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Environmental justice and enforcement of the safe drinking water act: The Arizona arsenic experience

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  • Cory, Dennis C.
  • Rahman, Tauhidur

Abstract

Environmental justice is concerned with 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. A wide variety of empirical studies have concluded that disparate-impact discrimination does in fact exist since minority and low-income communities are at disproportionate risk for environmental harm. In this paper we examine these issues in the context of enforcing the safe drinking water act (SDWA). Specifically, we focus on the association between race, income, and hazardous levels of arsenic concentration and analyze the broad equity implications of implementing the new arsenic regulation by examining the relationship between community-level exposure to arsenic and socioeconomic and demographic characteristics of the population in Arizona. The results provide no support for the contention that continued selective implementation and enforcement of the revised SDWA arsenic standard is likely to disadvantage minority or low-income groups disproportionately in Arizona.

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  • Cory, Dennis C. & Rahman, Tauhidur, 2009. "Environmental justice and enforcement of the safe drinking water act: The Arizona arsenic experience," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 68(6), pages 1825-1837, April.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:ecolec:v:68:y:2009:i:6:p:1825-1837
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    2. Germani, Anna Rita & Morone, Piergiuseppe & Testa, Giuseppina, 2011. "Enforcement and air pollution: an environmental justice case study," MPRA Paper 38656, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    3. Germani, Anna Rita & Morone, Piergiuseppe & Testa, