ABSTRACT

This chapter explores the environmental protection model and offers an alternative framework for addressing the needs and concerns of disenfranchised communities. Environmental justice activists have targeted disparate enforcement, compliance, and policy formulation as they affect public health decisionmaking. The impetus for changing the dominant environmental protection paradigm has not come from within regulatory agencies, the polluting industry, or the "industry" that has been built around risk management. Executive Order instructs federal agencies to conduct environmental human health analysis, whenever practicable and appropriate, to identify multiple and cumulative exposure. An environmental justice analysis of community impacts will need to bring the "socio" part of the assessment on par with the "economic" assessment part. Urban environmental inequities were identified in Council on Environmental Quality report. The Deep South Center for Environmental Justice (DSCEJ) works closely with grassroots environmental justice groups—a dozen groups serve on the DSCEJ's advisory board—and community leaders from impacted communities.