Environmental Justice and Activism in Indianapolis by Fuller Trevor K.;

Author:Fuller, Trevor K.;
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780739188408
Publisher: Lexington Books

Notes

1. Within Indianapolis there are other neighborhoods or communities which one could argue currently house environmental hazards. However, rather than simply assess communities with numerous or particularly challenging environmental hazards, I chose to base my selection of the study areas on the long-standing historical presence of environmental hazards of several forms. The study areas are unique in this way relative to most other parts of Indianapolis.

2. Many cities in the United States take inventory of existing or potential brownfield sites. However, until more recently, such information was rarely shared with the public. City administrations often felt it would reflect poorly on their city. Instead, cities are finding that more commercial and redevelopment interest occurs when such information is easily made available to the public.

3. This is a particularly interesting trend in environmental justice, especially within Indianapolis. The presence of old, abandoned, perhaps even unknown hazards in AfricanAmerican communities like Martindale-Brightwood compared to the presence of active, operating facilities (i.e., hazards), and/or regulatory enforcement actions in lower-income white communities like West Indianapolis. This illustrates a much deeper injustice along racial lines whereby disinvestment and decline tend to also mean the retreat of consistent environmental agency oversight and/or monitoring.

4. This was a quote from a resident of Martindale-Brightwood at a community meeting in which Marion County Health Department staff explained to residents how they could continue to garden despite the known history of lead contamination. In particular, specific types of fruits/vegetables were suggested that tend to store metals they take up in their leaves rather than in the meat of the fruit or vegetable.

5. Several Martindale-Brightwood residents were quite upset with the settlement between the US EPA and National Lead Industries. They felt the extent of sampling and remediation was too small in area. Some residents felt they could have high levels of lead but not know it as they were at the edge of the compromised sampling area. More recently, within the past two years, unrelated sampling by a group of high school students revealed elevated levels of lead in surface soil, prompting more recent expressions of fear and mistrust among some residents in Martindale-Brightwood.

6. To make matters worse the park in question housed baseball fields where little league baseball games were often played, thereby rendering young children more vulnerable to the contamination.

7. As an update, the building structure on the site of the former National Lead Industries property was finally razed in 2011.

8. In particular, the closing of the Daimler-Chrysler Foundry certainly would have been a major part of the reduction of total emissions in West Indianapolis.

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