ABSTRACT
Environmental justice is a term of many meanings, and most often is equated with environmental racism. For the most part, environmental justice is a policy that describes as its objective the prevention of government decisions to approve the dispersal of waste or pollution in a manner that discriminates on the basis of race or socio-economic status, or that promotes the enforcement and prevention of waste dispersal by private entities that disproportionately harms disadvantaged populations. The chapter discusses the adoption of environmental justice as a policy of federal and state governments and concludes with two case studies involving the siting of hazardous waste in areas that discriminated against neighbors based on race and socio-economic status.
