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Race and the environment in America

National

Latino

Axios Latino

In August 2015, Steve Benally walked out of his Halchita, Utah, home on the Navajo Nation and heard a warning: Don't use the water. The Gold King Mine near Silverton, Colorado, had spilled toxic wastewater into the Animas River watershed. 

The big picture: Benally would lose his harvest and suffer from secondary health effects, highlighting just one of the environmental dangers some Native Americans, Black Americans and Latinos face from pollution and poor government oversight.

Details: Study after study shows communities of color are exposed to more air and water pollution, lead poisoning and toxic waste than more affluent, white neighborhoods. A few examples:

In Michigan, Flint's drinking water was contaminated with high levels of lead in 2014 after the city changed its water source from the treated Detroit Water and Sewerage Department water to the Flint River — causing a long-lasting public health crisis among heavily Black communities. 

There are now criminal cases working its way through the court system about the Flint water system, as well as state and national programs aimed at remediation there. The water source was switched back, but the legacy of lead pollution, which is especially hazardous to children, will reverberate for a generation or more.

Every October, Black residents of Glades, Florida, suffer through "black snow," a thick soot in the air from the burning of nearby sugar cane fields. Studies show residents have high levels of respiratory distress and asthma.

Hundreds of abandoned uranium mines on the Navajo Nation in Utah, Arizona and New Mexico have polluted water supplies, harmed sheep and caused  cancer. The Environmental Protection Agency entered into $1.7 billion in enforcement agreements and settlements to clean up the mines. 

Residents of Hispanic towns near the site of the 1945 Trinity Test of the atomic bomb say they've suffered rare cancers through generations and faced dismissals from government officials who have refused their pleas for help.

The federal government has never apologized and opens up the Trinity Test site twice a year for tourists. Residents near other testing sites have been compensated. 

Susan Black, who lost her son Sylvester Stanley to Navajo neuropathy, walks by  puddles in depressions of the sandstone less than a mile from the mine where uranium residue was everywhere.

Susan Black, who lost a son to neuropathy, walks by puddles in depressions of the sandstone on the Navajo Nation near a uranium mine. Photo: Gail Fisher/Los Angeles Times via Getty Images

Threat level: Research shows that emissions of tiny particles known as fine particulates are one of the biggest and most unequal environmental killers in the U.S.

A landmark study published in April in Science Advances found that Black, Latino and Asian Americans face higher levels of hazardous particulate exposure than white Americans, regardless of income. 

This is due to their proximity to industry and construction sites and the associated emissions from cars and diesel trucks, researchers found. Overall, this pollution causes up to 200,000 excess deaths annually in the U.S., researchers found — disproportionately people of color. 

In recent years, Democratic presidents — starting with Bill Clinton — have launched initiatives they insisted would address the problems, but there's been little progress.

Now, the Biden administration is putting "environmental justice" into its budget documents, making it a priority across the government.

Biden's EPA defines environmental justice as "the fair treatment and meaningful involvement of all people regardless of race, color, national origin, or income, with respect to the development, implementation, and enforcement of environmental laws, regulations, and policies."

The administration also says it will devote "at least 40%" of the benefits from federal investments in clean energy to disadvantaged communities. 

In addition, the infrastructure bills before Congress include new spending to pay for replacing much of the remaining lead pipes in the country, starting with disadvantaged communities. 

Cleophus Mooney looks at cases of water in his home in Flint, Mich.

Cleophus Mooney looks at cases of water in his home in Flint, Mich. Photos: Seth Herald/AFP via Getty Images

Yes, but: It's too early to know whether any of this will bring significant changes to the communities that need the most help, or whether any of the new spending will even happen.

Much will depend on whether the administration can get its expansive agenda  with numerous environmental justice-related provisions through Congress this fall, including more funding for cleaning up contaminated sites under the Superfund program.

According to a 2020 EPA analysis, 26% of all Black Americans, 29% of all Hispanic Americans and 24% of all households in the U.S. below the poverty level live within three miles of a Superfund site. 

Henry Herrera, 87, shows the lack of hair on the back of his head and jaw resulting from cancer treatment years after he witnessed the Trinity Test.

