Voting restriction laws are a threat to environmental justice
By: Daniel Propp
Residents of Houston’s Fifth Ward neighborhood know that their zip code threatens their health. Creosote pollution from a nearby railyard has left the neighborhood with a cancer rate 3.6 times the regional average. For years, local residents have sought help from the state, to little avail. With the passage of a new voter restriction law, this may get even more difficult.
Fresh off an election in which record turnout delivered both Congress and the Presidency to the Democrats, Republican state legislators have drafted 272 bills restricting access to the ballot box. Couched in language about election security, these bills display a clear intent to disenfranchise likely Democratic voters. In the process they may expand and entrench environmental racism.
In the United States, access to a healthy environment is not shared equally. Black Americans are three times more likely to die from exposure to pollution than white Americans. This is because Black Americans are 75% more likely to live near facilities that produce hazardous waste. Centuries of exclusion from the decision-making process have left minority communities saddled with the polluting industrial facilities that whiter or more affluent communities refused to accept.
But these communities are fighting back. In the past year, activists have succeeded in blocking pipelines and highways that threatened the health of historically marginalized communities. And with the creation of an Environmental Justice Advisory Council, the Biden Administration has signaled that equity will be at the center of its climate policy. These victories are the results of a sustained effort by activists and communities to exercise their right to a healthy environment.
New voting laws in Georgia, Florida, and Texas threaten this progress. These laws, all passed in the last two months, contain provisions that are likely to disproportionately restrict access to the ballot in the communities most heavily impacted by environmental racism. Georgia’s law, for instance, limits each county’s absentee ballot drop boxes to one for every 100,000 residents or one for every early voting location, whichever number is smaller. Under this law, Fulton and DeKalb Counties – two counties in Metropolitan Atlanta – will be some of the most impacted, losing 56 of the 70 drop boxes they collectively had available in 2020. These counties have some of the worst air quality in the state, with the highest average concentrations of nitrogen dioxide and carbon monoxide pollution, and the sixth highest particulate pollution. They also have a high proportion of Black residents, accounting for 45% and 55% of their populations, respectively.
The story is similar in Florida and Texas, where the new laws place restrictions on both the deployment and availability of ballot drop boxes in densely populated areas, the same areas where pollution presents the most serious health risk. Collectively, these measures amount to a reduction in the voting power of the residents who face the greatest environmental hazard.
Voting is, for many, the first line of defense against environmental racism. In Georgia, voters elect members to the Public Service Commission, which regulates electricity providers in the state and recently came under scrutiny for electricity shutoffs in low-income neighborhoods during the pandemic. In Texas, voters elect members to the Texas Railroad Commission, which oversees pipeline siting, oil and gas extraction, and hazardous liquid disposal. Voters have weighed in on taxation of hazardous waste facilities (Georgia), restrictions on offshore oil and gas leasing (Florida), and pollution control measures (Texas). Most importantly, voters in each state elect a governor, who oversees the state’s environmental protection agency. For the residents of the Fifth Ward in Houston, the Commission on Environmental Quality is the only route to protection against deadly creosote pollution.
When a state reduces the voting power of the communities suffering the most from pollution, it strips them of their right to choose a healthy environment. In Georgia, Florida, and Texas – and across the country – people of color continue to suffer pollution-related health impacts because they had no say in the planning process. By restricting access to the voting booth, these new voting laws will ensure that this environmental racism persists.
Air pollution claims the lives of 100,000 Americans every year. Most of them have no say over what goes into the air they breathe. For these people, and for millions of others, the only avenue to a safer environment is through the ballot box. With the new voting laws, even this modicum of environmental justice may go up in smoke.