Court Rules EPA Unlawfully Delayed Environmental Racism Investigations for Decades

Darlene McClendon, 62, at her home in Flint, Michigan, on October 11, 2016. (Photo: Brittany Greeson / The Washington Post via Getty Images)Darlene McClendon, 62, at her home in Flint, Michigan, on October 11, 2016. (Photo: Brittany Greeson / The Washington Post via Getty Images)

A federal court ruled this week that the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) violated the Civil Rights Act by delaying investigations into environmental discrimination complaints for years, even decades. For plaintiff Phil Schmitter, a priest and social justice activist from Flint, Michigan, the ruling is a bittersweet victory that was a long time coming.

Schmitter’s story begins in the early 1990s, long before drinking water contaminated with dangerous levels of lead would turn Flint into an international symbol of environmental racism. At the time, Schmitter and other advocates living in a predominantly Black neighborhood on the outskirts of Flint were fighting a proposal to build a scrap wood incinerator nearby.

In October of 1994, Michigan state regulators arrived with armed guards at a school in Schmitter’s neighborhood to hold a hearing on a pollution permit for the incinerator. Schmitter and other attendees were shocked: Gun-wielding guards were nowhere to be seen at previous hearings held hours away in Lansing. Did they bring the uniformed guards to Flint because residents opposing the incinerator were Black?

“That’s very intimidating [to say], ‘Hey, come tell us what your concerns are,’ and there are these armed people here,” Schmitter told Truthout in an interview.

Reams of data show that sources of industrial pollution are more likely to be located near low-income communities and neighborhoods of color.

EPA investigators would later note that the hearing in Flint was abruptly adjourned before several community members had a chance to testify. In fact, hearing voices from the Black community in Flint did not appear to be a priority for the state environmental commission. One of the previous hearings in Lansing dragged on late into the night as regulators considered permits for other projects first, and advocates from the…

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