Environmental justice is exhausting: five decades of air pollution and community advocacy at Ezra Prentice Homes in Albany, New York

ABSTRACT

This narrative case study used semi-structured interviews, participant observation, and archival research to document the ongoing environmental injustices faced by the predominately Black residents of Ezra Prentice Homes, a public housing complex adjacent to the Port of Albany in the South End of Albany, New York. We highlighted the context of the relocation of minorities to this public housing complex for the construction of the Empire State Plaza, and impacts to residents from polluting port industrial activities and heavy-duty diesel trucks. Using a social justice Theory of Change framework, we evaluated the diversity of outcomes and relevance of an innovative suite of advocacy tools employed by policy activists and discussed the factors constraining the resolution of continued environmental injustices. We observed a complex legacy of environmental racism, power struggles, and an ongoing mindset of expendability of marginalised public housing residents targeting this community for hosting locally unwanted land uses and delayed long-term solutions. While policy activists employed a diversity of advocacy tools instrumental in winning lawsuits, expanding their base of support, attracting media, and bringing widespread state and national visibility to the struggles and necessary solutions for protecting residents, this “middle coalition” facilitated successful yet temporary policy outcomes in terms of long-term protections for residents. This research fills an important gap in the environmental justice literature that explores the phenomenon of public housing complexes inappropriately sited adjacent to polluting port facilities. Future research is needed to better understand community risk perceptions related to public housing and long-term public policy responses.

KEYWORDS:

• Environmental justice
• ports
• public housing
• advocacy tools
• air pollution

Disclosure statement

Stacy Pettigrew is a co-founder of the Radix Ecological Sustainability Center, which receives programmatic funding from NYS DEC and the City of Albany. No funding was received toward this manuscript.

Notes

1 For heating and cooling the Plaza, an oil burning steam plant in Sheridan Hollow (a predominantly Black community) was converted to a refuse burning incinerator. This Solid Waste Energy Recovery System (ANSWERS) was closed in 1994 due to citizen outrage and policy activism highlighting toxic air in the community (Los Angeles Times, March 6, 1994).

2 The median household income for the City of Albany is $45,825 (U.S. Census Bureau 2019).

3 In an effort to protect EJ communities, the Port of Oakland (CA) also removed and/or retrofitted older trucks with diesel particulate filters (DPFs) and implemented trucks with newer engines equipped with particle filters (Dallman, Harley, and Kirchstetter 2011).

4 FRA enforces regulations created by the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration (PHMSA). Incidents with crude oil transported via rail are handled by the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB), the investigatory agency responsible for recommending changes to regulations and policies based on the circumstances surrounding past accidents (Burton and Stretesky 2014).

5 For a more thorough academic treatment on why certain actors are better positioned to affect change in social justice and EJ struggles (see Martinez-Alier, Temper, and Scheidel 2016; Tajik and Minkler 2006; Tarrow 2011).

6 www.crimemapping.com; www.everyblock.com; www.seeclickfix.com; www.infrastructurist.com/f-this/; www.appsfordemocracy.org/stumble-safely; http://www.mybikelane.com; www.healthycity.org; and software developed to map community hazards and assets: www.ushahidi.org.

7 While asthma rates at Albany’s Creighton Storey public housing complex(∼20%) are on par with some national recorded rates for African Americans living below the poverty level, the survey of 119 of 176 Ezra Prentice households observed self-reported active asthma rates at Ezra Prentice Homes are 33%, statistically significantly higher (Pettigrew et al. 2021).