Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
Environmental Justice: An Alternative Environmental Discourse
In the early 1990s, environmental justice emerged as a potent politi-
cal movement in East Austin. Echoing the Sanitary Movement of the
nineteenth century, environmental justice advocates recognize the tight
coupling of environmental conditions and human health.
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In East Austin,
a neighborhood group called PODER (People in Defense of Earth and
her Resources) formed to fi ght the expansion of a gasoline tank farm
and its potential health impacts on neighboring residents. PODER and
other neighborhood organizations were joined by environmental groups
including Clean Water Action, Earth First!, and the Sierra Club and suc-
cessfully ousted several multinational petroleum companies from the tank
farm property.
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The Tank Farm Controversy was a signifi cant victory
for East Austin residents, due in part to a “red-green coalition” between
environmental justice activists in East Austin and green romantics in
Central Austin. The environmental justice activists returned the favor
by supporting the passage of the SOS Ordinance in 1992, and the inte-
grated coalition was seen as a “new rapprochement between minority
and environmental groups.”
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The groups shared a common cause in the
fi ght against the urban growth machine of developers and the municipal
government.
However, the red-green coalition would last for only a few years; the
introduction of the SGI and its promise to accelerate the gentrifi cation
processes already occurring in East Austin was an important element in
the unraveling of the understanding of urban growth as both an economic
and equity issue.
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East Austin activists recognized the SGI as a way to dif-
fuse the tensions between environmental and development interests in the
Hill Country at the expense of low-income minority residents in the inner
city. A PODER report does not mince words in characterizing the SGI as
a municipal policy of disguised gentrifi cation that allows environmental
protection goals to propagate “internal colonialism” and a continuation
of the urban renewal programs that affected East Austin in the 1960s.
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A local newspaper columnist summarizes the unintended consequence of
the SGI spatial fi x: “Problem is that folks in the Desired Zones were never
asked if they desired to be Desired. Smart Growth can be seen as a way
to dump growth into neighborhoods that don't want it or can't handle it
or are too disadvantaged or disempowered to do anything about it.”
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An
environmental activist echoes this perspective, arguing that “the mistake
in the 1990s is that we ignored social problems, we didn't relate the social
problems of East Austin with environmental issues.”
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