Seattle has lengthy been thought of one of many most sustainable cities within the nation. However the metropolis’s inexperienced fame obscures a deep legacy of environmental racism. Just some miles south of Seattle’s iconic downtown and waterfront lies the Duwamish Valley, a polluted stretch of land that is home to many low-income people of color. And an Environmental Safety Company (EPA) grant program supposed to assist seems to have inadvertently grow to be a part of the issue.
The Duwamish Valley feels a good distance from the leafy, inexperienced Emerald Metropolis. Right here, residents have entry to an average of only 40 square feet of inexperienced area every, versus a median of 387 sq. ft inside Seattle Metropolis limits. The Duwamish Valley is choked with pollution from a disproportionate variety of polluting industries and main highways. It additionally hosts the Decrease Duwamish Waterway Superfund website — one of the most toxic hazardous waste sites in the nation.
These components end in tangible and critical impacts. Life expectancy in a single Duwamish Valley neighborhood, South Park, is 13 years less than in whiter and extra prosperous areas of Seattle. After a long time of disinvestment, the Duwamish Valley neighborhood faces vital well being, public security and financial disparities that require neighborhood advocacy and systemic funding to restore.
Over 20 years in the past, the Duwamish River Community Coalition (DRCC) was based by neighborhood activists searching for to handle these issues. For greater than a decade, our work has been supported partly by a Technical Help Grant (TAG) from the EPA. The aim of the TAG is to “assist communities take part in Superfund cleanup decision-making” by offering neighborhood teams the funds to contract a technical adviser to “interpret and clarify technical experiences, website circumstances, and EPA’s proposed cleanup proposals and selections.”
But, what was initially a useful useful resource that allowed us to raised serve our neighborhood has in observe grow to be one other one of many many systemic obstacles that we face when working to create a secure and wholesome surroundings for all. Just lately, we determined to proceed our advocacy work with out the TAG.
The timing could appear shocking. We’re selecting to forego EPA help simply as inner restructuring and an inflow of funding has allowed the company to contemplate the ways in which environmental justice and well being fairness are inextricably linked to their work. But, even because the EPA works to handle environmental justice, the TAG is structured and operates in methods which are inherently unjust in my expertise — particularly to small, grassroots neighborhood organizations.
Sustaining the TAG has imposed outsized administrative burdens on DRCC. Important parts of our time and sources have been spent on getting ready, processing, submitting and refiling invoices, work plans and different paperwork as we try to navigate complicated and inconsistent TAG procedures in a well timed method to get reimbursed for the companies that we’re dedicated to offering to our communities.
Because the years have passed by, EPA has considerably narrowed our allowable scope. Because of this the work we are able to invoice to the grant has grow to be more and more restricted. Whereas these work plans are agreed upon by each events, there’s an plain energy imbalance between a federal authorities company that controls the funding, and small nonprofits that rely upon the company.
Our final work plan with the EPA was essentially the most limiting plan but. For instance, when utilizing TAG funds, we might have been required to seek the advice of with EPA earlier than conducting outreach to individuals who fish within the Duwamish River. If we wished to print a flyer warning of poisons in fish, or maintain a gathering on fish safely, we might first want to hunt approval from the EPA. This inhibited our capacity to succeed in a extremely weak inhabitants, and to do large-scale, systemic work inside our neighborhood.
Because the EPA strives to heart environmental justice in its work and organizational hierarchies, we hope the company will mirror on the methods wherein lots of its programs are nonetheless deeply flawed. Whereas new investments in environmental justice will little question catalyze long-awaited modifications, no amount of cash can treatment the implications of environmental racism if the programs that bolster these inequities stay firmly in place.
The EPA ought to take away systemic obstacles just like the burdensome TAG necessities that restrict true partnerships with community-based organizations. Our communities have priceless perception that have to be heard and integrated in environmental options. The National Environmental Justice Advisory Council acknowledges this, stating that “bringing native expertise and information to the desk improves the standard of cleanup selections and builds neighborhood help.”
In distinction, the construction of the TAG program prevents significant participation and progress. There isn’t a doubt that different environmental justice teams across the nation are additionally feeling the burden of those institutional obstacles, and we’re assured that by growing accessibility, the EPA will create areas for richer and extra numerous views to be heard.
Accountability and equitable funding practices are usually not mutually unique. The EPA ought to be capable of observe federal funds to make sure that cash is being spent for the right objective. However there are methods to carry organizations accountable for the grant cash they obtain with out overburdening them and limiting decision-making to teams which are giant sufficient to deal with present reporting necessities. For instance, the EPA may help frontline-serving intermediaries to deal with grant compliance. The EPA can and will work with neighborhood teams to develop processes that heart the group’s capability and expertise working with impacted communities.
In the end, the EPA says that it embraces “the necessity for higher outcomes in communities the place there are distinctive burdens and vulnerabilities for populations dwelling in and round Superfund websites.” I hope that EPA will acknowledge this chance to stay as much as that promise.
Jamie Hearn, J.D., is Superfund Program supervisor at Duwamish River Group Coalition because the Superfund Program Supervisor. Her work focuses on federal and state-level poisonous clean-ups. She beforehand labored as an environmental and out of doors educator and spent her time in legislation college working for the Tulalip Tribal Court docket, Seattle College Home Violence Authorized Clinic, American Indian Legislation Journal, Communities for a Higher Surroundings, and The Nature Conservancy.
