Law Commons^™

Uproar At Dancing Rabbit Creek: Battling Over Race, Class & The Environment, Colin Crawford

Publications

For the first five years of the 1990's, Noxubee County, Mississippi experienced a deeply divisive battle over the proposed siting there of one of the nation's biggest toxic waste dump and incineration facilities. Noxubee County, which is nearly 70% African-American, is also desperately poor. The fight over the proposed waste facility was in part a question of jobs versus environmental protection yet, as the selection below suggests, the waste fight was also influenced by long-standing animosities and social divisions-factors that, in my view, have been insufficiently appreciated by environmental justice activists and environmental lawyers alike.

Analyzing Evidence Of Environmental Justice: A Suggestion For Professor Been, Colin Crawford

Publications

One effect of the environmental justice movement has been to draw attention to the prejudices inherent in some modem environmental policies. These prejudices are most apparent when analyzing the location of hazardous waste facilities throughout the country. Several recent environmental justice studies have debated whether the location of these facilities has a direct correlation to the percentage of minorities in the surrounding areas.

This article critiques some of the methodology of these recent studies, most notably that of Professor Vicki Been, to determine the rationale governing the placement of hazardous waste facilities. Furthermore, this article suggests that researchers should expand …