Environmental Justice and the Superfund Program in the United States

Abstract

Numerous studies have investigated environmental justice (EJ) concerns in the context of the Superfund program. Previous studies, however, are limited by their inability to capture the characteristics of communities with land contamination at the timing of the siting, regional focus, varying definitions of EJ communities and focus on EJ concerns mainly in the siting of polluting activities. Consequently, the evidence on EJ concerns in the context of the Superfund program is mixed, which requires clarity. Superfund program may suffer EJ conflicts in National Priority List (NPL) siting, hazardous risk scoring (HRS) of potential NPL sites, and the remediation of NPL sites. Using NPL data from the entire US for 1980 and 2000, we investigate the EJ concerns in the NPL siting, HRS of potential NPL sites, and their remediation. In addition, we conduct the analysis using three different definitions of an EJ community: census tract, and within 1-mile and 2-miles radius of the NPL sites. In doing so, we test the sensitivity of EJ results to alternative definitions of an EJ community. Thus, this paper constitutes the most comprehensive study of EJ in the context of the Superfund program. Among other results, we find no consistent evidence for EJ concerns in the implementation of the Superfund program.

Keywords: Contamination, Environmental Justice, Superfunds, Low-income and minority communities