Discriminatory Outcomes of Industrial Air Permitting in Louisiana, United States
Overwhelming evidence indicates that communities of Color in the United States are disproportionately harmed by pollution. Yet, state environmental regulators, who permit industrial polluters under the U.S. Clean Air Act, do not universally recognize these disparities. In Louisiana, environmental regulators have denied the existence of pollution disparities, while citing infrastructure access as the basis for concentrating heavy industry in certain communities. We assessed whether industrial emissions disproportionately affect communities of Color in Louisiana and whether potential disparities might be driven by infrastructure or labor supply, as suggested by the Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality. We used a two part approach that accounted for spatial autocorrelation and collinearities among our datasets. First, we evaluated whether census tracts with industrial resources have disproportionately higher proportions of residents of Color. These resources included manufacturing labor supply and proximity to pipelines, railways, ports, and the lower Mississippi River. Second, we evaluated the relationship between race and reported industrial emissions of criteria pollutants using a linear regression model. Our model accounted for the spatial clustering of industrial facilities and included only census tracts with at least one industrial facility (i.e. “industrialized communities”). Overall, tracts with industrial resources had proportions of residents of Color that were comparable to the state average (absolute difference, <7%). Depending on the pollutant, industrialized communities of Color had 7-fold to 21-fold higher emissions than industrialized White communities. Over half (378 of 671) of Louisiana’s industrial facilities were clustered along a 184 mile, winding stretch of the lower Mississippi River, locally known as “Cancer Alley.” Collectively, our findings reveal a stark racial disparity in industrial emissions that is not attributable to industrial infrastructure or labor supply. Immediate action is needed to address this discriminatory effect of industrial permitting in Louisiana, and future research should focus on the role of state permitting in environmental injustice more broadly
Year of publication: |
2022
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Authors: | Terrell, Kimberly ; St. Julien, Gianna |
Publisher: |
[S.l.] : SSRN |
Subject: | USA | United States | Emissionshandel | Emissions trading | Luftverschmutzung | Air pollution |
Saved in:
freely available
Extent: | 1 Online-Ressource (20 p) |
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Type of publication: | Book / Working Paper |
Language: | English |
Notes: | Nach Informationen von SSRN wurde die ursprüngliche Fassung des Dokuments November 14, 2022 erstellt |
Other identifiers: | 10.2139/ssrn.4276748 [DOI] |
Classification: | K32 - Environmental, Health, and Safety Law |
Source: | ECONIS - Online Catalogue of the ZBW |
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10014240785
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