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The EPA allows polluters to turn neighborhoods into “sacrifice zones”

propublica.org

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Re: The EPA allows polluters to turn neighborhoods into “sacrifice zones”

#91

Post by philips »

htek wrote: post #67

Jesus, this story is going to have all the bad takes. People's main takeaway from the article is, "it's just the way cities grow," "it's the zoning board's fault," "people moved near a cancer cluster, it's their fault," "you should be able to pollute an area you pay for." Seriously? The problem is the government allowing private corporations to poison the environment to benefit the bottom line of the corporations. I…

Absolutely! I have started a project to encourage municipalities to use land use to protect their water and other sensitive spots from service stations.

The EPA has all sorts of silly guidelines like saying setback a gas station 500 feet from school or wetlands if they pump over 3.6MM gallons a year. Under that? 25 feet.

https://postpump.org is the project so far.

A crazy thing I learned recently is the cost of cleanups for underground storage tanks is not really tracked or published publicly. I started requesting information a few weeks ago. https://postpump.org/oregon

Re: The EPA allows polluters to turn neighborhoods into “sacrifice zones”

#92

Post by noahtallen »

dd36 wrote: post #86
htek wrote: post #67

Jesus, this story is going to have all the bad takes. People's main takeaway from the article is, "it's just the way cities grow," "it's the zoning board's fault," "people moved near a cancer cluster, it's their fault," "you should be able to pollute an area you pay for." Seriously? The problem is the government allowing private corporations to poison the environment to benefit the bottom line of the corporations. I…

Property rights. Why can you spew your toxin into my air/land?

Exactly. This isn’t some sort of weird environmental topic. This is a human rights violation. The foundation of a huge swath of our law is “no one has a right to encroach on a person or their property.” (Examples being murder and theft.) Pollution is a violation of that principle on a massive scale and it should be treated that way.

Re: The EPA allows polluters to turn neighborhoods into “sacrifice zones”

#93

Post by zardo »

dontcare007 wrote: post #49
lettergram wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Gonna have to side with city zoning being the wrong party here. It’s really the people who represent the tax base that should be protecting said tax base.

Yep, a failure on the part of the beaurocrats to deny the zoning changes.

Yeah we can safely assume that the chemical plant didn't exert any political influence whatsoever.

Re: The EPA allows polluters to turn neighborhoods into “sacrifice zones”

#94

Post by sokoloff »

vineyardmike wrote: post #87
friedman23 wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The engineers didn't set out to create processes that resulted in toxic by-products, your statement is not helpful at all.

> The engineers didn't set out to create processes that resulted in toxic by-products, your statement is not helpful at all. if the engineers did not set out to create a process free from polluting carcinogens, then they did something wrong.

When you have a campfire (or fire in your fireplace), you are releasing polluting carcinogens. When you heat olive oil to the smoke point, you are releasing carcinogens. If/when you do those things, are you also doing something wrong?

Re: The EPA allows polluters to turn neighborhoods into “sacrifice zones”

#95

Post by boringg »

francisofascii wrote: post #90
dantheman wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's the same when people move next to the airport and then complain about noise. In general this can be solved with an extension of property rights, the industrial zone/airport/music venue etc can own the rights to "pollute" the neighboring areas, much like buying air rights in a city. Then it's clear when you purchase / rent / what level of noise / pollution you can expect. This allows market forces to work, if aft…

The right to pollute should never be granted in perpetuity. If anything, it should be a recurring cost that increases or decreases based on the how much polluting is occurring. That way the markets work in incentivizing less polluting.

This is interesting and far too progressive for any of the cities to regulate at this time (or at any point in the past). This does sound like the right way to permit new industrial areas / processes. Though I imagine it might be difficult to pull off. Grandfathered industries would have such a huge advantage.

Re: The EPA allows polluters to turn neighborhoods into “sacrifice zones”

#96

Post by lioeters »

htek wrote: post #67

Jesus, this story is going to have all the bad takes. People's main takeaway from the article is, "it's just the way cities grow," "it's the zoning board's fault," "people moved near a cancer cluster, it's their fault," "you should be able to pollute an area you pay for." Seriously? The problem is the government allowing private corporations to poison the environment to benefit the bottom line of the corporations. I…

> The problem is the government allowing private corporations to poison the environment to benefit the bottom line of the corporations.

Thank you, a voice of reason! This really needed to be said on this thread.

Re: The EPA allows polluters to turn neighborhoods into “sacrifice zones”

#97

Post by woodruffw »

sokoloff wrote: post #94
vineyardmike wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The engineers didn't set out to create processes that resulted in toxic by-products, your statement is not helpful at all. if the engineers did not set out to create a process free from polluting carcinogens, then they did something wrong.

When you have a campfire (or fire in your fireplace), you are releasing polluting carcinogens. When you heat olive oil to the smoke point, you are releasing carcinogens. If/when you do those things, are you also doing something wrong?

It is relatively easy, from my vantage point, to see dividing lines between "doing something bad for your own health," "doing something bad for your health and those in your physical and emotional circles," and "doing something bad for the health of an entire city, country, or region." It can be the case for each of these to be wrong, in different ways, without confounding or deflating the other cases.

Re: The EPA allows polluters to turn neighborhoods into “sacrifice zones”

#98

Post by boringg »

kaiju0 wrote: post #37

This is a pretty typical growth pattern. Industrial zone establishes and city is set far away in a safe area. City expands and resident need cheap housing. The cheap housing is built near the industrial zone as that is how economic forces work. People then see this and say they built industrial next to the poor people when the opposite occurred. Now the industry is giving cancer to poor people and needs to be punishe…

I think they way you described was a bit harsh. That said this is a serious challenge for industry that have large footprints and health risks to the community. In the electric markets there are lots of power plants that were originally far from communities but then housing spread and fell into the catchment areas.

Going forward wouldn't it make sense to zone an entire area to not be allowed to build for residential purposes (essentially a buffer around the industrial zones)?

It feels like its a grey area of responsibility etc. For industrial processes that are known to be highly toxic it would fall on the industrials but as we find out more information around toxicity and impacts (which it feels like more is coming to light all the time) it will require some deft navigating.

Re: The EPA allows polluters to turn neighborhoods into “sacrifice zones”

#99

Post by tux3 »

sokoloff wrote: post #94
vineyardmike wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The engineers didn't set out to create processes that resulted in toxic by-products, your statement is not helpful at all. if the engineers did not set out to create a process free from polluting carcinogens, then they did something wrong.

When you have a campfire (or fire in your fireplace), you are releasing polluting carcinogens. When you heat olive oil to the smoke point, you are releasing carcinogens. If/when you do those things, are you also doing something wrong?

Yes, except scale makes all the difference.

If you burn a tire, you're polluting and releasing toxic fumes around. But one burnt tire doesn't affect the neighborhood.

Industry is not negligible. At larger scale toxic waste hurts a lot more people, of course it does! The campfire whataboutism is a bit silly in comparison.

Re: The EPA allows polluters to turn neighborhoods into “sacrifice zones”

#100

Post by parineum »

dd36 wrote: post #79
kaiju0 wrote: post #37

This is a pretty typical growth pattern. Industrial zone establishes and city is set far away in a safe area. City expands and resident need cheap housing. The cheap housing is built near the industrial zone as that is how economic forces work. People then see this and say they built industrial next to the poor people when the opposite occurred. Now the industry is giving cancer to poor people and needs to be punishe…

Property rights. If the adjacent property is unsafe due to your actions, you should pay to fix the problem.

If someone buys the adjacent property after you've made it unsafe without breaking any laws, who pays?
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