Layers of injustice: A distributional assessment of toxic chemical facilities, releases, and cleanups.

The Resource Conservation and Recovery Act of 1976 (RCRA) is a cornerstone of environmental policy in the United States. The law regulates the generation, transportation, storage, and disposal of hazardous chemicals. Although regulated, hazardous releases can still occur at RCRA sites due to flawed equipment, human error, and dated historical practices. Releases are investigated and remediated through what is known as a Corrective Action (CA). Using Census data and a novel dataset of RCRA facilities across the contiguous U.S., we examine the possibility of systematic inequities with regards to the (i) siting of RCRA facilities, (ii) occurrence of releases and CAs, (iii) duration of CAs, and (iv) permanence of remediation methods. We find evidence of disproportionate impacts across racial, ethnic, and income dimensions. The results vary, however, depending on the different aspects of the siting and cleanup process, thus highlighting the need for multi-layered analyses to identify and fully understand potential inequities associated with environmental programs.
Competing Interests: Declaration of competing interest The authors declare the following financial interests/personal relationships which may be considered as potential competing interests: Dennis Guignet reports financial support was provided by Oak Ridge Institute for Science and Education. If there are other authors, they declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.
(Copyright © 2024 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.)