"When a special team of EPA inspectors first showed up at an industrial plant belching carcinogens on the worn outskirts of Birmingham, Ala., in 2011, their findings of flagrant regulatory violations were later deemed serious enough to warrant a referral to the Justice Department.
But what happened — and didn't happen — next tells a disquieting tale of a status quo that has long left people of color and low-income communities disproportionately exposed to toxic air pollution, an E&E News review has found.
And, while the Biden administration now trumpets a renewed commitment to environmental justice, the saga surrounding the ABC Coke complex, which produces a fuel made from coal, also exposes the barriers to achieving those equity goals.
Among them: a regulatory system that cedes front-line oversight to state and local officials who may be unwilling or ill-equipped to crack down on influential polluters; cautious, far-removed EPA managers; and a secretive enforcement apparatus that in this instance seems to have treated a vulnerable community as an afterthought."
Sean Reilly reports for E&E News March 22, 2021, in the first of a two-part series.
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