jobs, goods and markets, and neighborhoods.

ISTEA mandates that improvements comply with the Clean Air Act, whereby priorities will be given to projects that will clean up polluted air. ISTEA also requires transportation plans to comply with Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibits discrimination in the use of federal funds, investments, and transportation services.

Improvements in transportation investments and air quality are of special significance to low-income persons and people of color, who are more likely to live in areas with reduced air quality when compared with affluent households and whites. A 1990 National Argonne Laboratory study discovered that 57 percent of whites, 65 percent of African Americans, and 80 percent of Latinos lived in the 437 counties that failed to meet at least one of the EPA ambient air quality standards; a total of 33 percent of whites, 50 percent of African Americans, and 60 percent of Latinos live in the 136 counties in which two or more air pollutants exceed standards; and 12 percent of whites, 20 percent of African Americans, and 31 percent of Latinos live in the 29 counties designated as non-attainment areas for three or more pollutants.

A similar pattern was discovered in the heavily populated Los Angeles area. According to the South Coast Air Quality Management District estimates, 71 percent of African Americans and 50 percent of Latinos live in areas with the most polluted air, compared to 34 percent of whites.

Environmental Justice and Executive Order 12898

What started out as local community-based grassroots struggles against toxins, facility sitings, transport of hazardous material, freeways, fare hikes, and disparate services has now blossomed into an environmental justice movement. Environmental Justice refers to equal enforcement of our laws, policies, and regulations; identifying and addressing discriminatory practices, policies, and guidance; elimination of disproportionately high and adverse human health and environmental impacts on low-income and minority populations; and involving impacted communities in decision-making.

The environmental justice movement has "trickled up" from grassroots community concerns to the federal government and the White House. In response to growing public concern, President Clinton on February 11, 1994 issued the Executive Order 12898, Federal Actions to Address Environmental Justice in Minority Populations and Low-income Populations." This Order is not a new law but is an attempt to address environmental justice problems within existing federal laws and regulations.

The Executive Order restates the provisions found in the three-decade-old Civil Rights Act of 1964, Title VI. The Act prohibits discriminatory practices in programs receiving federal funds. The Executive Order also focuses attention back on the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), a twenty-five-year-old law that set policy goals for the protection, maintenance, and enhancement of the environment. NEPA's expressed goal is "to ensure for all Americans a safe, healthful, productive, and aesthetically and culturally pleasing environment." NEPA requires federal agencies to prepare a detailed statement on the environmental effects of proposed federal actions that significantly affect the quality of human health.

The Executive Order calls for improved methodologies for assessing and mitigating impacts, health effects from multiple and cumulative exposure, collection of data on low-income and minority populations who may be disproportionately at risk, impacts on subsistence fishers and wildlife consumers; and it encourages participation of the impacted populations in the various phases of the NEPA process, including scoping, data gathering, alternatives, analysis, mitigation, and monitoring.

Environmental Justice Transportation Conference

A national conference, "Environmental Justice and Transportation: Building Model Partnerships," was held in Atlanta, Georgia. The conference, held May 11-13, 1995, was cosponsored by the Federal Highway Administration, Federal Transit Administration, Federal Railroad Administration, and Clark Atlanta University. The meeting held was attended by over 200 grassroots environmental justice leaders, civil rights advocates, legal experts, planners, academicians, and government officials from 30 states. The conference included some 80 presenters, a keynote speaker, moderators, and panelists in plenary and breakout sessions. Over half of the presenters represented grassroots groups and other non-governmental organizations (NGOs).

Conference participants were charged with defining new interagency approaches to foster greater public participation of impacted populations to create healthy and sustainable communities through wise transportation investments. The four broad conference objectives included:

· Ensuring greater stakeholder participation and public involvement in transportation decision-making.

· Directing resources to identify and address discriminatory outcomes, disproportionate impacts, inequitable distribution of transportation investments, and their civil rights implications.

· Improving research, data collection and assessment techniques.

· Promoting interagency cooperation in transportation planning, development, and program implementation to achieve livable, healthy, and sustainable communities.

Through plenary sessions and breakout groups, the conference provided a forum for grassroots environmental justice leaders, civil rights advocates, legal experts, planners, academicians, and government officials to assist the USDOT in identifying, promoting, and strengthening plans for including broad-based stakeholders in transportation decision-making.

The conference was grounded in the hard work and struggles of diverse grassroots groups. It is their work that has redefined and shaped this new environmentalism to include "where people live, work, and play, as well as the physical and natural world."

Representatives from grassroots environmental justice networks were an integral part of conference speakers, moderators, panelists, and the Steering Committee. The Conference Steering Committee included representatives from such groups as the Southwest Network for Environmental and Economic Justice, Southern Organizing Committee for Social and Economic Justice, Indigenous Environmental Network, Asian and Pacific Island Environmental Network, Midwest Environmental Justice Network, Commission for Racial Justice, Xavier University's Deep South Environmental Justice Center, and the Washington Office on Environmental Justice served on the conference planning committee.

From New York to Los Angeles and places in between, grassroots community groups are organizing themselves into a movement to create just, healthy, sustainable, and livable communities. Cities such as Atlanta, Macon, Washington, Chicago, New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Oakland offer fertile ground for grassroots transportation organizing. Some grassroots groups have organized around freeway construction, bus facility siting, or transport of hazardous materials through their communities, while other groups are demanding a fair share of transportation investments, services, and benefits that accrue to transit-oriented development.

More important, grassroots groups and community leaders are demanding a place at the table with MPOs, as equal partners in decision-making, especially on issues that have direct impact on their communities. It is not enough to be sitting at the table, but those most affected by transportation policies must have a voice, and this voice must be respected.

The conference proceedings contain summaries of all plenary sessions as well as keynote and breakout speakers. The recommendations were derived from discussions in the twelve breakout sessions that were held over a two-day period. For more information, please contact the Environmental Justice Resource Center, Clark Atlanta University, (404) 880-6911.

John Hope Franklin, From Slavery to Freedom: A History of the Negro in America, 4th ed., New York: Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., 1974, p. 276.

Aldon D. Morris, The Origins of the Civil Rights Movement: Black Communities Organizing for Change, New York: The Free Press, 1984, pp. 17-25.

Ibid., p.51

Council on Environmental Quality, The Second Annual Report of the Council on Environmental Quality. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1971.

Dee R. Wernette and Leslie A. Nieves, "Breathing Polluted Air: Minorities are Disproportionately Exposed," EPA Journal 18 (March/April, 1992): 16-17.

See Eric Mann, L.A.'s Lethal Air: New Strategies for Policy, Organizing, and Action. Los Angeles: Labor/Community Strategy Center, 1991.

See Robert D. Bullard, Unequal Protection: Environmental Justice and Communities of Color. San Francisco: Sierra Club Books, 1994.

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