We use cookies to improve our services and remember your choices for future visits. For more information see our Privacy Policy and Terms of Use.
We use cookies to improve our services and remember your choices for future visits. For more information see our Privacy Policy and Terms of Use.
Rebekah Cowell is an investigative journalist whose work focuses on low-income, minority communities located near hazardous-waste facilities. She lives in Pittsboro, North Carolina, and is a fellow at the Schuster Institute for Investigative Journalism at Brandeis University.
We need a system to determine when a community has already shouldered its fair share. Right now, if someone wants to build a hazardous-waste facility, the EPA or state will assess the risk to nearby residents from that new facility only; the risks posed by the three or four or five polluters already in the area aren’t added to the equation. So there is nothing that might trigger the EPA or state to say that this community is overburdened by pollution.
May 2012Has something we published moved you? Fired you up? Did we miss the mark? We’d love to hear about it.
SEND US A LETTER