DEP gets advice on controlling pollution in poor communities
An advisory group has released a draft report and is holding public forums. It studied the problem and what can be done.

By Dan Hardy
March 28, 2001

After years of allegations that poor and minority communities were bearing the brunt of environmental pollution in Pennsylvania, the state Department of Environmental Protection in 1999 formed a work group to investigate and propose improvements.

The Environmental Justice Work Group - made up of community, labor, civil-rights and industry representatives, government officials, and environmental lawyers - released its draft report this month and held the first of several community forums on it this week.

The report recommends that the DEP increase community participation when considering industrial permits, step up enforcement and monitoring in "environmentally burdened" communities, and mandate improvement plans.

Monday night, a panel of work-group members held a community forum on the draft report at a community center in Chester, a city of mostly African American residents that is home to several large polluting industries and has for years been at the center of the debate about environmental justice.

The work group plans to hold six other meetings around the state by April 18 and complete its report by June. DEP has pledged to implement the final plan.

The panel's reception at the gathering of about 40 people ranged from polite suggestions to skepticism and outright hostility.

"There are already standards that the DEP has not enforced," said Zulene Mayfield, chairwoman of Chester Residents Concerned for Quality Living, a group that has fought to keep waste-processing companies out of Chester and to regulate the ones already there. "If there is no enforcement or penalties for violating anything in this report, what good is it?"

Alisa E. Harris, DEP's environmental-equity coordinator and a panel member, responded: "I don't want there to be any expectations that this is a silver bullet. . . . But I can say that we're committed to implementing the issues addressed in this report."

Jerome Balter, an environmental lawyer with the Public Interest Law Center of Philadelphia who represents several community groups that are fighting polluters, said the report did not address how to define an environmentally burdened community and what special steps to take where such communities exist.

He proposed that "where there's bad health - a significantly poorer health rate in a community - you should say, 'You in that community have the power to say yes or no' " to companies that would increase pollution and health risks. He added that there is a high correlation between poor health, pollution, and the presence of poor and minority communities.

Work group member Alfred Ryan, a Peco Energy employee, responded, "We realized early on that we were not going to come up with a specific standard that says, 'If this exists, you're not going to get a permit.' What we did do is say, 'Here are the hoops to go through; here is the process.'

"We left it up to the DEP to set the standards," he said. "What we have said is that new standards have to be developed."