Race, not chance, determined toxic waste site placement in Houston

Evidence

His 1979 study had discovered that all five city-owned landfills were located in black neighborhoods. Moreover, “Six out of eight city-owned incinerators were in black neighborhoods,” he recalled in a 2017 interview with the Union of Concerned Scientists. “And more than 80 percent of the garbage dumped in the city from the 1930s up to 1978 was being dumped in black neighborhoods. Black people only made up a quarter of Houston’s population at the time.”9 — Harriet A. Washington, A Terrible Thing to Waste, 1208

Categorization

• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Harriet A. Washington, A Terrible Thing to Waste, 1208
• recurring: this claim recurs 2 times within its source
• XREF: connects to: Race, not income, best predicts where toxic waste sites are located — Harriet A. Washington, A Terrible Thing to Waste, 465; Officials sited toxic PCB dumping in a black county despite contrary scientific criteria — Harriet A. Washington, A Terrible Thing to Waste, 1198; Race is the strongest predictor of hazardous waste facility siting in the US — David Schlosberg, Defining Environmental Justice:…, 208