From Workshop to Waste Magnet: Environmental Inequality in the Philadelphia Region

From Workshop to Waste Magnet

Nature, Society, and Culture

Scott Frickel, Series Editor

A sophisticated and wide-ranging sociological literature analyzing nature-society-culture interactions has blossomed in recent decades. This book series provides a platform for showcasing the best of that scholarship: carefully crafted empirical studies of socio-environmental change and the effects such change has on ecosystems, social institutions, historical processes, and cultural practices.

The series aims for topical and theoretical breadth. Anchored in sociological analyses of the environment, Nature, Society, and Culture is home to studies employing a range of disciplinary and interdisciplinary perspectives and investigating the pressing socio-environmental questions of our time—from environmental inequality and risk, to the science and politics of climate change and serial disaster, to the environmental causes and consequences of urbanization and warmaking, and beyond.

Available titles in the Nature, Society, and Culture series:

Diane C. Bates, Superstorm Sandy: The Inevitable Destruction and Reconstruction of the Jersey Shore

Cody Ferguson, This Is Our Land: Grassroots Environmentalism in the Late Twentieth Century

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Stephanie A. Malin, The Price of Nuclear Power: Uranium Communities and Environmental Justice

Diane Sicotte, From Workshop to Waste Magnet: Environmental Inequality in the Philadelphia Region

From Workshop to Waste Magnet

Environmental Inequality in the Philadelphia Region

Diane Sicotte

Rutgers University Press

New Brunswick, New Jersey and London

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Sicotte, Diane, 1960– author.

Title: From workshop to waste magnet : environmental inequality in the Philadelphia region / Diane Sicotte.

Description: New Brunswick, New Jersey : Rutgers University Press, 2016. | Series: Nature, society, and culture | Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2015047303| ISBN 9780813574202 (hardcover : alk. paper) | ISBN 9780813574196 (pbk. : alk. paper) | ISBN 9780813574219 (e-book (epub)) | ISBN 9780813574226 (e-book (web pdf))

Subjects: LCSH: Environmental justice—Pennsylvania—Philadelphia Region. | Environmental degradation—Social aspects—Pennsylvania—Philadelphia Region. | Environmental health—Pennsylvania—Philadelphia Region. | Minorities—Health and hygiene—Pennsylvania—Philadelphia Region. | Hazardous waste sites—Environmental aspects—Pennsylvania—Philadelphia Region. | Philadelphia Region (Pa.)—Environmental conditions.

Classification: LCC GE235.P4 S53 2016 | DDC 363.7009748/11—dc23

LC record available at http://lccn.loc.gov/2015047303

A British Cataloging-in-Publication record for this book is available from the British Library.

Copyright © 2016 by Diane Sicotte

All rights reserved

No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without written permission from the publisher. Please contact Rutgers University Press, 106 Somerset Street, New Brunswick, NJ 08901. The only exception to this prohibition is fair use as defined by U.S. copyright law.

Visit our website: http://rutgerspress.rutgers.edu

Contents

List of Figures

List of Maps

List of Tables

Acknowledgments

Introduction

Chapter 1. Measuring Environmental Inequalities in the Philadelphia Area in 2010

Chapter 2. Theorizing Urban Environmental Inequality

Chapter 3. The Rise of Industrial Philadelphia

Chapter 4. Environmental Inequality from 1950 to 1969

Chapter 5. The Making of Waste Magnets: Environmental Burdening after 1970

Chapter 6. Intersectionality and Environmental Inequality in the Philadelphia Region

Chapter 7. Toward a Rust Belt Theory of U.S. Environmental Inequality

Appendix: Nature of This Study

Notes

Index

About the Author

Figures

1. Carole Burnett, Chester resident

2. Monument marking William Penn’s landing in Chester City, 1682

3. Mike and Jackie Saier, Port Richmond residents

4. Layering of industrial and social landscapes in the Philadelphia area

5. Theoretical representation of the processes through which predominantly minority and predominantly white Philadelphia area communities became extensively burdened

