COLUMN LEFT/ BENJAMIN F. CHAVIS JR. : A Threat to One Is Threat to All : The poor suffer disproportionately from environmental harm.

‘Three out of five African-Americans and Latinos live in communities with one or more hazardous waste sites.’

“Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.” -- Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

Letter from Birmingham Jail, April 16, 1963

Dr. King’s words reveal the moral truth that we all have a mutual interest in promoting justice. That we share our interdependent planet ultimately means a threat to anyone’s environment is a threat to everyone’s environment.

The convergence of basic survival with the struggle for equality is reflected in the increasing national demand for environmental justice. It is a movement that confronts the immorality of upper- and middle-class people consuming the most energy and producing the most waste, while it is the health of the poor that is most affected by the resulting pollution.

It is fueled by research such as the National Law Journal’s findings that the federal government’s Superfund program takes 20% longer to place minority communities on the priority list for Superfund cleanup, and that the EPA consistently imposes considerably weaker penalties on those who pollute minority neighborhoods. Our 1987 study, “Toxic Waste and Race in the United States” also identified race to be the most significant factor in determining the siting of hazardous waste facilities. Three out of five African-Americans and Latinos live in communities with one or more hazardous waste sites.

Environmental racism is graphically represented in both urban and rural communities--places like the 80-mile strip along the Mississippi River between New Orleans and Baton Rouge dubbed “Cancer Alley.” An area predominantly inhabited by poor descendants of slaves, it is also home to 136 industries, petrochemical companies and waste dumps that annually release more than 900 million pounds of toxins into the air, ground and water. The inhabitants of that corridor suffer some of the highest cancer rates in the nation.

Escaping poverty does not provide a shield from environmental degradation for African-Americans. Take the all-black, middle-class Carver Terrace development in Texarkana, Tex. The development was built on land once a chemical dump site for arsenic and other life-threatening contaminants. The community was placed on the Environmental Protection Agency’s national priorities list for cleanup, and Congress ordered relocation of the residents who are still fighting the government to gain fair value for their properties, which were appraised by the government below replacement cost at $30,000 to $40,000. Meanwhile, the blue-collar white Mountain View Mobile Homes community in Globe, Ariz., facing similar health risks, received $80,000 to move from the asbestos-contaminated soil underneath their homes.

East Liverpool, Ohio, provides yet another example. The nation’s largest toxic-waste incinerator is slated to open near an African-American community. Vice President-elect Al Gore recently announced opposition, calling for operations to not proceed until a study is conducted to ensure that the incinerator will cause no adverse impact on public health.

Gore sent an important signal. The best way for the new Administration to meet the challenge of supporting environmental justice is by emphasizing the critical connection between a healthy economy and a clean environment. This job does not fall to either the Administration or the environmental justice movement alone. Civil rights, religious, labor and traditional environmental groups have a vested stake in crafting an effective strategy.

Our nation must be proactive in setting the long-term goals of a sustainable society that is economically viable and environmentally safe. Achieving that goal can offer hope and justice to the people and communities that have been marginalized under 12 years of trickle-down economics.

It is no accident that the civil-rights movement is redefining conventional definitions of the environment at the same time that many others are reformulating concepts of national economic priorities.

Ultimately, it will take the same type of creativity and passion that three decades ago enabled the civil-rights movement and the Johnson Administration to desegregate public accommodations, guarantee voting rights and forge a broad-based consensus that prodded America to live up to its Constitution. So much of that work is still unfinished. The civil-rights movement and the environmental movement can no longer afford to remain separate.

This new reality presents the new Administration with a precious window of opportunity. We can only open it together.