When the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) issued guidelines in February for applying civil-rights laws to pollution permits, Detroit officials saw no reason for concern.
The minority-dominated city leadership was all for the concept. Its aim, after all, is to assure that environmental hazards aren't concentrated in minority areas, a phenomenon sometimes called "environmental racism."
But they're plenty concerned now, and so are city officials elsewhere.
The vaguely written but sweeping guidelines threaten cities with loss of jobs, as well as federal environmental funds. At a hearing in Detroit Friday, mayors from around the nation turned out to demand changes.
Detroit illustrates the reasons for their frustration: The rules require penalties whenever a permit is issued for a polluting facility that has a disproportionate impact on minorities. But just about any neighborhood in the predominately black city would suffer such an impact.
And since the EPA was poised to nullify permits even after construction had started, the guidelines threatened $5 billion in redevelopment for the once riot-torn and desolated community. What business would choose to build where it faced such risks?
So, Mayor Dennis Archer became a leading opponent of the guidelines, getting the National Conference of Mayors to oppose them.
After the hearing Friday, the EPA backed away from the guidelines. It promised to work with local officials, industry and community advocates to develop a policy all can live with.
What's less obvious is whether that's possible.
The EPA has been trying - and failing - to find an acceptable policy for five years.
After getting its first complaint in 1993, it created an office of environmental justice to investigate problems and promote discussion.
Yet internal studies indicating the problem is not widespread were buried. That failure has had embarrassing side effects.
Last week, the Congressional Black Caucus, issued a resolution supporting the guidance, basing its stand in part on a 1992 National Law Journal study showing environmental discrimination. Only the study was flawed. On the same day the EPA was meeting with the mayors, an agency spokesperson admitted the EPA had withheld from Congress its own expert analysis refuting the Law Journal study.
The EPA hasn't done any better dealing with environmental justice complaints. It has found none that its attorneys felt they could uphold in court.
The EPA's best known case involves a proposed $700 million plastics plant in a rural, mostly black Louisiana County, and it illustrates EPA's dilemma.
The plant would more than meet strict emission limits, and got state approval more than a year ago. Polls show most residents, black and white, support it and want its high-paying jobs. But minorities nearest the plant want it stopped.
Rather than broker a compromise, the EPA put the plant on hold at least until next year - ironically to serve as a test case for the guidelines it is now rewriting.
As Archer told the EPA Friday, "Injustice of any kind can't be tolerated." And certainly residents of any disadvantaged community forced to bear a disproportionate environmental burden deserve help. But so far, the EPA's approach has done little more than give minority areas another hurdle to economic growth.
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