Maps

1. Philadelphia area communities by percentage non-Hispanic white, 2010

2. Philadelphia area communities by median household income, 2010

3. Philadelphia area extensively burdened communities, 2010

4. Philadelphia area communities by racial/ethnic composition, 2010

5. Philadelphia area communities by social class, 2010

6. Philadelphia industrial districts, c. 1830

7. Philadelphia area affluent communities, c. 1880

8. Philadelphia City dumps, c. 1929

9. Philadelphia factories, 1950

10. Philadelphia area pollution-intensive factories, 1950

11. Getis-Ord Hotspot Analysis for pollution-intensive factories, 1950

12. Philadelphia Census tracts by percentage white, 1950

13. Number of factories per community, 1950

14. Number of factories by products, per community, 1950

15. Census tracts in the Bridesburg-Kensington-Richmond Planning Analysis Area, 2010

16. Getis-Ord Hotspot Analysis showing number of environmental hazards per community, 2010

Tables

1. Environmental hazard point system

2. Descriptive statistics for communities by number of environmental hazards and hazard points, 2010

3. Definition of racial/ethnic composition categories

4. Social class cutpoints (points)

5. Black male representation in manufacturing industries, Philadelphia, 1880

6. Descriptive statistics for Philadelphia Census tracts, 1950

7. Number (%) of waste disposal facilities and factories in pollution-intensive industries by Philadelphia Planning Analysis Area, 1950–1959

8. Philadelphia area counties’ share of population, in number and (%), 1860–2010

9. Philadelphia area incinerators and hazardous waste facilities as of 2010, by year opened for operation

10. Number (%) of total manufacturing jobs, by county, 1951–2009

11. Percentage change in number of manufacturing jobs, by county, 1951–2009

12. Number of employees by industry and racial composition of all employees, Philadelphia-Camden-Wilmington Metropolitan Statistical Area, 2010

13. Annual average wage by industry, 2010

14. Population, racial/ethnic composition, and median household income/family income for Camden City, New Jersey, 1950–2010

15. Population, racial/ethnic composition, and household income/family income for Chester City, Pennsylvania, 1950–2010

16. Data sources for environmental hazards

17. Communities in the 90th percentile for environmental burdening, by hazard points, number of hazards, and community characteristics

18. Formula for measuring racial integration with comparative approach

19. Cutpoints for racial/ethnic composition categories

20. Cutpoints for social class category

21. Average racial/ethnic composition by racial/ethnic composition category, 2010

22. Average median household income and median home value by racial/ethnic composition category, 2010

23. Average economic, educational, and occupational characteristics by social class category, 2010

24. Average racial/ethnic composition by social class category, 2010

25. Risk ratios and 95% confidence intervals (in parentheses) measuring risk for extensive burdening (mean number of hazards shown in italics)

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank the generous and knowledgeable people who helped me with this project, including Carole Burnett, Sarah Wilson (not her real name), Chris Mizes of the Philadelphia Clean Air Council, Michele Kondo, Mike and Jackie Saier, and the Reverend Horace Strand. The resources of the libraries of the University of Pennsylvania, the Temple Urban Archives, the Philadelphia City Archives, and the National Historical Geographic Information System at the University of Minnesota were invaluable to this project, as was the research expertise of Latanya Jenkins at Temple University.

Others who provided feedback and help on the manuscript include David Pellow, Scott Frickel, Kelly Joyce, Tanya Nieri, Douglas Porpora, Mimi Sheller, and my anonymous reviewers. Thank you all so much.

Introduction

Philadelphia is known for its cheesesteaks, pretzels, and the statue of Rocky near the steps of the Art Museum. But among those who care about environmental justice, Philadelphia and the towns surrounding it are also known for their stark and shocking environmental inequalities. Some area residents live in clean, leafy neighborhoods far from industrial pollution, while others are engaged in a daily neighborhood struggle with polluted air, multiple waste disposal facilities, relentless truck traffic, and the legacy of toxic manufacturers long gone.

Camden City, New Jersey, and Chester City, Pennsylvania, are two such places in the Philadelphia area where important legal battles were fought more than ten years ago. For a moment, it seemed as though poor people of color engaged in continual struggles to fend off the latest proposal for the fifth, tenth, or thirtieth polluting facility for their neighborhood might be able to block the latest one using Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. After all, their lawyers reasoned, it should not matter whether intentional discrimination was occurring—all that really mattered was the grossly unequal outcome, and the disparate impact it visited upon poor people of color. But the U.S. Supreme Court viewed it differently, and in its 2001 decision in Alexander v. Sandoval the court ruled that communities could no longer sue state or federal regulators for actions resulting in disparate impact.¹ And so, in both communities, the struggle continues.²

