We must work together to achieve environmental justice

Sometimes people describe disadvantaged neighborhoods as on the 'wrong side of the tracks.' When it comes to some of Southern California's most blighted neighborhoods, the more apt description might be 'too close to the tracks.'

Neighborhoods nearest the tracks-close to rail yards, distribution centers, and ports-are among the most polluted in our region. Dr. John Miller calls these areas 'the diesel death zone.' An emergency room physician and port area resident himself, he has treated patients from these areas who've had acute asthma attacks. Sometimes his patients have died from these attacks.

These neighborhoods endure almost every environmental problem imaginable: polluted air, water, and soil; excess noise, visual blight, heavy truck traffic, decaying streets and dilapidated buildings; a poverty of open space, parks, and landscaping.

As if the environmental justice issues weren't enough, economic and social justice issues are prevalent in most of the same areas. The neighborhoods lack economic opportunity, jobs, skills, and business opportunities, they have underperforming schools, and problems with drugs, gangs, and violence.

These problems-economic, social, and environmental-are all tightly twisted together, like a giant Gordian knot. Unfortunately, most efforts to deal with the problems have been segmented and uncoordinated. Some seek to solve economic problems, others the social ones, still others the environmental ones.

The problem with this segmented approach is that as we untie the economic part of the knot, we may be tangling up the social and environmental parts. Sometimes, the best efforts have only made an area more dependent on outside help-and left it high and dry as soon as that help tapers off.

Economic fixes can exacerbate environmental problems. Expanding a warehouse center for the jobs it produces can increase pollution, noise, traffic, and blight.

Over most of the good-movement corridor, from San Pedro Bay to the Inland Empire, residents are turning out in force at public meetings to protest expansion projects. Though they may want more jobs, they want clean jobs.

One of the solutions to help with a lack of clean jobs in an area is to create redevelopment districts to help bring in big-box retailers. The approach has the added advantage of increasing local sales tax revenues and providing new places people can shop.

However, the big-box stores can stifle local business development and make the area more dependent on the whims of national corporations. National chain stores are largely autonomous entities that do not rely on local businesses for support.

A study in Austin, Texas shows, for example, that a Borders bookstore provides about $13 of local economic opportunity for every $100 spent in the store-most of that as employee salaries. But BookPeople, a locally run bookstore, brings in $45 because it depends on local business-to-business services.

In some areas, social services and subsidized housing are highly concentrated. Though the number of such services can show society is reaching out to help people, when these services are heavily concentrated in an area, they can lead to ghettoization. Though it may be unjustified, the high concentration can scare away more affluent residents and businesses, the very elements needed to make the area more self-sufficient.

Often part of a politically disenfranchised population, the people who depend on social services may be in no position and lack the skills to stand up for their rights when they are faced with an environmentally damaging project. Sometimes, the very companies that may harm the environment also contribute to nonprofits that provide social services in the area. The contributions can have a chilling effect on the voices of those who might be able to speak out on behalf of the people they are helping care for.

In some areas, the best-meaning environmental efforts to build new parks may do little more than create attractive nuisances for gang members, if police are unable to keep an area patrolled. Such facilities are often in forced competition with jobs and social services. The vacant lot might be a new employer, a new school, low-income housing, or a park, but not any two. In Wilmington, this dispute has led to legal challenges between a pro-parks group and Habitat for Humanity. Cash-strapped city governments are almost always forced to choose options that fall back to the most basic needs of economic survival. This, in the world's most prosperous country. How must others cope?

Whether we are members of the environmental movement, a social or economic justice movement, or a chamber of commerce, we need to work cooperatively to find new solutions that may help address the problems comprehensively. No one movement is an island. We are part of the same communities, and we need to start working like it.

Tom Politeo is chair of the Harbor Vision Task Force.