The EPA Is Dropping Climate Justice Investigations Left and Right

By Willy Blackmore Originally appeared in Word in Black Mississippi between New Orleans and Baton Rouge that cannot be disputed. It’s a fact that, before the Civil War, the area was home to a number of sugarcane plantations; residents in many of the majority Black communities found along the river descended from people who were enslaved to work those cane fields.& It’s a fact, too, that, starting in the mid-20th century, many of the former plantation sites were developed as chemical plants, including many that manufacture plastics. Now, the cancer rates in the predominantly Black communities that sit next to those plastic plants are far, far higher than the national average.& Those facts are the basis not only for the area’s infamous nickname, Cancer Alley, but also the deeply held belief by many who live there that it’s because so many of the residents are Black that the chemical companies sought to build there in the first place. After decades of inaction, the Environmental Protection Agency was poised to do something about those facts last year — but even after a lawsuit tanked an investigation, the very foundation of the EPA’s ability to investigate and act on these kinds of...