HUFFINGTON
06.17.12
OLD KING COAL
ENVIRONMENTAL
JUSTICE? Critics
say the relocations
of millions of tons
of coal ash from Tennessee to the Arrowhead landfill near
Uniontown, Alabama
was discriminatory.
UNIONTOWN
86.7%
AFRICAN-AMERICAN
ARROWHEAD
LANDFILL
UNIONTOWN
RIGHT:
The portion of the
population nearest
the landfill that is
African American,
by Census block.
SOURCES: U.S. CENSUS BUREAU; DAVID LUDDER
LESS DENSE
POPULATION
imity to the spill, a facility’s history of complaints, and potential
impacts on nearby low-income
and minority communities, among
other factors.
Still, Bullard maintains that a
larger share of the total refuse generated by the spill by mid-2010
— 24,000 of 39,000 tons, or 61
percent — was being deposited in
minority communities, even though
blacks and other people of color
make up just a quarter of the coastal population in those four states.
In late July of that year, residents of Harrison County, Miss.,
successfully blocked BP from using the local Pecan Grove landfill
for the oil trash. Harrison is 70
percent white.
97.6%
AFRICAN-AMERICAN
MORE DENSE
POPULATION
96.8%
100%
AFRICANAMERICAN
AFRICANAMERICAN
100%
AFRICANAMERICAN
The situation in Perry County,
Bullard says, is not different.
“It’s a classic case of environmental injustice,” he says. “The coal
ash was too dangerous to stay in
east Tennessee — in what happened
to be a mostly white area — so why
is it OK to ship it to Perry County?
“This is happening in 2010,
not 1910,” Bullard says. “The
problem with all this is not the
lack of evidence. The problem
is, once we have all these facts,
what do we do?”
Though not a direct answer to
that question, Alabama’s governor,
Robert Bentley, did issue an executive order in February of last year,
effectively establishing a moratorium on new landfill permits until