Volume 6, Issue 9

Flint, MI: 8-27-98

EPA’s environmental justice policy, supposedly designed to protect areas with high minority populations, has struck again. This time it is way off base. A proposed steel mill near Flint, Michigan has nearly been killed because of an “environmental justice” complaint filed by a local opposition group. EPA happily and enthusiastically took the complaint to heart and is on the verge of killing the project. But it turns out that 84% of the people who live close to the proposed mill do not fit the ground rules of such a complaint. Many, including the mayor of Detroit, believe that the rules will actually hurt minorities by smothering jobs. However, in this case minorities aren’t an issue. EPA has performed no basic demographic study to confirm that the area might even fit complaint guidelines and now it looks pretty bad for the EPA. One EPA staffer blamed the oversight on “an exodus of experienced staff in the wake of the growing environmental justice controversy within the agency, [therefore] analysts were unavailable to do that work.” The analysis reportedly only takes approximately 30 minutes. The company is threatening to move to Ohio if the wrongheaded investigation does not cease immediately.

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