North Carolina Environmental Justice Cases...

JD.\1 NORTII CAROLINA

by EarthAfrica News Service

Communities Statewide Come Together for Environmental Justice North Carolina's second annual community-based environmental justice summit took place November 12 - 13, 1999, bringing together more than 200 people from diverse backgrounds to the historic Franklinton Center at Bricks. The center is a conference, retreat and educational facility sponsored by the United Church of Christ, and used by progressive community-based groups throughout the country.

The forum was designed to bring folk together from communities confronting environmental and social justice problems throughout North Carolina.

"Our goal was to strengthe.n the resources and plans used by communities and government agencies," said lead organizer, and AAEJAN coordinating council member, Gary R. Grant. Grant explained that the summit brought togethet· community organizers, and workers vat;ous African American communities statewide, with traditional environmentalists and conservationists, university researchers and scientists, and county, state and federal government officials.

The mixing from these varied backgrounds, Grant explained, is to try to ensure that common interests are recognized, and "in tum, will help protect and improve the quality of life for all North Carolina residents. By working together, we can start building a better tomorrow today."

The summit was coordinated by the Concerned Citizens of Tillery, The North Justice Network, The Center for \Nomen's · Economic Alternatives, The Land Loss Prevention Project, North Carolina Cenu-al University's Environmental Science Program, North Carolina Fair Share, North Carolina Student Rural Health Coalition, and Enviro 1st.

The program took place not long after the devastating statewide flooding that followed Hurricanes Dennis and Floyd (see stories below), though the summit was conceived of months in advance. Thus, the forum, which was structured to help edu-

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From statewide, residents came to compare horror stories of encroachment and disrespect.

cate and inform participants about the long history and disproportionate practices of environmental injustice in North Carolina, also addressed immediate concerns summjt participants were facing.

Activities were diverse, and: • Provided a forum in which communities statewide developed strategies to address similar environmental concerns.

• Enabled participants to push for the creation of a state environmental justice office or commission to deal with state environmental justice issues.

• Allowed for development of recommendations and a resolution to present to Governor James Hunt concerning statewide environmental justice issues.

• Enabled development of strategies relevant environmental justice issues related to the 1999 disasters do not become long-term concerns.

The summit was excellent in the exch:mge of information, including workshops designed to help identify specific objectives for participants to take back to their home communities, or to their local or state government agency. There were presentations by community people living on the frontline, along with those of university researchers, academicians and scientists studying the issues, as well as from county and state government officials.

Distributed were academic papers on topics ranging from the "Relationships Between Race/Ethnicity and Income and the Proximity of Large Manufacntring Facilities in North Carolina," "Environmental

Injustice in North Carolina's Hog Industry," and "Do Disasters Discriminate?: An Exploratory Analysis of Disproportionate Impact of Hurricanes on Black Communities in Eastern North Carolina."

Statements by community member after community member emphasized the similarity of the problems each is confronting. From landfills used to store radioactive and other hazardous wastes, to water contaminated by a variety of manufacturing processes, to hog farms and hog lagoons, residents were crying out, seeking changes, and organizing for it to happen.

Sylvia Allen from the community of Hennessy in Vance County described how her area of around 150 homes is sun·ounded by a waste treaunent plant, two landfills one controlled by the county and one by the city- and a waste transfer station, all in a 2 112 miles radius. She said she had met with county commissioners, who said they were trying to address the community's problems, such as contaminated water. Still, she said government officials and those from the facilities, don't like to hear from residents, and she said "they were usirig intimidation tactics to try to stop us from speaking out about this 30 year old problem."

But the community, Allen s.o'l.id, has become more persistent in recent years, particularly after finding there's petroleum and e<:oli in their water; no one has det.ennined where it has come from. And while resident's initially believed each household was individually affected, they have since found that it's a common problem. Now they are working in unity. She

said she came to the summit because "we need some serious help" from outside of their area.

As with Sister Allen's story, all of the others reflect the importance of the summit, and the need to accomplish specific shared objectives.

Indeed, through collective actions such as participation in North Carolina's "Hog Roundtable" and the "Landfill Roundtable," which b1ings together communities with scientists, policymakers, and environmentalists to discuss and determine policy approaches, residentsjointly believe- are hoping, are praying, are fighting- their voices will be heard.