As industrial suburbs of Philadelphia, Camden and Chester are two among many other such communities that form a sort of inner ring around Philadelphia, close to the Delaware River. In these inner-ring towns, and in the city of Philadelphia, are many places where heavy manufacturing in the primary metals, machine manufacturing, chemical, petroleum refining, rubber, and shipbuilding industries took place from the early 1800s to the 1970s. In the history of people and industry in the Philadelphia area, 1950 was an important year: it marked the first tiny trickle of what in the 1960s and 1970s would become a flood of people and businesses out of the city and into the surrounding suburbs, and the development of more suburbs farther away from the city. This is why we need to examine the area as a whole—the suburbs as well as the city—to understand the development of the environmental inequalities that will be revealed in chapter 1. For this reason my study area includes, on the Pennsylvania side of the Delaware River, Philadelphia (which is both the City and County of Philadelphia) and Bucks, Chester, Delaware, and Montgomery Counties; and on the New Jersey side of the Delaware River, Burlington, Camden, and Gloucester Counties.

The industrial communities within these counties began to lose manufacturing jobs in the 1970s, losses that changed the social fabric of some industrial towns and neighborhoods forever. Many of the factories are gone, but the legacy of industrial land use has drawn new waste disposal facilities that bring with them many of the drawbacks of industry, but without the plentiful jobs that existed in the past. As a result, many industrial neighborhoods still feel very industrial, but now the odds of meeting a neighborhood resident who is poor or unemployed are much higher than they used to be.

Some industrial towns and neighborhoods are more racially diverse today than they were before the 1970s, with more African American and Hispanic residents and fewer non-Hispanic white residents. Throughout their history they were always ethnically diverse, with many claiming German, Polish, Greek, Russian, Ukrainian, and other ethnic heritages. But job loss led to population loss and the departure of a large proportion of white residents from some communities, leaving some of them predominantly minority, while others remain predominantly white. Some are extremely poor, while others rank somewhere between poor and middle-class. Others are solidly middle-class. But most share a legacy of manufacturing activities that were established early (in the Philadelphia area, by about 1820) near a body of water, a situation very common in Rust Belt cities in the Northeast and Midwest. Although this industrial history has left a great deal of toxic pollution in its wake, the present situation is a vast improvement over conditions in the past. For example, in the 1940s the stretch of the Delaware River bordering Philadelphia was called one of the most grossly polluted areas in the United States.³

The worst environmental abuses were curtailed in 1970 by the creation of a new set of laws and the federal, state, and local environmental protection agencies to administer and enforce those laws. But although there is less toxic pollution in the Philadelphia area today than there was before 1970, its distribution has changed: more facilities producing unhealthy effluents and poor environmental conditions now tend to be concentrated in fewer places. In chapter 1, I will show which thirty-three communities bear more environmental burdens than 90 percent of all communities in the Philadelphia area. But for now, let’s take a look at life in two of these extensively burdened communities: Chester City in Delaware County, and the Port Richmond neighborhood in Philadelphia. Both of these communities border the Delaware River.

Chester City: Life in an Extensively Burdened Waterfront Community

Let’s begin with Chester City, Pennsylvania, the home of Carole Burnett (pictured in figure 1) and Sarah Wilson (not her real name).

Figure 1. Carole Burnett, resident of Chester, Pennsylvania, October 2013. Photograph and map by author.

Chester City is an industrial town on the waterfront of the Delaware River. Located in Delaware County surrounded by much wealthier communities, Chester City as of 2010 reported a median household income of $28,698, slightly more than one-third of $74,515, the median household income of the Philadelphia Metropolitan Area as a whole. As of 2010, a greater proportion of people were poor in Chester than in Philadelphia: 29.8 percent of Chester residents had incomes below the federal poverty threshold, and 35.14 percent received public assistance in the form of cash payments or food assistance; while 24.3 percent of Philadelphia residents reported an income below the federal poverty threshold and 30.42 percent received public assistance. Chester is located in affluent Delaware County, where only 9.4 percent reported an income below the poverty threshold and 11.93 percent received public assistance. Seventy-two percent of Chester’s residents were African American, 16 percent were non-Hispanic white, and 9 percent were Hispanic.⁴

