A report commissioned by Residents Opposed to Pigs and Livestock (ROPL), a biracial grassroots community group located in College Station, Texas, finds that race was a factor in the evaluation and selection of the site for a multi-million dollar consolidated livestock facility operated by Texas A&M University. A hearing will be held at 10:00AM, Friday, March 13, 1998, in Brazos County's 361st Texas State District Court. The university relocated its animal centers off campus to its Animal Science Teaching Research and Extension Complex or ASTREC . The ASTREC is located in the mostly African American area known as the Brushy community. The sprawling campus farm land where the former animal centers were housed is now home to the George Bush Presidential Library. "If pigs aren't good enough for the Bush Library, they are not good enough for the Brushy community, "states Reverend Cedric Rouse.

The rural Brushy community, located across the Brazos River from Texas A&M University's farms known as the "Plantation," dates back more than 100 years. Professor Robert D. Bullard, author of Dumping in Dixie and director of the Environmental Justice Resource Center at Clark Atlanta University, prepared the report as part of his testimony for a lawsuit filed by members of ROPL.

Professor Bullard's report concludes that: (1) Texas A&M University officials failed to consider the inequitable distribution of costs and benefits of the animal center to the nearby communities; (2) Texas A&M University officials failed to adequately assess the impacts (i.e., costs and benefits) of the facility on the nearby community; (3) Texas A&M University officials failed to document a site evaluation, ranking, and selection process in which all communities were treated equally without regard to race; (4) Texas A&M University officials failed to adopt an objective, quantifiable, and nondiscriminatory evaluation criteria to assess "community impact;" (5) Texas A& M University officials failed to take into account the cumulative and additive impacts the animal center facility would have on the neighboring community; (6) Texas A&M University failed to give proper notification to home owners, property owners, and residents who live in the Brushy community; (7) Texas A&M University failed to protect the rights of residents who live in the Brushy neighborhood (who are mostly African Americans) the same way they protected residents who lived near the alternate sites who are mostly whites; (8) the siting of the animal center facility in the Brushy community follows a national pattern in which institutionally biased decision making leads to the siting of locally unwanted land uses and industrial facilities, in this case the animal center facility, in low-income and minority communities (this pattern has been noted in several of my books and numerous articles); and (9) Texas A&M University's site selection process discriminated against the residents of the Brushy community.

Building the consolidated livestock center in the Brushy community to accommodate initially up to four thousand animals, including pigs, goats and sheep, and several hundred cattle, with several large sewage ponds for the treatment of manure, follows a pattern of land use that is widespread in the United States, whereby facilities that negatively impact the health and well being of nearby residents are disproportionately placed in low-income and minority neighborhoods. The number of animals to be housed at the ASTREC was later reduced to 1,300 animals and one sewage pond.

"The small Brushy community is already burdened with polluting facilities and locally unwanted land uses or LULUs," states Dr. Bullard. It has two large gravel pits, an injection well, an asphalt and a cement plant, and the Brazos County Citizens Garbage Collection Station. The addition of the animal center, less than 100 feet from the Brushy community, is yet another nonresidential land use in this small community. Professor Bullard further states, "the Brushy community and similar unincorporated communities are vulnerable to a triple jeopardy' in that they are often rural, poor, and politically powerless against outside interests."

University officials agreed that the livestock center would have negative impacts on the adjacent community. They also voiced concern about the possible negative economic impact a large livestock center would have on adjacent property values and future community economic development opportunities surrounding alternative sites located near white home owners. Ironically, University officials voiced no such concerns about the environmental impacts, economic impacts, and future development opportunities, or land use compatibility surrounding the property located in the Brushy community. "University officials appear to suggest that the mostly black Brushy community is compatible with a consolidated livestock center and the white communities and the George Bush Presidential Library are not," states Professor Bullard. If the livestock facility will depress real estate values in white communities, then it is reasonable to assume that the animal center will have a similar impact on real estate in their community. Brushy community residents are already negatively impacted by the noise from animals, dust, odors, flies, and birds.

Bullard's study reveal that A&M University officials did not use a uniform, objective, and unbiased evaluation criteria to assess environmental and economic impacts and thereby gave less weight and protection to residents surrounding the site in the Brushy community. University officials and Regents expressed no concern that interest in the property near A&M Plantation (i.e., the Brushy community) violated one of their own guidelines, that the site for a consolidated animal complex avoid "conflict with existing population centers," since an established black neighborhood with approximately eighty families lived very close to the site. University officials characterized the site in the Brushy community as "isolated." This rendering of African American communities as "invisible" is a common characteristic of environmental racism. The process for evaluating the eleven sites was biased in favor of the only site near which a large black community existed, by minimizing or ignoring the site's negative features, especially its small size, the large surrounding population cluster, the presence of several churches and the rural water system serving the area. University officials were more concerned not to place the facility at a location that could negatively affect a predominantly white neighborhood, and the site's future development for commercial or other high value purposes, and the housing areas thought to be near the poultry farm. To protect these more "strategic areas," University officials and the Board of Regents preferred building the consolidated livestock center in a populated area consisting of five registered rural subdivisions, across and down the road from black neighborhoods.

Racial discrimination played an important role in selecting the site for the animal complex in the Brushy community. Various high University and System officials expressed the view that a large animal complex would be incompatible with adjacent population centers, and would interfere with or prevent developments at or near the sites close to Highway 47, such as a hotel-golf course complex. Some key University officials even sought to protect the residents of Westwood Estates, a predominately white subdivision located near one of the alternative sites.

As a public institution, Texas A&M University receives millions of dollars in federal funds. The Texas Agricultural Experiment Station and College of Agriculture at A&M are supported heavily by USDA education and research dollars. Between 1992 and 1996, the Department of Animal Science received a total of $1.1 million in federal funding. There is clear evidence that the mostly African American Brushy community was treated differently from the white communities located near the alternative sites for the consolidated animal center. University officials acknowledged and weighed the potential environmental and economic impacts of an animal center on the white communities (and considered them to be unacceptable, incompatible, and difficult to justify). No such considerations were given to the potentially negative environmental and economic impacts of an animal center on the mostly black Brushy community. This is tantamount to environmental racism and racial discrimination.

For more information contact:

Dr. Robert D. Bullard
Environmental Justice Resource Center
(404) 880-6911

Residents Opposed to Pigs and Livestock
Rev. Cedric Rouse
(713) 779-2356

Dr. Al and Ruth Schaffer
(409) 846-7240

Attorney Robert E. Hager
(214) 965-9900

If you would like to view Dr. Bullard's full affidavit click HERE

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