Troy D. Abel

Coming Clean: Information Disclosure and Environmental Performance

Coming Clean is the first book to investigate the process of information disclosure as a policy strategy for environmental protection. This process, which requires that firms disclose information about their environmental performance, is part of an approach to environmental protection that eschews the conventional command-and-control regulatory apparatus, which sometimes leads government and industry to focus on meeting only minimal standards. The authors of Coming Clean examine the effectiveness of information disclosure in achieving actual improvements in corporate environmental performance by analyzing data from the federal governments Toxics Release Inventory, or TRI, and drawing on an original set of survey data from corporations and federal, state, and local officials, among other sources. The authors find that TRI -- probably the best-known example of information disclosure--has had a substantial effect over time on the environmental performance of industry. But, drawing on case studies from across the nation, they show that the improvement is not uniform: some facilities have been leaders while others have been laggards. The authors argue that information disclosure has an important role to play in environmental policy -- but only as part of an integrated set of policy tools that includes conventional regulation.

The Limits of Civic Environmentalism

Two key components of civic environmentalism are the devolution of policy control of environmental policy from the federal government to states and localities and the increase of local citizen participation in policy decision making. Using a combination of case studies and interviews, the authors suggest that devolution of policy making and policy implementation may not increase the role of citizens. Rather, due to both the participatory mechanisms used and the larger trends in political participation in democratic societies, citizen involvement may be limited in significant ways. Although evidence is found that citizens can and do influence policy under certain circumstances, there is also cautionary evidence to suggest that this influence is not widespread and does not include representative samples of local communities. The authors conclude that for civic environmentalism to be truly civic, barriers to participation must be acknowledged and overcome.

Skewed Riskscapes and Environmental Injustice: A Case Study of Metropolitan St. Louis

This article presents a case study of Toxics Release Inventory (TRI) air pollution exposure risks across metropolitan St. Louis. The first section critically reviews environmental justice research and related barriers to environmental risk management. Second, the paper offers a conventional analysis of the spatial patterns of TRI facilities and their surrounding census block group demographics for metropolitan St. Louis. Third, the article describes the use of an exposure risk characterization for 319 manufacturers and their air releases of more than 126 toxic pollutants. This information could lead to more practical resolutions of urban environmental injustices. The analysis of TRIs across metropolitan St. Louis shows that minority and low-income residents were disproportionately closer to industrial pollution sources at nonrandom significance levels. Spatial concentrations of minority residents averaged nearly 40% within one kilometer of St. Louis TRI sites compared to 25% elsewhere. However, one-fifth of the region’s air pollution exposure risk over a decade was spatially concentrated among only six facilities on the southwestern border of East St. Louis. This disproportionate concentration of some of the greatest pollution risk would never be considered in most conventional environmental justice analyses. Not all pollution exposure risk is average, and the worst risks deserve more attention from environmental managers assessing and mitigating environmental injustices.

Skewed Riskscapes and Gentrified Inequities: Environmental Exposure Disparities in Seattle, Washington

OBJECTIVES Few studies have considered the sociohistorical intersection of environmental injustice and gentrification; a gap addressed by this case study of Seattle, Washington. This study explored the advantages of integrating air toxic risk screening with gentrification research to enhance proximity and health equity analysis methodologies. It was hypothesized that Seattles industrial air toxic exposure risk was unevenly dispersed, that gentrification stratified the citys neighborhoods, and that the inequities of both converged. METHODS Spatial characterizations of air toxic pollution risk exposures from 1990 to 2007 were combined with longitudinal cluster analysis of census block groups in Seattle, Washington, from 1990 to 2000. RESULTS A cluster of air toxic exposure inequality and socioeconomic inequity converged in 1 area of south central Seattle. Minority and working class residents were more concentrated in the same neighborhoods near Seattles worst industrial pollution risks. CONCLUSIONS Not all pollution was distributed equally in a dynamic urban landscape. Using techniques to examine skewed riskscapes and socioeconomic urban geographies provided a foundation for future research on the connections among environmental health hazard sources, socially vulnerable neighborhoods, and health inequity.

Environmental Information Disclosure and Risk Reduction among the States

In what has become a rite of spring, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agen cy (EPA) each year publishes a report of the latest data from the Toxics Release In ventory (TRI). This prominent information disclosure program is grounded in the as sumption that revealing manufacturing pol lution information will spur better industrial environmental performance (Graham and Miller 2001; Hamilton 2005).These data and the innovative program from which they are generated have received considerable scrutiny among researchers. Yet most of this research analyzes national or facility-level trends (Grant, Jones, and Bergesen 2002; Grant, Jones, and Trautner 2004) rather than variation among the states. Although researchers interested in state variations have studied other kinds of

RESEARCH ARTICLE: Tools of Environmental Justice and Meaningful Involvement

Environmental justice policy goals encompass the fair treatment and the meaningful involvement of all people in environmental policy formation and implementation. Few studies consider how new environmental justice programs foster meaningful involvement; this study addresses this gap by examining seven years of an environmental justice small grants program implemented by the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). We frame our research in the theory of environmental discourses, dividing policy implementation among adherents with a managerial, pluralist, or communitarian perception of remedies to environmental injustice. We hypothesize that EPA awards will emphasize the managerial and pluralist discourses. Our studys empirical foundation included a content analysis of documents on 736 small grant awards. We supplemented this data with 23 interviews of grant recipients and four interviews with EPA officials. During seven years, more than half of the grants (58%, or 501) funded programs to primarily increase environmental justice information in the recipient community. Grants for technical capacity came in a distant second (21%, or 186) of the programs funded by EPA. Organizational efforts were the third most frequent award, representing 14% of all grants. Finally, only 7% of awards funded an initiative to expand public participation in environmental decisions. The EPA policy objectives included the goal of building participatory capacity in the design and implementation of local environmental decisions; however, funded programs emphasized efforts to generate and disseminate information, instead of building civic capacities for citizens to use information in meaningful ways. We conclude that environmental justice practitioners should better balance technical and informational efforts with “civic-minded” capacity-building programs.