Proposed pipelines and environmental justice: Exploring the association between race, socioeconomic status, and pipeline proposals in the United States.

Abstract

The current natural gas and oil boom in North America requires new pipelines which pose environmental risks from the wellhead to their destinations. The environmental justice literature suggests that minority populations, people with low socio-economic status, and rural communities are disproportionally exposed to risks associated with potentially harmful land uses. Using data from the 2015 five-year American Community Survey and pipeline route data compiled by The FracTracker Alliance, this study tests whether the above assumptions are true for proposed FERC permitted natural gas transmission pipelines in the United States for which planned routes have been made available. Using binary logistic regression, the study provides only limited, and in some cases contradictory, support for these hypotheses. Although a higher share of highly educated residents significantly decreases the likelihood of a pipeline proposal in a census tract, a higher poverty rate also significantly lowers this probability. Only the share of Black and Asian residents is significantly (negatively) associated with pipeline proposals. However, to test whether this holds true for built pipelines, reliable routing data are needed, which are considered confidential in the United States.