“Make Us Whole”: Environmental Justice and the Politics of Skepticism

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Notes

†This essay is dedicated to the memory of Ms. Johnnie Mae Brown, a true warrior for justice, and to her family, friends, and her neighbors in Hyde Park.

¹Except for people who explicitly requested otherwise, I have used pseudonyms.

²See http://www.hud.gov/offices/cpd/affordablehousing/training/web/relocation/overview.cfm, accessed July 21, 2010.

³Specifically, ethnographic methods included participant observation, open-ended interviews, and the collection of life histories. Participant observation consisted of working as a volunteer at the Hyde Park community center (where in addition to observing and participating in Center activities, I was able to hold informal conversations with almost all residents over the course of fourteen months); volunteering for Hyde Park's neighborhood organization (the Hyde and Aragon Park Improvement Committee [HAPIC]); and attending informal and formal community events. In addition, I conducted extensive, open-ended interviews with approximately 35 residents, and approximately 25 public officials, developers, consultants, non-profit organization staff, and civic leaders from outside of the neighborhood. My most intense period of ethnographic research lasted from September 1998 through November 1999; from November 1999 through 2011, I kept in very close touch with HAPIC activists and other neighborhood residents and visited usually twice per year.

⁴For some examples of the extensive literature on this topic, see di Leonardo (1998) and Reed (1999).

⁵See also Peluso and Watts 2001; West 2006.

⁶Much of the information described here can also be found in Checker (2005).

⁷HAPIC had no membership dues and considered anyone living in Hyde Park a member.

⁸From the “Southern Wood Piedmont Augusta Plant History,” a document prepared by SWP's attorney in 2004, on file with the author.

⁹As summarized in Governor's Task Force, Governor's Task Force on the Long-Term Health Care Needs for Southern Wood Piedmont Residents. Augusta, Georgia, 1996. Author's files.

¹⁰For some summaries of this work, see Checker (2009); Fitchen (1988); Shrader-Frechette (2010); Tesh (2000).

¹¹See also http://www.epa.gov/compliance/environmentaljustice/nejac.

¹² http://www.wrdw.com/home/headlines/6581542.html?storySection=story, accessed July 21, 2010.

¹³Over the years, residents continued to joke that they were “still waiting for Ms. Y to come to a meeting.”

¹⁴See http://www.fanning.uga.edu/work/images/brownfieldsfy08.pdf, accessed July 21, 2010.

¹⁵ http://www.epa.gov/aging/grants/grant-list/2008_0630_grant_1.htm, accessed February 9, 2010.

¹⁶The CSRA EOA is part of a statewide authority that among other things provides direct income assistance to help low-income Georgians pay their rent, utilities, and some medical bills.

¹⁷Some private non-profits have created capacity-building programs to address this problem, yet the problems discussed continue to plague the public funding process.

¹⁸Detention ponds retain water indefinitely, while retention ponds reduce flood damage by gathering storm water and eventually releasing it.