Alabama: New Bill Requires Industry to gauge pollution in minority areas

• The most outrageous pollution problems that environmental justice advocates point out, such as PCB contamination invariably are in poor, working-class or black neighborhoods.

''. . . environmental issues like dumping toxic wastes on poor and black communities are going on unchecked and unmonitored. There's an encroaching danger to quality of life in these communities. Dumps are rarely in upper-class communities.''Rep. Joseph Mitchell, D-Mobile House sponsor of the bill A Senate committee unanimously passed a bill Wednesday that would require the state to measure pollution affecting minority populations before considering permits for industries. The bill, approved 5-0 by the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, is one of three ''environmental justice'' proposals that were introduced in the Legislature this session. Supporters lauded the passage as a step forward in the effort to ensure that poor and minority populations get equal protection from industries' pollution. ''There's a position taken by some of us that environmental issues like dumping toxic wastes on poor and black communities are going on unchecked and unmonitored,'' said House sponsor Rep. Joseph Mitchell, D-Mobile. ''There's an encroaching danger to quality of life in these communities. Dumps are rarely in upper-class communities.'' [more]