Environmental Justice and Expert Knowledge in the Wake of a Disaster

Abstract

The aftermath of Hurricane Katrina provides an important lens into the various dimensions environmental justice in New Orleans. In particular, the hurricane served to highlight disparities in health and well-being that already existed in the region and to foreground the vulnerabilities of poor, working class, and minority communities. Disputes over local vs cosmo politan knowledge and questions about whose science and whose knowl edge 'counts' in the reclamation of the city play out in the politics of rebuilding this historic place. The US environmental justice (EJ) movement of the past several decades, a hybrid of traditional environmental and social justice concerns, has primarily focused on two issues: (1) the siting and expansion of haz ardous and undesirable facilities in poor and minority communities; and (2) the effort to remediate, relocate, and/or pay damages to members of poor and minority communities affected by pollution. Louisiana has been a focus of this movement, with citizens' groups fighting a variety of injustices from the siting of hazardous industries in minority communities to building affordable housing on superfund sites (Roberts & Toffolon-Weiss, 2001). A good example of the EJ movement is the activism that has taken place in Louisiana's Cancer Alley, an 85-mile stretch of the Mississippi River between New Orleans and Baton Rouge that is home to more than 130 petrochemical plants and petroleum processors interspersed between numerous rural, urban, and suburban communities. The public controver sies that have played out in the region, largely driven by the citizens' desire to protect or clean up their environment, serve to illustrate intersections between EJ and science studies. In particular, the public understanding and use of science has played an important role in the various debates and has helped shape regulation, enforcement, and remediation (Allen, 2003). Science has often been used strategically as a weapon in the context of envi ronmental controversy, with each side each having its own, often unequal, defenses. Furthermore, the integration of environmental issues with social justice concerns engendered a broader conception of what counts as a