Toxic Dumps Becoming Minorities' Neighbors

Racial minorities are increasingly more likely than whites tolive near hazardous waste sites in America, a new study says.

In Illinois, neighborhoods with hazardous waste sites have, onaverage, a42.5 percent minority population, according to the study,which defines neighborhoods by ZIP code. U.S. census figures showthat Illinois has about a 25.7 percent minority population, the studysaid.

"If you are a person of color, you are much more likely to livenear one of these sites than a white person," said Benjamin A.Goldman, co-author of the report to be officially released today.

Co-sponsored by the United Church of Christ, the NAACP and theWashington D.C.-based think tank Center For Policy Alternatives, thestudy said that a member of a racial minority has a 47 percent betterchance than a white person to be living near hazardous wastetreatment, storage and disposal facilities.

"I could have told them that without any studies," saidSoutheast Side environmental activist Hazel Johnson of the People fora Community Recovery. "We are under attack."

In 1980, 25 percent of the people living in a neighborhood thatcontained one or more hazardous sites were non-white. By 1993, thatfigure had risen to 31 percent, the report said. Nationally, theaverage neighborhood is 14.4 percent minority, Goldman said.

In Illinois, six of the 30 hazardous waste sites are inneighborhoods made up mostly of minority residents. Fourteen sitesare in neighborhoods where the minority makeup is above the nationalaverage.

Within the state, hazardous waste communities range from 1.47percent minorities in downstate Aledo to 95.15 percent in Chicago'sWest Side ZIP code neighborhood of 60651.

Figures from earlier years for Illinois were not available togauge increases or decreases.

Goldman said the study cannot pinpoint the exact reason for whatthe group calls "the disconcerting connection between the location oftoxic waste sites and communities of color."

Goldman said the situation is getting worse as more peoplebecome aware of the controversies surrounding waste facilities.Fewer people want them in their communities, which, in some cases,force plants to cluster in areas already hosting a facility.

Looking at ZIP code plots, the study found that aboutone-fourth of the 530 commercial hazardous waste treatment, storageand disposal facilities in the United States were in neighborhoodswhere people of color were the majority. Some 310 neighborhoods, orclose to 60 percent, were above national average in terms of minoritypopulation.

WMX Technologies Inc. of Oak Brook, a major waste facilityoperator in the United States, disputed the idea that the communitiesare disproportionately minority.

A University of Massachusetts study funded by WMX used smallercensus tracts to find that neighborhoods closest to the facilities"are in fact working-class, industrial white neighborhoods," saidCharles McDermott, director of government affairs for WMX.

"We do agree that environmental justice is a serious issue and a problem in certain areas," McDermott said. "There are communitiesof color disproportionately impacted by pollution. But when onelooks at demographic data based on census tracts, (neighborhoodsnearest facilities) are not disproportionately minority."