Despite a sense of community and the presence of many caring people, Chester faces some daunting social and environmental conditions, and as a result is often viewed by outsiders as a deteriorating, dangerous, and polluted place. Chester suffers from a high violent crime rate, with a 2012 homicide rate of 64.25 per 100,000 inhabitants, many times the national average of 3.3 for cities its size. After being adjusted for population size, Chester’s homicide rate was three times higher than Philadelphia’s homicide rate of 21.51.⁵ In 2014, Chester suffered a record 30 homicides.⁶

From 2001 to 2013, Chester was a food desert without a single grocery store, which meant that residents had to go out of town to buy fresh, healthy food. This posed a severe hardship to Chester households because 33.76 percent lacked access to a car.⁷ These conditions and others have taken their toll on Chester residents’ health: the infant death rate in Chester in 2011 was 14.8 per 1,000 live births, twice the statewide average of 7.2; death rates from cancer, stroke, and lower respiratory disease all were higher in Chester than the Pennsylvania average.⁸

Until at least 1992, efforts to improve things in Chester were blocked by a Republican-controlled city government characterized by residents as one that delivered government functions as personal favors.⁹

In addition to the everyday burdens of poverty, dysfunctional government, poor health, and crime, Chester also faces an extensive array of environmental burdens that add to residents’ problems. Packed into Chester’s six square miles are the Delaware County Regional Water Control Authority water treatment plant (Delcora), which treats 50 million gallons of sewage per day; the Covanta trash incinerator, which burns up to 3,510 tons of trash per day; six manufacturers that produce, use, or store ten thousand pounds or more of one or more hazardous chemicals per year and must report to EPA’s Toxic Release Inventory (TRI); one abandoned hazardous waste site listed on the Superfund; a cement recycling business with a large crusher; and other polluting facilities.

These facilities cause concern among residents such as the woman I’ll call Sarah Wilson, who has lived in Chester since 1973. She says, The Chester residents, the children, we have health issues here. A lot of childhood asthma, a lot of respiratory disease. I even spoke to a couple people—not only did she have multiple sclerosis, but she had friends, at least one or two friends, who also had it. And she was interested in knowing if that was a possible by-product, if you will, of breathing the chemicals here.

In addition to industrial chemicals, Sarah and other residents are concerned about breathing dust from a large cement crusher: And then I know there was the cement crushing facility down there. . . . I’ve spoken with some of the residents in that area . . . they also had problems with the particulates that were blowing off the cement crushing facility . . . you’ve got all this sort of dust flying around. And that’s a particular problem for people with respiratory problems . . . even not being able to open your windows!

Residents must also deal with problems stemming from the constant flow of heavy tractor trailers into Chester, and the effect on their homes: As far as truck traffic, when I’m on the highway, on my way to work, particularly on [Interstate Highway] 95, anytime I see one of those big tractor trailer semi trucks with municipal waste, I know either where it’s goin’ or where it’s comin’ from. You know? And you’re talking about tons of municipal waste, so these trucks are heavy. And I know there are residents down on Second and Booth Streets [near the incinerator], the trucks come down the same street every day. And there was a situation where the foundations of their houses were starting to crack.¹⁰

Carole Burnett, a Chester resident since 1982, told me of how she developed pneumonia after participating in a walking tour of the incinerator and other facilities near the waterfront: I had been informed by my allergist, when he said, ‘Keep your windows closed and keep your air conditioning on.’ Which I thought was strange at the time. But when I took a tour down there . . . the skin around my face, around my mouth started burning . . . within two weeks I had developed walking pneumonia in my left lung.

Carole is concerned about a new plan: last year, the City of New York signed a twenty-year contract with Covanta to send about 30 percent of the city’s 14 million tons of trash to two incinerators, one of which is in Chester. The trash will be transported by barge and train to Wilmington, Delaware. From there it will be trucked into Chester, where Carole is certain its impact will be felt. Well, it’s going to be more trash. It’ll be more funk, more odor. More air pollution going up into the air. More trucks. More truck traffic.¹¹

But like any place that people call home, there is much more to Chester than dirt and dysfunction. Chester residents take pride in Chester’s place in Pennsylvania’s history: William Penn’s first landing in Pennsylvania in 1682 occurred not at Penn’s Landing in Philadelphia as is usually believed, but there in what is today Chester. There is a stone monument in town commemorating this landing (see figure 2).

Figure 2. Monument marking William Penn’s landing in what is now Chester City, Pennsylvania in October 1682. Photograph by author.