Henry Herrera, 87, shows the lack of hair on the back of his head and jaw resulting from cancer treatment years after he witnessed the Trinity Test. Photo: Russell Contreras/Axios

The bottom line: We're a long way from knowing whether "environmental justice" plans will actually make Black Americans, Latinos and Native Americans any safer from environmental threats or repair the damage already done.

"We're at least hopeful some Native American and Hispanic people of New Mexico near the Trinity Test site will finally get recognized and compensated," Tina Cordova, co-founder of the Tularosa Basin Downwinders, tells Axios.

1. The toll of environmental racism

Native Americans, Black Americans and Latinos face disproportionate health hazards from pollution and poor government oversight.

Photo illustration of a nuclear mushroom cloud, the Flint Water Plant water tower, and a hand with an i.v.

Photo illustration: Sarah Grillo/Axios. Photo: Geoff Robins/Getty Images

Deep Dive: Hard Truths – Environment

Latin America and Latinos

In August 2015, Steve Benally walked out of his Halchita, Utah, home on the Navajo Nation and heard a warning: Don&#x27;t use the water. The Gold King Mine near Silverton, Colorado, had spilled toxic wastewater into the Animas River watershed. The big picture: Benally would lose his harvest and suffer from secondary health effects, highlighting just one of the environmental dangers some Native Americans, Black Americans and Latinos face from pollution and poor government oversight.

Breaking climate science and policy coverage as extreme weather events reshape communities. Keep tabs on the race to a low carbon economy, which may be bumpy as governments, climate tech startups and major oil and gas companies race to find their niche amid the changing energy landscape.

Energy & Climate

Top stories & latest news on the Federal Reserve, real-time data, plus the biggest shifts happening in the U.S. and global economy.

Economy

2024 will be an election year like no other, as President Biden seeks re-election amid economic uncertainty, two wars and questions about his age. His likely foe, former President Trump, faces felony charges and vows revenge on his political enemies. Meanwhile, Americans generally are dissatisfied with those choices and are divided over immigration, race, education and more.

Politics & Policy

After a record economic expansion, the coronavirus pandemic sent the U.S. economy into a recession as unemployment soared to staggering heights. The country now faces urgent questions about how much stimulus is needed for reeling consumers and businesses, and what a recovery might look like.

Economy & Business

On a cool July dawn, 11-year-old Henry Herrera and his father were outside their home in Tularosa, New Mexico, when they saw a bright light and heard the boom of what turned out to be the world's first atomic bomb test. 

Hours later, their home was covered in ash.

Why it matters: Three-quarters of a century later, Hispanic and Mescalero Apache families and descendants of those living near the Trinity Test are dealing with rare cancers that have devastated nearly four generations, while the federal government ignored, dismissed and forgot them.

Those families, mainly Latino and Native American, now want acknowledgment and compensation like white families near U.S. nuclear testing sites in other states. But time is running out. 

The big picture: "The military didn't tell us a damn thing. Not even, 'I'm sorry.' They didn't hurt nothing but a bunch of Mexicans who lived there, I guess,"  Herrera, now 87, tells Axios.

No president, from Harry Truman to Joe Biden, has apologized to residents near the Trinity Test or openly advocated for New Mexico to be included in the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act.

Details: On July 16, 1945, the U.S. Army detonated an atomic bomb developed through the Manhattan Project by scientists at the then-secret community of Los Alamos.

The bomb exploded at 5:29 a.m. in a desert valley called Jornada del Muerto, or Journey of the Dead. 

Its thunderous roar during the rainy season knocked people from breakfast tables in Tularosa and sent others on the Mescalero Apache reservation into hiding.

At first, the blast's radioactive cloud blew away from Hispanic villages and Indigenous communities, but New Mexico's swirling winds brought it back, covering those communities with debris.

Henry Herrera describes seeing the Trinity Test explosion from his parents' Tularosa, N.M. home in 1945.

Henry Herrera describes seeing the Trinity Test explosion from his parents' Tularosa home in 1945. Photo: Russell Contreras/Axios

What they're saying: "My mother had just hung her white clothes on the clothesline, and god dang! You should have seen the god dang dust that rolled all over town. She was so mad that she had to wash them all over again," Herrera remembers. 

