Environmental justice from the ground(water) up: coping with contamination in Tallevast, Florida

ABSTRACT

How do communities living with chronic environmental contamination cope with the social, political, and economic impacts of the contamination? This research employs a community-engaged oral history approach with participant observation and archival research to address this question. We focus on the case of Tallevast, Florida, where the local groundwater has been contaminated with chlorinated solvents for over 60 years and where cleanup is estimated to take another 100 years. In addition to concerns about health and wellness, we find that residents are also concerned about household displacement and the disruption of social networks, failed governance at the local and state levels, and financial stress from rising healthcare costs and declining property values. Coping strategies used by the community to address these issues include reliance on churches as community hubs, environmental justice organising to contest authority and advocate for local knowledge and equity in decision making, and civil legal action to seek financial relief. These strategies support efforts toward restorative justice that seeks to repair relationships and trust between stakeholders needed for community redevelopment and revitalisation by promoting equity in being able to contribute meaningfully to decisions that affect resident’s health and the environment.

KEYWORDS:

• Chronic environmental contamination
• community-engaged oral history
• coping strategies
• restorative justice

Acknowledgements

This research was conducted with the permission of the University of South Florida Institutional Review Board, IRB Study 004442. We gratefully acknowledge Laura Ward, Wanda Washington, and all the residents of Tallevast and our partners at FOCUS, Inc. for their ongoing support of this project. We also wish to thank Jeanne Zokovitch, Daniel Lende, Heather O’Leary, and Abby Vidmar who provided helpful input on earlier drafts of this paper.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This material is based on work supported by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency [grant number BF02D29422-0] and by the U.S. National Science Foundation [grant number 1950458].