Chester used to be a prosperous center of manufacturing. During the Civil War, its shipyard turned out ships for the Union; and each time war broke out, Chester experienced another industrial boom. During World War I, Chester workers found employment at many local manufacturers including the Sun Shipbuilding Company, the Atlantic Refining Company, and Keystone Paving and Construction. In all these industries, black workers worked alongside white ethnic workers.¹² An examination of the directory of Pennsylvania manufacturers in 1950 reveals that fifty-seven factories—31 percent of all the factories in Delaware County—were located in Chester.¹³ Chester also boasted a thriving retail district: in fact, during the 1950s shopping in Chester was so good that it was not unheard of for people to travel there from towns along the affluent Main Line to do their Christmas shopping.¹⁴

The first indications of Chester’s decline came in 1962, when the Ford Motor Company closed its obsolete automobile plant in Chester, and Sun Shipyard laid off thousands.¹⁵ But throughout the 1960s, Chester’s school system was still a source of pride for Chester residents. As Sarah Wilson puts it, If you talked to people who went to elementary school and then to junior high school, there was a sense of pride in the education system. I hear people talk about the teachers they had, how dedicated they were. And then . . . even when I graduated in 1975, there was still the same sense of pride, the sense that you could get a quality education here . . . but sometime after that, in the late ’70s going into the ’80s, things started to decline little by little.¹⁶

Part of the decline was due to an increase in crime. While the crime rate was at an all-time high all across the United States in the early 1980s, almost every newspaper story about Chester was about either its poverty or its high crime rate.¹⁷ People had already been conditioned to view crime and poverty as problems inextricably linked to urban neighborhoods and the African Americans who dwelled there.¹⁸ This racial stigmatization of Chester exacerbated its problems by making it appear to be the right place for dirty and polluting land uses unwanted elsewhere. It also exaggerated the amount of risk faced by white visitors to Chester.

Residents are aware of this stigma and its unfairness, as Carole Burnett related in the story of a recent armed robbery in Chester that ended in the death of a white drugstore clerk: Now we just had a . . . vigil at the Rite Aid [drugstore]. Because a worker in that store that happened to be Caucasian, that everybody liked, Jason, was killed. And immediately you think, oh, Chester, a crime place. All those people that were involved, that they finally arrested, were from Philadelphia.¹⁹

Recent attempts at economic redevelopment along Chester’s waterfront have resulted in the construction of large-scale entertainment complexes including a casino and racetrack and a soccer stadium. But these are in fact projects that can be characterized as exclusionary development as they are generally inaccessible to Chester residents, and bring them no benefit at all.²⁰ Although the casino brings about 8,500 people to Chester each day and thousands come to the soccer stadium on big game days, all are whisked along Highway 291, which divides the waterfront from the poor areas of Chester. None of these visitors have to go through much of Chester, interact with its residents, or patronize its businesses.

When asked if they have seen any benefits from these new facilities, which appear to be taking pains to distance themselves as much as possible from the city in which they are located, Sarah Wilson had this to say: Not to my knowledge . . . not that I can see outwardly. The fact that they even changed the name of it . . . it was Harrah’s Chester. Now it’s Harrah’s Philadelphia. They did that over a year ago. That makes people feel that, what do you think of us? What do you think of the city?²¹

But for the people who call Chester home, it is a city made up of families that has a sense of family, which I interpreted to mean that people feel closer to each other than is implied in the phrase a sense of community. Chester is where parents raised their children and saw their children and grandchildren come back to Chester to live. It’s a city where there are many organizations with dedicated people working to help and mentor youth, and where people fought to get City Hall back after decades of Republican machine control. Most of all, Chester is a city where people aren’t even close to having given up.

Port Richmond: Life in One of Philadelphia’s Oldest Industrial Neighborhoods

Port Richmond, the home of Mike and Jackie Saier (pictured in figure 3) is sometimes called Richmond by residents.

Figure 3. Mike and Jackie Saier at their home in Philadelphia’s Port Richmond neighborhood, August 2013. Photograph and map by author.

