Equity dimensions of hazardous waste generation in rapidly industrialising cities along the United States–Mexico border

Abstract

During the last 30 years, researchers and policy analysts have voiced concerns about the potential impact of pollution and hazard generated by foreign-owned manufacturing companies operating in Mexican cities bordering the USA. Despite the salience of the problem, to date, efforts to characterise unequal exposure to hazard in these cities have produced limited and inconclusive evidence. This study examines the relationship between the spatial distribution of hazardous waste generation facilities and socio-economic characteristics of neighbourhoods in the Mexican border city of Nogales. It assembles a geographic information system (GIS) to relate demographic data with an inventory of export-oriented industrial facilities and explores whether there is a spatial correlation between the location of these facilities, different levels of hazard and the neighbourhoods' socio-economic characteristics. In contrast to prevailing environmental justice findings, it is suggested that industry siting is not primarily associated with the location of low socio-economic status neighbourhoods in the city of Nogales. Rather, it shows that the spatial distribution of hazards seems to be influenced mainly by the location and accessibility of urban and transportation infrastructure, suggesting that the environmental equity hypothesis may have to be reframed in the context of rapidly developing urban areas with basic infrastructure deficits.

Keywords:

• environmental equity
• US–Mexico border
• hazardous waste
• maquiladora industry
• North America Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA)
• spatial distribution

Acknowledgements

The authors gratefully acknowledge the support of the National Council for Science and Technology (CONACYT) in Mexico and of the National Institute of Health (Grant #TW006489) funded by the Fogarty International Center and the Office of Behavioral and Social Sciences Research in the United States.

Notes

1. Published in the Official Gazette of the Federation in 29 January 1988 and amended on 13 December 1996 and 31 December 2001.

2. The US Environmental Protection Agency applies a minimum of 1000kg (2200 pounds) of hazardous waste a month as the threshold to differentiate between large quantity generators (LQG) and other generators of hazardous waste.

3. The percentage of the population in the AGEB within the concentric ring was estimated by multiplying its population density by the area overlapping the ring.