A relatively high percentage of minority and low-income communities live in heavily polluted areas, near refineries, superfund sites, or toxic incinerators, bearing most of the burden of the country’s pollution. According to research by the California Lung Association, these communities are likely to be located in urban areas where pollution is greater due to a concentration of commerce and people, and where there are rising temperatures.

According to a Sierra Club report, Latino Communities at Risk, three out of every five Latinos live near uncontrolled waste sites. A recent study by Harvard University found that the rate of asthma is increasing in children, with the highest rate of increases among African-American and low-income children. In Houston, Winifred Hamilton, PhD, SM, of Baylor College of Medicine’s Environmental Health Section found that, although the black community makes up only 20 percent of the population, 82 percent of the city’s waste management facilities are located in predominantly black neighborhoods.

In an interview with the Texas Observer, community activist Hilton Kelley outlines the unbalanced relationship that exists between community and industry in his hometown of Port Arthur, Texas. When a community is petitioned as a site for a new refinery or plant, local officials are often promised jobs for residents in exchange for support for local projects. Specific areas, however, may be targeted for unsavory reasons: perceived lack of broad-based opposition to the project, a town in dire need of lowering its unemployment rates, a system that favors industry over society.

In Houston’s East End, “there are so many strange smells, you know something is wrong,” said resident Henry Garcia. There are a number of industrial facilities in this heavily Latino area, where all 15 miles of Freeway Texas 225 are lined with refineries, chemical plants, and tank farms. “The people who run the plants change, the technology changes, but the rules stay the same,” he continued, referring to a grandfather clause in Texas environmental law that applies to plants over a certain age.

It is often difficult for those monitoring pollution in an industrial area to trace pollution back to one particular plant or one particular source – and in Houston difficult to demonstrate a causal connection between pollution and illness. Various organizations and institutions (such as the University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston, Harvard University, Galveston-Houston Association of Smog Prevention, and Baylor University) have conducted studies they believe show clear links between so-called smokestack pollutants and illnesses in the surrounding communities. But it is just as easy to claim that the occurrence of these diseases in communities near the plants is due to cigarette smoking, diet, living conditions, or proximity to vehicular pollution, as shown in research by the California Lung Association and University of Texas School of Public Health at Houston.

There are also no rules governing how long a company can wait after purchasing land and obtaining a permit before deciding to build an industry facility, said Juan Parras of Texas Southern University’s Environmental Law and Justice Center. “[Companies wanting to build a plant] can buy the land, get the permit, and then sit on it until local resistance has died down,” he said. “If there is any opposition to the project, it is strong at first, but then, once people realize that the process could take many years, they give up. They get burnt out by the system, the long court process, the bureaucracy.” Parras and his colleagues at TSU are pressing state legislators to limit permit validity and to prompt developers to begin building within a certain time frame.

It was not until 1994 that the US EPA’s Office of Environmental Justice was established in order to address misrepresentation of environmental concerns in low-income communities and communities of color. But ten years after its inception, the OEJ has not been fulfilling its promise to the people it was designed to protect. In an evaluation report published in March 2004, the EPA inspector general noted that the EPA has neither fully implemented nor “consistently integrated environmental justice into its day-to-day operations,” because it has not identified minority and low-income populations that need protection.

While, on the one hand, the federal government has not identified communities that need protection under Environmental Justice rules, on the other, the communities, themselves, are sometimes slow to identify and act on the environmental threats in their neighborhoods. In some of the communities most affected by pollution, there is simply a lack of awareness of the problem. Latino communities (especially those with a high percentage of new arrivals) face numerous challenges that may prevent them from taking a more active role in defending the environment: many members’ immigration status or inherent mistrust of government; a population with many under the voting age or otherwise ineligible to vote.

There is a catch-22 facing the communities that co-exist with plants that pollute – in standing up to industry and forcing them to clean up their act, there is the threat that industry will retaliate by transferring jobs (decreasing the tax base) or even by preventing new jobs from being created. Plants and refineries frequently contribute to the well-being of the town or neighboring community by donating money to education and cultural events and including residents on advisory panels.

The US House of Representatives recently passed legislation that, if approved by the Senate, will allow refineries located in areas of high unemployment to circumvent federal and state environmental regulations. While this may rejuvenate some local economies, there will undoubtedly be a trade-off, perhaps not visible in the short-term.

There is pressure on government agencies by grassroots environmental groups for restored air quality monitoring. Seven environmental organizations filed a lawsuit in response to the EPA’s 2004 rule change. Activist groups are teaching their neighbors how to have an impact on local politics and the decisions that directly affect them, and more studies are being done to show a link between the amount and type of particulate matter released into the air and the health problems that residents of low-income areas have.

Catherine Santamaria works for the Houston World Affairs Council, an educational nonprofit.