Environmental Justice, Tribal Nations, Toxins, San Diego County, Planning
Environmental justice should be an essential goal for all in the planning field. Learning about the lifestyles, conditions, and experiences of marginalized populations will help planners see the effects of their decisions to the general public and environmental health. I hope to uncover and study specifically issues that the Native Americans of San Diego face when dealing with local governments in order to bring new insights to address the problem or at least further the research. Although I feel strongly that racism and discrimination is prevalent in all levels of society and government, I do understand that not all decisions made in planning have bad intentions and that there are layers of debate that go into them all. I want to see if San Diego follows a general pattern of following NIMBY attitudes toward undesirable industries in their siting decisions. I hope to bring more awareness to the environmental justice movement as it is still not as well known as the traditional environmental movement. This research, although focused on Tribal Nations, will be useful to any group trying to empower themselves and combat the burdens of pollution onto their neighborhoods.
Brook, Daniel. “Environmental Genocide: Native Americans and Toxic Waste.” American Journal of Economics and Sociology 57, no. 1 (January 1998): 105-113.
Cole, Luke W., and Sheila R. Foster. From the Ground Up: Environmental Racism and the Rise of the Environmental Justice Movement. New York: New York University Press, 2001.
Commission for Racial Justice United Church of Christ. “Toxic Wastes and Race at Twenty.” United Church of Christ, 2007.
http://www.ucc.org/assets/pdfs/toxic20.pdf (Accessed October 26, 2009).
Farber, Daniel. Capitalizing on Environmental Injustice. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 2008.
Girdner, Eddie, and Jack Smith. Killing Me Softly. New York: Monthly Review Press, 2002.
Kevin, Daniel. “Environmental Racism and Locally Undesirable Land Uses,” 1996. http://faculty.virginia.edu/ejus/ENV97.htm (accessed October 24, 2009).
Current research suggests that vulnerable populations, such as those living on reservations, carry a heavier burden of pollutants. This proposal will examine the environmental justice issues around the tribal governments in San Diego County. It will look at three fundamental problems: is their access to clean resources compromised by local government planning decisions, what hazards do they face, and what determinants are used by local planning agencies for siting the polluting industries. To address these key issues, the study will investigate the industries present around four reservations using the TRI database, the communication between the tribal governments and San Diego through meeting reports and interviews, and the toxins affecting them with EPA and TRI data. The research will contribute to the on-going environmental justice dialogue, but it will also be shared with tribal nations in the hope that it will give them insight and influence.
Current and past research suggests that minority and poor communities carry a heavier burden of pollution. This paper examined this environmental justice issue by exploring the land use situation around the tribal governments in San Diego County. Native Americans have a history of vulnerability to exploitation, corporate misconduct, and environmental abuse. This paper focused on the fundamental issue of whether or not the wealth of a reservation plays a role in the type of surrounding industry. Also, it contributes to the more complex issue of identifying an environmental injustice. This paper concentrated on the Pala and Campo tribal reservations to analyze the industries sited around using the Toxin Releases Inventory (TRI) and Geographic Information Systems (GIS) data. This paper presents two very different case studies in the county which further the research that identifying environmental justice is more complex than the straightforward distributional analysis. This study also found that in San Diego County, the socioeconomic status of a tribal nation can impact their acceptance of an industry that is considered dirty.
Current and past research suggests that minority and poor communities carry a heavier burden of pollution. This paper examined this environmental justice issue by exploring the land use situation around the tribal governments in San Diego County. Native Americans have a history of vulnerability to exploitation, corporate misconduct, and environmental abuse. This paper focused on the fundamental issue of whether or not the wealth of a reservation plays a role in the type of surrounding industry. Also, it contributes to the more complex issue of identifying an environmental injustice. This paper concentrated on the Pala and Campo tribal reservations to analyze the industries sited around using the Toxin Releases Inventory (TRI) and Geographic Information Systems (GIS) data. This paper presents two very different case studies in the county which further the research that identifying environmental justice is more complex than the straightforward distributional analysis. This study also found that in San Diego County, the socioeconomic status of a tribal nation can impact their acceptance of an industry that is considered dirty.
The proposal’s research design will be concentrating on the location of point sources and non-point sources of toxins and pollution that can affect the reservation populations which can be found through the TRI facilities database and various maps showing roads and rivers. This database is available online and provides GIS data that can be downloaded. The research will use maps that show spatial relationships which can be made using the GIS data from the TRI database as well as SANDAG data of the county. The health portion of the research will be conducted through health data websites, interviews with professionals, and literature on the public health. The proposal will also have a portion that will analyze the communication between Tribal and local government which can be researched through meeting reports, frequency of workgroups and meetings, and literature on the subject. Census data will also be used to analyze the conditions and details of the Tribal populations. The research will also include as much personal observation as possible of the conditions on reservations.
This proposal will focus on the Tribal Nations of San Diego County. The three main spatial factors are the locations of industrial facilities that release hazardous toxins, the locations and geography of Native American reservations, and the buffer zones or lack of them between the polluting sources and residential communities. The importance of the geography of the reservations will show the effects of a downwind position from hazardous pollutants from facilities. Buffer zones can help protect and mitigate the dangers of proximity to toxic release, and the lack of them can unveil a significant planning problem.
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