LOCAL ELECTIONS / L.A. MAYOR : Coalition Stresses Plight of Inner City : Politics: Environmental Justice Forum urges candidates to take into account ethnic and low-income citizens in decisions on future development.

As the mayoral race in Los Angeles shifts into high gear, a coalition of leaders from the city’s ethnic communities and environmental organizations on Monday called on the 24 candidates to address the “environmental and economic injustices” at the city’s urban heart.

Pointing to a proposal for a waste-to-energy incinerator in South-Central Los Angeles, a proposed incinerator and prison in East Los Angeles and public transit they say ignores the needy, the group demanded that development decisions take into account ethnic and low-income citizens.

“These concerns have never been incorporated into urban planning,” Tom Soto, president of the Coalition for Clean Air, said during a City Hall press conference fittingly punctuated by traffic noise and swirling bus exhaust.

As the first anniversary of the Los Angeles riot nears and the city waits tensely for the verdict in the second Rodney G. King beating trial, public officials must consider issues of race and income as they fight to control pollution and rebuild the city, the group said.

To that end, the recently formed Environmental Justice Forum mailed a list of 14 demands to candidates for mayor, City Council and city attorney and asked them to join the program of environmental justice. None have yet responded. Candidates contacted for comment Monday did not return telephone calls.

The forum is composed of leaders from Heal the Bay, the Natural Resources Defense Council, the Coalition for Clean Air, Mothers of East Lost Angeles and Concerned Citizens of South Central Los Angeles, among other organizations.

The environmental justice movement has gained strength nationally in the past decade, as the civil rights and environmental movements acknowledged that those who suffer the greatest harm from pollution are most often poor, disenfranchised and members of a racial minority.

A 1987 study called “Toxic Wastes and Race in the United States” found, for example, that communities with the most commercial hazardous waste facilities also had the highest percentages of minority residents.

Even at an event that stressed the relatively young marriage of ecology and civil rights, a few divisive barbs were thrown Monday, underscoring in particular the environmental movement’s traditional base in the middle class.

“Candidates (in the mayor’s race) are only speaking about environmental issues when they’re in the Westside and Encino,” said Mary Nichols, senior attorney for the Natural Resources Defense Council, “not in South-Central at the AME Church.”

Nichols said candidates have compartmentalized their campaign speeches, talking ecology to the middle class and civil rights to the poor. But with the growing push toward environmental justice in Los Angeles, she said, “we hope they just won’t be able to separate them again.”