It is where people in Philadelphia go for Polish food. Its Polish ethnic flavor is evident from the many Polish groceries and restaurants, the Polish flags on display, and the tall spires of its Catholic churches. Its streets are narrow, lined mostly with well-kept rowhomes, and there is a constant flow of traffic that is choked off every few blocks by construction. Few homes have driveways or garages, and parking is tight. Many couples with children have recently purchased homes here, taking advantage of the relatively affordable prices in this neighborhood and causing the population to get younger.²²

Mike and Jackie’s neighborhood is one of the oldest industrial neighborhoods in Philadelphia, located along the Delaware River. Neighborhood boundaries are always contested in Philadelphia, and there is often no general agreement among residents as to where the boundaries lie. But according to the boundaries used by the City of Philadelphia, there are eight census tracts in Port Richmond, and its racial/ethnic composition is 55 percent non-Hispanic white, 14 percent African American, and 27 percent Hispanic. Its median household income is $28,963—77 percent of Philadelphia’s median household income and 41 percent of that of the Philadelphia Metropolitan Area. But Port Richmond’s non-Hispanic white population is concentrated into the four census tracts closest to the river (where Mike and Jackie live), which average 92 percent white, 1.4 percent black, and 4.36 percent Hispanic. Median household income is $35,702 in these tracts, just slightly less than that of Philadelphia as a whole.²³

Like Chester, Port Richmond is also extensively burdened with environmental hazards. As is true of every industrial neighborhood in Philadelphia, it has been subjected to many decades of intensive industrial use without strong environmental laws. Environmental irresponsibility and neglect is evident in abandoned and crumbling factories, and in fenced-off brownfields and Superfund sites.

But in the Bridesburg neighborhood, which borders Port Richmond, environmental hazards from the old Philadelphia Coke plant lie hidden under a verdant overgrowth of grass and trees. The Philadelphia Coke site covers sixty-eight acres, and hazardous waste is still stored onsite. Until the plant closed in 1982, Philadelphia Coke manufactured fuel for steel plants. All the buildings are gone, and the vacant land enclosed by a chain-link fence appears to be a park. Only by excavating under the soil and sampling for chemicals can the true extent of toxic contamination be revealed.²⁴

Bridesburg is one of two industrial neighborhoods adjoining Port Richmond. In the past, it specialized in manufacturing chemicals and coke to fuel steel plants. As of 2010, it was 95 percent white, 0.45 percent black, and 2.66 percent Hispanic, with a median household income of $44,058 (120 percent of Philadelphia’s median household income of $36,836). The other neighborhood is Kensington, now a low-income neighborhood with the city’s largest concentration of Hispanic residents. As of 2010, Kensington was 40 percent white, 14 percent black, and 39 percent Hispanic, with a median household income of $26,184, or 71 percent of Philadelphia’s median household income.²⁵ In decades past, Kensington specialized in textiles; it has a long history as one of Philadelphia’s oldest industrial districts. The three neighborhoods together make up the Bridesburg-Kensington-Richmond Planning Analysis Area, one of twelve Planning Analysis Areas used by Philadelphia city planners from 1950 to 2010. (In chapter 1, I will outline the results of research including these areas.) Bridesburg-Kensington-Richmond’s 7.39 square miles contain six Toxic Release Inventory facilities; fourteen Superfund sites; two electric power plants; one sewage treatment plant; and two trash transfer facilities (see the appendix for data sources).

Mike Saier, who was born in Port Richmond, and his wife, Jackie, who has lived there since 1968, live in the part of Port Richmond close to the river. They love their neighborhood and have seen environmental conditions improve since the 1970s. Mike recalls what it was like there in the 1950s when the plants were still going: First of all, we had a factory directly across the street, which was a metal galvanizing place. Which used to let off terrible smells day and night. And we had a diesel train go by the front of the house [he points out where the tracks were in the narrow street in front of his house] . . . they’re buried underneath the asphalt out here, they redid ’em about ten years ago. Used to deliver lumber from the yards and chemicals to all the chemical plants around here.²⁶

But their safety and their quality of life are still at risk due to the constant flow of truck traffic through the narrow streets of their neighborhood. They also have serious concerns about what air pollutants are doing to their health, so much so that Jackie spoke at a hearing held by the Environmental Protection Agency: Two summers ago my neighbor’s house on Almond Street was on fire. It started in the kitchen . . . because of a [large] tractor trailer going over [our street], the fire truck couldn’t get by . . . the fireman couldn’t open the fire truck doors [because] they were stuck between a parked car and the tractor trailer . . . the smell from the diesel was overwhelming . . . I had to close my windows it stunk so bad . . . my neighbor later passed away from her burns.

The building that once housed the metal galvanizing plant across the street is now a preschool, and many children play there during and after school every day. Jackie is concerned for the children’s health because they are breathing smoke