The Federal Government’s Response to Environmental Inequality

Konisky, David M.

doi:10.7551/mitpress/9780262028837.003.0002

Cited by 8 publications

(13 citation statements)

References 20 publications

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“…The evidence is not uniform, and there remain important, unresolved debates about the causal mechanism(s) underlying these patterns [31][32][33]. Nevertheless, the presence of these disparities has generated social mobilization among affected communities [34,35], and at least some limited response from federal, state, and local government agencies [33,[36][37][38][39].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Racial, ethnic, and income disparities in air pollution: A study of excess emissions in Texas

Konisky

Zirogiannis

2019

PLoS ONE

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Objective Excess emissions are pollutant releases that occur during periods of startups, shutdowns or malfunctions and are considered violations of the U.S. Clean Air Act. They are an important, but understudied and under-regulated, category of pollution releases given their frequency and magnitude. In this paper, we examine the demographic correlates of excess emissions, using data from industrial sources in Texas. Methods We conduct two complementary sets of analyses: one at the census tract level and one at the facility level. At the census tract level, we use a multinomial logit model to examine the relationships between racial, ethnic, and income characteristics and the incidence of excess emissions. At the facility level, we first estimate a logit model to examine whether these characteristics are associated with facilities that emit excess emissions, and then, conditional on the presence of excess emissions, we use ordinary least square regression to estimate their correlation with the magnitude of releases. Results Across our analyses, we find that the percentage of Black population and median household income are positively associated with excess emissions; percentage of college graduate, population density, median housing value, and percentage of owner-occupied housing unit are negatively associated with excess emissions. We, however, have not found a clear and significant relationship between the percentage of Hispanic population and excess emissions.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Racial, ethnic, and income disparities in air pollution: A study of excess emissions in Texas

Konisky

Zirogiannis

2019

PLoS ONE

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“…The Obama Administration devoted considerable resources to dealing with environmental inequity, specifically creating a new interagency working group, whose participants all signed a memorandum of understanding, devoted to accomplishing the goals of EO 12898 (Kaswan 2013;Konisky 2015;Salcido 2016). This group was part of the larger programme "Plan EJ 2014" which signified a renewed effort to emphasise the importance of EJ in EPA activities.…”

Section: The Origins and State Of Ejmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The Bush Administration sought to downplay the significance of race and ethnicity in agency rulemaking (O’Neil 2007; Salcido 2016), a development which caused the US Office of Inspector General (2004) and the GAO (2005) to rebuke the EPA for its failure to consider equity in its rulemaking. The Obama Administration devoted considerable resources to dealing with environmental inequity, specifically creating a new interagency working group, whose participants all signed a memorandum of understanding, devoted to accomplishing the goals of EO 12898 (Kaswan 2013; Konisky 2015; Salcido 2016). This group was part of the larger programme “Plan EJ 2014” which signified a renewed effort to emphasise the importance of EJ in EPA activities.…”

Section: The Origins and State Of Ejmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Studies that have scrutinised the implementation efficacy of EJ as a policy goal in the US, particularly since EO 12898 was written, have not been kind (e.g. Konisky 2015Konisky , 2016, while articulating some of the reasons for the failure of efforts aimed at EJ promotion. We build on this work by arguing that policy-making uncertainty has played a major role in undermining political attempts to successfully steer EJ in the right direction.…”

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confidence: 99%

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Political control and policy-making uncertainty in executive orders: the implementation of environmental justice policy

Provost

Gerber²

2018

J. Pub. Pol.

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Environmental justice (EJ) has represented an important equity challenge in policymaking for decades. President Clinton’s executive order (EO) 12898 in 1994 represented a significant federal action, requiring agencies to account for EJ issues in new rulemakings. We examine the impact of EO 12898 within the larger question of how EO are implemented in complex policymaking. We argue that presidential preferences will affect bureaucratic responsiveness and fire alarm oversight. However, EJ policy complexity produces uncertainty leading to bureaucratic risk aversion, constraining presidential efforts to steer policy. We utilise an original data set of nearly 2,000 final federal agency rules citing EO 12898 and find significant variation in its utilisation across administrations. Uncertainty over the nature of the order has an important influence on bureaucratic responsiveness. Our findings are instructive for the twin influences of political control and policy-making uncertainty and raise useful questions for future EJ and policy implementation research.

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“…Evaluations of the EPA and its actions in light of EO 12898 have found its implementation slow, inconsistent, and often nonexistent (NACA, 2001; EPA, 2004). These shortcomings are why scholars insist that the executive order was largely a symbolic political gesture (Cooper, 2001; Konisky, 2015).…”

Section: Environmental Regulationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Toxic Cities: Neoliberalism and Environmental Racism in Flint and Detroit Michigan

Benz

2017

Critical Sociology

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The consequences of neoliberal colorblind policies concerning environmental justice in Michigan are explored using critical race theorist Alan Freeman’s victim and perpetrator perspectives on legal decision-making. The victim perspective allows evidence of disparate impact to be proof of unequal protection under the law. The dominant perpetrator perspective requires proof of the intent to discriminate for a racial discrimination claim to be valid. Michigan’s environmental legal history is examined through the lens of these two perspectives, tracing how Michigan as a state, with the aid of the federal government, has institutionalized a racialized caste system of ‘worthiness’ for environmental protection through strict adherence to the perpetrator perspective. Specific attention is paid to the water crisis in Flint and a Marathon Oil refinery in Detroit. The injustices occurring at these locations are less the result of racist individuals than the product of decades of neoliberal colorblind policymaking supported and upheld in our court rooms.

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The Federal Government’s Response to Environmental Inequality

Cited by 8 publications

References 20 publications

Racial, ethnic, and income disparities in air pollution: A study of excess emissions in Texas

Racial, ethnic, and income disparities in air pollution: A study of excess emissions in Texas

Political control and policy-making uncertainty in executive orders: the implementation of environmental justice policy

Toxic Cities: Neoliberalism and Environmental Racism in Flint and Detroit Michigan

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