Coming to terms with environmental justice

The momentum of environmental justice has grown over the last decade, fueled by a passionate, sometimes inflammatory rhetoric. Confronting business with a series of distinctly different policy challenges, environmental justice advocates generally feel that economically disadvantaged populations are often exposed to more than their fair share of industrial pollutants and are thus suffering a “disparate risk.” a term now incorporated in permitting guidance adopted by EPA.Business generally has had less than a coherent response. At a policy level it is challenging to address an issue with so many different aspects, from relocation of low income communities to the sovereign rights of Native Americans; from noisy transportation routes to property devaluation. But, where businesses are responding effectively, they seem to be creating public participation mechanisms which allow for authentic representation and place an emphasis on listening to a community's real needs.