Impaired Water Hazard Zones: Mapping Intersecting Environmental Health Vulnerabilities and Polluter Disproportionality

Raoul Liévanos

doi:10.3390/ijgi7110433

Abstract

This study advanced a rigorous spatial analysis of surface water-related environmental health vulnerabilities in the California Bay-Delta region, USA, from 2000 to 2006. It constructed a novel hazard indicator—“impaired water hazard zones’’—from regulatory estimates of extensive non-point-source (NPS) and point-source surface water pollution, per section 303(d) of the U.S. Clean Water Act. Bivariate and global logistic regression (GLR) analyses examined how established predictors of surface water health-hazard exposure vulnerability explain census block groups’ proximity to impaired water hazard zones in the Bay-Delta. GLR results indicate the spatial concentration of Black disadvantage, isolated Latinx disadvantage, low median housing values, proximate industrial water pollution levels, and proximity to the Chevron oil refinery—a disproportionate, “super emitter”, in the Bay-Delta—significantly predicted block group proximity to impaired water hazard zones. A geographically weighted logistic regression (GWLR) specification improved model fit and uncovered spatial heterogeneity in the predictors of block group proximity to impaired water hazard zones. The modal GWLR results in Oakland, California, show how major polluters beyond the Chevron refinery impair the local environment, and how isolated Latinx disadvantage was the lone positively significant population vulnerability factor. The article concludes with a discussion of its scholarly and practical implications.

Highlights

IntroductionCase studies of successive Bay-Delta water management and planning processes in the 2000s found that low-income and nonwhite people representing water justice interests were systematically excluded from those processes [4,5]
Three surface water toxic release facilities affiliated with E-D Coat, Inc.; the Pennzoil-Quaker State Co., and the Lesaffre Yeast Corp. are plotted in Figure 13, Map B, with gray points
Studies spanning the environmental health and inequality literature are increasingly focusing on the problem of “water injustice”, its sociospatial dimensions that put people and places at heightened risk of exposure to a number of water-related environmental health hazards [1,2,3]

Summary

Introduction

Case studies of successive Bay-Delta water management and planning processes in the 2000s found that low-income and nonwhite people representing water justice interests were systematically excluded from those processes [4,5]. People from those same backgrounds, as well as those with limited education attainment and English-speaking ability, tend to experience heightened risk of exposure to surface water-related environmental health hazards in the Bay-Delta. The pathway to these exposure vulnerabilities include residential segregation near

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Results

Conclusion