What people didn't know at the time is that the clothes became radioactive. The family kept using them for years, he says.

Curious residents also went to ground zero to picnic and took artifacts, including the radioactive green glass known as trinitite.

Some even took contaminated pieces of cloth left behind to make christening dresses.

A black and white image of the mushroom cloud from the Trinity test in New Mexico.

The Trinity Test in New Mexico. Photo: Corbis via Getty Images

The intrigue: Only after the U.S. dropped atomic bombs about a month later on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki would southern New Mexico residents learn any details about the Trinity Test.

Residents over the years developed rare forms of cancer, holding bake sales to raise money for treatment, not knowing what was happening. 

Total health care costs and money lost for people living in the affected four New Mexico counties are unknown.

Herrera had his jaw reconstructed after suffering from mouth cancer. His family and other residents believe such cancers are related to the atomic bomb test.

Don't forget: It wasn't just the first bomb that was a concern. During the Cold War, the U.S. government stepped up its production of nuclear weapons by mining uranium all over the Navajo Nation.

There, the birth rate of the sheep dramatically dropped and surviving lambs struggled to walk. Other lambs were born without eyes. 

Navajo uranium miners also developed cancer and grappled with health care bills. Many ventured into the desert to die alone, since it's considered a bad omen to die at home.

There are over 500 abandoned uranium mines today on the Navajo Nation, according to the EPA. Homes and water sources near those now-closed mines have elevated levels of radiation.

A Navajo woman feeds sheep in a shack on the Navajo Nation in 2005.

A Navajo woman feeds sheep in a shack on the Navajo Nation in 2005. Photo: Gail Fisher/Los Angeles Times via Getty Images

What's next: Tina Cordova, co-founder of the Tularosa Basin Downwinders Consortium that advocates for families affected by the Trinity Test, tells Axios that residents of southern New Mexico are hopeful about finally being included in the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act. 

RECA is a federal law originally passed by Congress in 1990 to award financial reparations to Nevada Test Site downwinders and later uranium workers in other states.

The act is scheduled to sunset on July 15, 2022, but the Hispanic village of Tularosa and the Mescalero Apache Reservation were never included in the law because Trinity Test downwinders were left out. 

The Senate this year is expected to consider a bill sponsored by Sen. Mike Crapo (R-Idaho) to extend the law and possibly include southern New Mexico residents in addition to Native American uranium miners and some Idaho residents near other radioactive sites, Cordova adds. 

The bottom line: "It begs the question: Why were people near the Trinity Test left out of the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act?" Cordova says. "Many of them were people of color."

2. Henry Herrera and the legacy of the Trinity Test

Residents near the Trinity Test say they suffered from lasting health damages for decades and no one seemed to care.

Photo illustration: Aïda Amer. Photos: Russell Contreras/Axios, Fotosearch/Getty Images

On a cool July dawn, 11-year-old Henry Herrera and his father were outside their home in Tularosa, New Mexico, when they saw a bright light and heard the boom of what turned out to be the world&#x27;s first atomic bomb test. <ul><li>Hours later, their home was covered in ash.</li></ul>Why it matters: Three-quarters of a century later, Hispanic and Mescalero Apache families and descendants of those living near the Trinity Test are dealing with rare cancers that have devastated nearly four generations, while the federal government ignored, dismissed and forgot them.

News and analysis of the scientific advances fueling AI and quantum computing, revolutionizing biology and medicine, and tackling climate change. Science is changing the world and colliding with the global politics that shape it.

Science

Austin

Axios Austin

Data: First Street Foundation; Chart: Kavya Beheraj/Axios

A national study out earlier this year from the nonprofit First Street Foundation supports what experts have long believed: The National Flood Insurance Program undercharges for flood insurance in certain areas, making it cheaper and easier for people to live in dangerous places if they’re willing to take the risk.

The big picture: The group found 4.2 million properties across the country face major flood risk and pay too little in flood insurance; a quarter of those were in Florida. And the data show the risk is racially lopsided.

In more than two-thirds of states, areas with more minority residents also have a greater share of unmapped flood risk than the statewide average, the New York Times reported last year.

