A state-funded report formally advised siting toxic facilities in poor, rural, minority communities
Evidence
Members of El Pueblo also found out about a 1984 report done for the California Waste Management Board. That report, known popularly as the Cerrell Report, and paid for California taxpayers’ dollars, suggested to companies and localities that were seeking to site garbage incinerators that the communities that would offer the least resistance to such incinerators were rural communities, poor communities, communities whose residents had low educational levels, communities that were highly Catholic, communities with fewer than 25,000 residents, and communities whose residents were employed in resource-extractive jobs like mining, timber, or agriculture. When members of El Pueblo looked around Kettleman City, they were startled. “The Cerell report fit us to a T,” says Mary Lou Mares, one of the leaders of El Pueblo. The incinerator proposal suddenly also made sense to Kettleman residents: “If there’s a report that specifically tells them what to look for, of course they’re going to target us,” observes Mares. — Luke W. Cole and Sheila R. Foster, From the Ground Up, 61
Categorization
- SEED: The Cerrell Report could anchor an article on how ‘least resistance’ targeting became institutionalized siting doctrine paid for by taxpayers themselves.
- SHARE: Send to anyone teaching environmental law or EJ — the report is a documented smoking gun of state-subsidized environmental racism.
- recurring: this claim recurs 2 times within its source
- XREF: connects to: National studies already show enough racial disparity in toxic siting to demand causal investigation; A state-funded consulting report instructed waste companies to target poor, uneducated communities; The 1984 Cerrell Report told industry how to site waste plants in low-opposition communities — Luke W. Cole and Sheila R. Foster, From the Ground Up: Environmental…, 356
Broader Connections
- The 1984 Cerrell Report told industry how to site waste plants in low-opposition communities
#expands(0.92) — Luke W. Cole and Sheila R. Foster, From the Ground Up, 356