Officials exploited the Spanish-language issue to eclipse dump permit scrutiny

Evidence

As part of the permitting process for the incinerator, Kings County issued an Environmental Impact Report (EIR). The Environmental Impact Report was about 300 pages long, with another 700 pages of appendices, for a total of about 1,000 pages. Kettleman City residents, 40 percent monolingual Spanish speakers, 95 percent Latino, said to Kings County, “Look, to include us in this decision, you need to translate these documents into Spanish.” Kings County was unresponsive. The County decision makers likely did not want to set a precedent; if they translated the EIR, they would have to translate documents in other situations, which is something the people of Kettleman City thought would probably be a good idea. Chem Waste, in a generous offer, translated a five-page executive summary and distributed that to every household in Kettleman City. English speakers in Kings County thus had about 1,000 pages of data to pore over, while Spanish speakers had five pages. — Luke W. Cole and Sheila R. Foster, From the Ground Up, 72 (#contradicts, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Monolingual Spanish residents were excluded by an untranslated environmental review — Luke W. Cole and Sheila R. Foster, From the Ground Up: Environmental…, 72

Related

• Monolingual Spanish residents were excluded by an untranslated environmental review (similarity 0.92)

Broader Connections

• Monolingual Spanish residents were excluded by an untranslated environmental review #contradicts (0.80) — Luke W. Cole and Sheila R. Foster, From the Ground Up, 72