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Enviornmental Justice Timeline
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1964 Civil Rights Act
The Civil Rights Act of 1964 is a landmark civil rights and labor law in the United States that outlaws discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, national origin, and later sexual orientation and gender identity. -
Environmental Protection Agency Created
The Environmental Protection Agency is an independent executive agency of the United States federal government tasked with environmental protection matters. President Richard Nixon proposed the establishment of EPA on July 9, 1970; it began operation on December 2, 1970, after Nixon signed an executive order. -
Federal Recognition of Environmental Justice
The National Environmental Policy Act created the President’s Council on Environmental Quality. This council wrote a report that expanded the definition of environmental quality and acknowledged the concept of environmental justice. The report also assessed the U.S. environment, addressing trends of the time. The council documented many facts and recommendations in this report so that Congress would understand the state of the United States environment and be better able to protect it. -
Hawkins v. Town of Shaw Court Case
Hawkins v. Town of Shaw, 437 F.2d 1286 was a class-action lawsuit over equal distribution of municipal services and infrastructure which reached the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit. -
1977 | Urban Environment Conference Promotes Discussion
This group included the United Auto Workers, United Steel Workers, Oil, Chemical, and Atomic Workers, as well as the Sierra Club and the National Welfare Rights Organization. In 1977, the Urban Environment Conference used a $66,000 grant to fund 11 environmental justice conferences across the United States meant to foster coalitions between environmentalists, occupational health organizers, and minorities. -
Warren County Protest
In 1978, the Ward Transformers Company dumped 31,000 gallons of chemicals called PCBs on the side of roadways in North Carolina counties. The state government planned to construct a landfill to contain the waste in a small town in Warren County that was 75% African-American. Worries about the possibility of contaminated groundwater sparked multiple lawsuits hearings to prevent the construction of the landfill. -
Indigenous Environmental Network Forms
Grassroots indigenous people formed the Indigenous Environmental Network (IEN) in the 1990s to address environmental and economic justice issues. The IEN strengthens indigenous communities and tribal governments by empowering them to create strategies for the protection of their sacred sites, natural resources, health, and human rights. -
First National People of Color Summit
At the First National People of Color Leadership Summit, attendees debated and created the modern definition of environmental justice. The previous understanding of environmental justice focused on the disproportionate effects of toxic waste facility placement and pollution. -
First State Environmental Equity Law
In April of 1993, Irma Hunter Brown, an African-American Arkansas representative who lived near a toxic waste facility, convinced the Arkansas legislature to enact the first state law on environmental equity and justice. This environmental equity act seeks to prevent the concentration of solid waste disposal facilities in lower income and minority communities by prohibiting the construction of waste management facilities within twelve miles of existing waste management facilities. -
Environmental Justice Executive Order
In 1994, President Bill Clinton issued Executive Order 1298, which requires federal agencies to identify potential health threats that stem from environmental effects. It requires these agencies to take appropriate actions to address environmental injustices in marginalized communities. The order also ensures transparency and nondiscrimination in actions affecting health and the environment. -
Hurricane Katrina
When category 5 Hurricane Katrina devastated the southern coast of the United States, it caused the death of 1,836 people and $125 billion dollars in damage. The death and destruction tolls were particularly high in New Orleans, LA, where a significant amount of storm surge levees breached and flooded 80% of the city. New Orleans is home to many marginalized and low-SES populations that were disproportionally affected by the damage and destruction of the hurricane. -
Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill
In 2010, British Petroleum’s (BP) Deepwater Horizon oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico discharged 134 million gallons of oil into the water and 7.7 billion scf of natural gas into the deep sea. By June 2010, the explosion had caused an oil slick ten times the size of Rhode Island; the cumulative oil slick throughout the spill was roughly three times that.This oil spill was the equivalent of the Exxon Valdez oil spill occurring at the same site every week for three months. -
Bayou Bridge Pipeline Protests
The Bayou Bridge Pipeline, when completed, will be able to transport 480,000 barrels of crude oil per day from Lake Charles, Louisiana to St. James. Protestors worked to stop the pipeline in 2016 when construction was slated to begin because they were concerned about the environmental effects and public safety impacts of the pipeline. Indeed, the environmental justice stakes of the BBP are very high in this case because the pipeline poses oil spill risks and may impain basinwaterquality. -
Atlantic Coast Pipeline Protests
Many protestors have worked to prevent the proposed Atlantic Coast Pipeline, a 42-inch and 600-mile natural gas pipeline that would bring up to 1.5 billion cubic feet per day of fracked natural gas from West Virginia to eastern North Carolina. Many environmental groups have even filed a formal environmental justice complaint with the North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) claiming that the DEQ failed to consider the disproportionate impacts of the pipeline -
Hurricane Florence
Hurricane Florence’s devastation on many fronts exposes how natural disasters exaggerate existing injustice. The hurricane caused schools to close and both houses and highways to flood, but most importantly, it brought to public attention the dirty secrets of the coal and hog farm industries: coal ash dumping and waste lagoons. Companies like Duke Energy and Smithfield Foods rake in billions of dollars in profits while low-SES communities are exposed to disproportionate environmental healt -
Cancer Alley
In 1987, the corridor between New Orleans and Baton Rouge gained the nickname “Cancer Alley” or the “Chemical Corridor” because of the health consequences caused by hundreds of petrochemical facilities concentrated in a small area along the Mississippi River. Louisiana annually produces 16,000 pounds of hazardous waste per capita, 12.5% of the hazardous waste produced nationally though the state only produces 6.5% of U.S. chemicals.