Flint Michigan has been in the news recently as it was uncovered that lead contaminated water had flown into poor minority communities. However, by shedding light on this community in Michigan has also lead to investigations of other like communities across the US and researches have unearthed some sad results.
A study conducted by Mary Collins of New York College looked at what she termed "hyper-polluters" or businesses that pollute a significant amount. Given these businesses she cross referenced them with their location in 2000 to see whether or not there was a correlation with their location and the communities they were established around. She found that these "hyper-polluters" were more likely to be located near a poor minority community.
Recently, industrial emissions examined 16,000 organizations from a variety of sectors not including power plants and found that 90% of the toxic pollution emitted was done by only 5% of the businesses in their test area. Consequently again, these 5% were found to be located in poor minority communities.
Through this research they hope it will help the EPA to targeted and voluntary programs for these "hyper-polluters" in order to lessen their emissions and better the environments of these poor minority communities.
Do you think the EPA will be able to help these firms and communities to better each other's environments or do you think it will have to be through legislative action or some more aggressive form of change to help these communities?
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/energy-environment/wp/2016/01/27/its-not-just-flint-poor-communities-across-the-country-live-with-extreme-polluters/?hpid=hp_hp-more-top-stories_ee-pollution-1105am%3Ahomepage%2Fstory
Though it is unfortunate that Flint is experiencing what it is, I hope this will spur communities and EPA to take "hyper-polluters" very seriously. Businesses must be held accountable for the negative externalities they produce.
ReplyDeleteI think that it will require legislative action. These companies know that they are heavily polluting these poor communities. Therefore, they have already shown the kind of morally wrong company they are. With this in mind, I would be shocked if they respond to criticism from the EPA. I think that the only way they will take action is if they are forced to by legislation.
ReplyDeleteI agree with the above comments. I took a public finance class this past semester with Prof Gitter and we talked a lot about negative externalities and there was a lot of focus on pollution. One of the big problems that surrounding this is that it is difficult for people to assess is where the pollution is actually coming from and what percentage it is. On top of this it is incredibly costly to do so and often times does not yield very good results because changes and consequences are not easily enforced. This leads me to believe that the only way changes will be made is through legislation being written forcing firms to be accountable for their pollution.
ReplyDeleteFirst I want to start off by saying that I do agree that these negative externalities need to be taken care of. One thing I think is important to keep in mind though is that these companies aren't purposely polluting "poor" areas. Correlation doesn't necessarily imply causation, I don't think these companies are targeting poorer areas to pollute in. At least partially, I think it is more a matter that the property costs near these businesses have been driven down because of the pollution in that area, and as a result are areas in which those with lesser incomes are able to live because of the lesser property values. Regardless of where these businesses are polluting, whether it be poor or rich, these externalities do need to be controlled to a greater extent.
ReplyDeleteI agree with the comments above that affirmative action needs to be taken to address these issues and reforms are required to safeguard against these problems from happening in other communities.
ReplyDeleteIt is sad that the news about Flint wasn't revealed earlier, in a psych class my teacher was talking about how this incident happened. One of the main reasons this happened for so long was because Flint is a very poor community. They have no power, and couldn't reach out to the right people to fix it. If this ever happened in a "rich" community, it would be fixed within a matter of days. With that being said, I do agree that this will help the EPA. I do also agree with Christopher, that correlation does not imply causation, but I think any information on this topic helps.
ReplyDeleteIt's interesting to look at the statistic that 90% of the pollution is being caused by 5% of the businesses in their testing area. The EPA has obviously already enacted regulations otherwise, one would assume that more businesses would be contributing to the pollution (since it is a higher cost for companies to reduce their pollution output). If these "hyper-polluters" are still polluting, even with the current regulations set forth by the EPA, it is likely going to take a more aggressive form of change to get them to reduce their pollution.
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