Zoom in: For decades, Austin, Texas, has spent tens of millions of dollars buying and demolishing homes in the working class, heavily Latino area along Onion Creek after finding that flood maps for the area underestimated actual risk.

In 2013, floods hit Austin in the early hours of Halloween, killing at least three people and damaging more than 500 homes. Some parts of the city received nearly 10 inches of rain in 24 hours.

Other major floods damaged or destroyed homes in 1981, 1998, 2001 and 2015.

What they're saying: “In my community it’s a matter of if, not when, the next big flood happens,” Vanessa Fuentes, a City Council member representing the Onion Creek area, tells Axios.

Flashback: In the wake of the 2013 flooding, an analysis by the Austin American-Statesman found that the city paid on average $191,000 a piece for more than 100 properties around Onion Creek between 2014 and 2015.

That included relocation payments aimed at helping homeowners buy comparable homes in less-flood-prone areas.

Most of the houses the city purchased were subsequently demolished.

Yes, but: Many homeowners in the area have bemoaned how the buyout packages have torn the neighborhood fabric. 

“We would like to preserve our neighborhood, and we're concerned that they're destroying homes that, if they do true mitigation, would otherwise be livable,” Mike Rodriguez, president of Onion Creek Homeowners Association, told KVUE in 2019.

State of play: At the end of September, the Austin City Council will likely vote to adopt a climate equity plan, which will accelerate city efforts to tamp down carbon emissions because of what it describes as the “unjust impacts” of climate change on communities of color and low-income people. 

That follows an April city-staff report that recommended a host of flood mitigation strategies, including the creation of a home repair program to help low- and moderate-income households make small-scale floodproofing improvements on their properties, such as building drainage swales.

What’s next: Climate scientists forecast more frequent, harsher storms — and more flooding — in Central Texas, an area of the country known as Flash Flood Alley.

The actuaries appear to agree: Texas historically has among the highest insurance rates in the country because of weather-related risks ranging from tornadoes to hurricanes. Rates for the average home in Texas have increased every year since 2012, by as much as 12.9% in a single year, per Texas Department of Insurance data.

“We typically lead the nation in hail claims, have 367 miles of coastline, and most of our state’s metro areas are either on the coast or in Flash Flood Alley,” Ben Gonzalez, a spokesperson for the Texas Department of Insurance, told Axios. 

Plus: While Texas doesn't require homeowners to purchase flood insurance, properties in a high-risk flood zone typically need coverage as a condition of a bank loan. 

“Flood insurance can cost $400 to $500 a year,” Fuentes told Axios, “and that’s a huge new cost for working-class families.”

The bottom line: Fuentes in January, referring to the earlier Onion Creek floods, said "it is essential that this issue remains a priority in order to prevent further loss of life and displacement, which unfortunately disproportionately affects the most vulnerable members of our community.”

Fuentes says she hears from new residents moving to fast-growing Austin who are amazed at all the undeveloped green space by Onion Creek. 

But she says that natural beauty hides the area's dark history. “Hundreds of families were displaced, homes were demolished and some people died,” Fuentes says.

3. Communities of color bear disproportionate flood risk

4.2 million properties across the country face major flood risk, which falls disproportionately on

A national study out earlier this year from the nonprofit First Street Foundation supports what experts have long believed: The National Flood Insurance Program undercharges for flood insurance in certain areas, making it cheaper and easier for people to live in dangerous places if they’re willing to take the risk.The big picture: The group found 4.2 million properties across the country face major flood risk and pay too little in flood insurance; a<a class="gtmContentClick" data-vars-link-text=" quarter of those were in Florida" data-vars-click-url="https://www.tampabay.com/hurricane/2021/03/14/study-finds-that-floridans-are-underpaying-for-flood-insurance/" data-vars-content-id="1d0a5e0a-b812-41af-bc7a-708b94e8248a" data-vars-headline="Communities of color bear disproportionate flood risk" data-vars-event-category="story" data-vars-sub-category="story" data-vars-item="in_content_link" href="https://www.tampabay.com/hurricane/2021/03/14/study-finds-that-floridans-are-underpaying-for-flood-insurance/" target="_blank"> quarter of those were in Florida</a>. And the data show the risk is racially lopsided.

4. Climate change could hit people of color especially hard