The Environmental Justice Movement: A California Study of EPA Superfund Cleanups

This research paper seeks to explore the environmental justice movement in California, through specifically examining the cleanup of EPA Superfund sites. In 1980, the Environmental Protection Agency created the Superfund list, consisting of the nation's worst toxic waste sites, which the EPA has committed to clean. This paper qualitatively analyzes the cities/counties near two Superfund sites in California, one that has been permanently cleaned and another that has yet to be cleaned. While many factors may influence the EPA to clean up certain sites over others, this paper focuses on whether race, income/education, representation, and community groups play a role in the permanent cleanup of a site. I initially hypothesized that the site with a higher non-white population and lower educational attainment/income was less likely to receive permanent cleanup. This hypothesis was not supported in my analysis of the two selected sites. I also hypothesized that the site with lower levels of bureaucratic representation would be less likely to experience permanent cleanup, however it seems that distributional equity may have played more of an influential role on the EPA than bureaucratic representation. My results regarding the presence of community organizations were inconclusive, though some groups were found to have had access to the EPA. While examining more sites across the U.S. would further research in this area, this project serves as a basis of understanding toxic waste sites in vulnerable communities and the EPA's role in the environmental justice movement.