Says Grant: "What the environmental justice network is trying to do is create roundtables around all of these issues. That will make available to every community the expertise of the environmental groups, with the expertise of the community groups that have been through this." He explains, that it is only through establishing these type of coalitions that real change will occur. Says Grant: "We not only need a 'Hog Roundtable' and Landfill Roundtable, but also a Toxic Roundtable, and a Lead Roundtable, and others. Because you've got communities all over the state fighting in their own little cor-

that occurred when Hurricane's Dennis and Floyd hit in September 1999.

Particularly hard-hin-vas the state's eastern region, which is 35 to 40 percent African American, and the most impoverished region in the state. Many of the contaminated communities are historic areas dating back to the 1860s and the "end" of African enslavement.

• As late as three montlts after the storms, some 30 percent of the well-water in the eastern region remained contaminated and undrinkable. vVhat is most tragic is that these communities had been warning of potential mass contamination for at least a decade.

Over this period, they have complained of the air, water and land pollution that has occurred from the large amounts of waste produced by the millions of chickens, turkeys and hogs raised and house<;! at the neighboring farms, or processed at huge hog slaughter house production facilities.

Their complaints and warnings were ignored. Instead, over a 10-year-period from the late-1980s to the late-1990s, the state became the nation's largest industrial poultry producer and second largest hog producer. Now, after Dennis and Floyd, and a state policy of destructive rezoning and a denial of local land use decisions and rights, the land and history of many of these communities have been almost totally destroyed.

Not long after the storm, the State Department of Environment and Natural Resources established an "emergency waste management strategy": two-thirds of the state had been completely paralyzed, and because of the large number of chicken, turkey Government decisions allowing huge, thousands of head and hog agri-industry farms, hog farms led to a contamination emergency in Black areas. there were concerns about keeping fecal matter out of the water supply.

After Floyd, President Clinton immediately ners, it's going to take us all willing to come declared the state a disaster area. North to the table, advocating for ourselves."

Carolina Governor James B. Hunt had declared most of Eastern North Carolina a .. .And The Floodwaters disaster area even before Hunicane Floyd Tumed toW aste: hit, and called out some 3,000 national guardsmen to assist in maintaining order.

Eastem North Carolina Blacks Statewide 43,000 homes were damaged, Suffer Severe Pig "Waste" 6,875 destroyed and 16,300 uninhabitable.

Contamination After Storms Less than 1 percent of the residents canied flood insurance and less than 50 percent carThe state of North Carolina has experilied home owners insurance (again, this was enced historic levels of fecal contaminaespecially true of the severely poveJ·ty-suicktion following the devastating flooding

en primarily Black eastern counties). Three hundred roads were impassable, including interstate highways 40 and 95; some L5 million people were without electricity.

Agriculture, the state's primary industry, suffered an estimated $1 billion in losses.

But nowhere in the state did they suffer as they did in Eastern North Carolina. Some 73 municipalities and 66 eastern and coastal North Carolina counties were impacted. This includes the African American coastal county communities of Curituck, Dare, Hyde, Cataret, Pender, Onslow, Brunswick and New Hanover, and the inland counties of Duplin, Sampson, Edgecombe, Greene and Pitt.

Some of these are the areas where the pollution is the result of the huge, sprawling, odor-generating hog and poultry open waste storage pits euphemistically called "lagoons."

Similarly, the oversized slaughterhouses where the hogs and chickens are prepared for market (in facilities operated and controlled by three of the most profitable meat distributors in the nation - Smithfields, Carrolls, and IBP) result in severe pollution.

Throughout the region, all of these facilities were decimated by floodwaters. The hog fmms were completely flooded, and more than 100,000 hogs were killed (a million chickens and turkeys were also destroyed). You might remember those numerous overhead photographs and TV reports showing masses of hogs piled high.

This was after rivers crested in some eastern counties as high as the Tar river at 43 feet in Edgecombe County, the Neuse river at 30 feet in Green County, the Cape Fear river at 54 feet in Bladen County and the NE Cape Fear river at 24 feet in Duplin county.

Each of these waterways, which all pass by significant African American populations, were already among the state's most heavily polluted rivers. They have since tested as having large quantities of the phosphorus and niu·ogen produced from swine manure. From each came a brown heavy sludge into the Pamlico Sound, the nation's second largest estuary, and on into the Atlantic. The impact was devastating. "What we're seeing is an ecological event on the catastrophic scale," Hans Paerl, a marine scientist at the university of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, was quoted as saying in a Washington Post wire service piece two weeks after the storm.

"We have a great big mess around here," Donald Reuter, a state Environment and Natural Resources official told the New York

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