The National Journal, MARCH 4, 2000, Vol. 32, No. 10, p. 712.

Seeking Justice in Roads and Runways

BY: Mark Murray

Residents of Boston know how to put up a good fight. The city, after all, was home to the Boston Massacre in 1770 and the Boston Tea Party in 1773, two acts of defiance that helped spark an armed revolution. The city was also the scene of violent clashes over school desegregation in the 1970s. The latest battle in Beantown concerns a controversial proposal to build a new runway at Logan International Airport. Republican Gov. Paul Cellucci and city businesses have been pushing for this airport expansion, while Boston Mayor Thomas M. Menino and community activists have been vociferously opposing it.

     Yet, instead of brawling in the streets or dumping tea into Boston Harbor, the opponents of expansion have relied on a different tactic: invoking the Clinton Administration-endorsed principle of "environmental justice."

     The environmental-justice movement grew out of the realization that residents of minority and low-income neighborhoods often bear a disproportionate share of pollution and other environmental hazards. In 1994, President Clinton made the concept more than just a nebulous term: He signed an executive order directing all federal agencies to consider environmental justice in their missions, programs, and policies. And these agencies, including the Department of Transportation, eventually developed their own guidelines and strategies to comply with the order.

     Environmentalists and other community activists have invoked the principle of environmental justice by citing Title VI of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which prohibits discrimination on the basis of race, color, or national origin in any program or activity that receives federal funding. Title VI allows individuals to file administrative complaints with federal departments and agencies. Since 1994, the Environmental Protection Agency has received 90 complaints under Title VI, and has accepted 18 of them for investigation. The agency is considering 29 other cases.

     The issue of environmental justice has focused mostly on such matters as the placement of toxic-waste plants in minority and low-income areas. (See NJ, 7/11/98, p. 1608.) But recently, community and environmental activists have begun to apply the concept to the transportation sector. In Boston, for instance, runway opponents argue that expanding Logan Airport, which is located in the working-class neighborhood of East Boston, would disproportionately increase the aircraft noise around nearby economically disadvantaged communities. "This puts more traffic pollution over people who already experience that now," said community activist Mary Ellen Welch. "We say there has to be a cap on growth." Welch and other activists have called for expanding Hanscom Field, a regional airport that is located in a wealthier suburb, as an alternative to the Logan expansion.

     Last April, the EPA came out against the new runway, and it specifically stressed its concerns about environmental justice. Recently, the Federal Aviation Administration-which has the final say about the runway's fate-called for an independent review panel to look at the expansion issue more closely. The FAA's action has delayed construction of the runway until at least 2002.

     But Boston hasn't been the only battleground for environmental justice in transportation planning. Consider:

     * In Los Angeles, the NAACP Legal Defense & Educational Fund filed a lawsuit in 1994 charging that the Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority disproportionately spent more money on its rail system (which largely benefits wealthier residents) than it did on the city's bus service (which is used more by minorities). The group filed the suit under Title VI, and it won a large settlement in 1996.

     * Also in Los Angeles, activists have cited environmental-justice concerns in opposing the expansion of Los Angeles International Airport. These detractors say that a new airport should be built at the former El Toro Marine base in upscale Orange County.

     * In Milwaukee, civil rights and environmental groups filed an administrative complaint in 1998-under Title VI-because Republican Gov. Tommy Thompson and the Wisconsin Department of Transportation refused to allocate federal money to build a light-rail system in the city. The groups argue that light rail would link inner-city minorities with jobs in the suburbs. The matter is now in mediation.

     * In Atlanta in 1998, Environmental Defense (formerly the Environmental Defense Fund) and other community groups opposed $700 million in highway projects, in part because these roads would disproportionately harm the air quality of low-income and minority neighborhoods. They also charged that much of the road construction would occur in the white suburbs and would have a negative impact on minorities' access to jobs.

     "We simply haven't been paying as much attention to equity in benefits and burdens," said Michael Replogle, the Environmental Defense's transportation director. "It is a question of fairness."

     But the issue of environmental justice has made Republicans, road builders, and business interests cringe. "It's just another tool that the extreme environmental groups are using to stop highway projects," said Matthew J. Jeanneret, the communications director of the American Road & Transportation Builders Association. He notes that environmentalists have also used the Clean Air Act to block road expansions. Yet environmental justice, according to Richard Lazarus, a law professor at Georgetown University, has much more political force than the Clean Air Act because it gives activists "a significant rhetorical advantage." After all, chemical companies and transportation planners certainly don't want to be called environmental racists.

     Replogle says that environmental justice is much more than a tool or a rhetorical device. "We're not talking about using environmental justice to stop transportation spending. We are looking at how transportation spending affects our communities."

     Critics of the environmental-justice movement have a laundry list of other complaints. An aide at the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, which is chaired by Rep. Bud Shuster, R-Pa., contends that the concept of environmental justice is too vague. In Atlanta, for example, community groups have cited both the air pollution from nearby highways and the preponderance of transportation resources in the white suburbs as cases of environmental injustice. "It is one of those concepts that can mean anything to anyone," the aide said.

     Groups that oppose extending the environmental-justice principle argue that the noise and air pollution arising from transportation projects affect more than just minority and low- income communities. Indeed, even the anti-runway activists note that expanding Logan Airport will also affect ritzy areas on Boston's waterfront and at Beacon Hill. "It hits everyone, really," Welch admits.

     Critics also point out that in blocking these road and airport projects, community activists are standing in the way of the jobs and economic benefits that these projects would bring to the neighborhoods where they're built. Furthermore, they argue that transportation planners aren't racists or intentionally cruel toward the poor; rather, they say, transportation projects tend to be built in low-income and minority areas because the real estate there is cheaper.

     Moreover, Jeanneret contends, no federal court has recognized environmental justice as a legitimate rationale for halting or changing transportation projects. Stuart J. Lieberman, an environmental lawyer in Princeton, N.J., agrees. He points to the 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals, which ruled in 1997 that the EPA's environmental-justice regulations gave rise to a private right of action for aggrieved community members. This ruling, however, concerned the location of a solid-waste facility in an African-American area. Still, Lieberman says that it's just a matter of time before the courts begin to take up transportation- related complaints. "The environmental-justice movement is still at the beginning of its cycle," he says.

     Even the critics of environmental justice concede that wealthier neighborhoods, unlike their poorer counterparts, have always had more power to block undesirable transportation projects. And if nothing else, addressing the issue of environmental justice gives some of that power to minority and low-income neighborhoods because it includes them in the transportation-planning process.

     Just listen to Ruthie Walls. She says that her predominantly African-American neighborhood in South Atlanta is caught in a tangled web of state roads and interstate highways. Trucks zoom in and out of her community, she complains, and the exhaust from this traffic has caused many children in the neighborhood to develop asthma. But Walls has been on the march: She has taught the area's youth about pollution and its effects, and she has organized community protests demanding environmental justice-all in an effort to give her community a louder voice in transportation decisions.

     "I don't think it's a black or white issue. I think it's more (about) information," she said. "We're not getting the information to have a say."

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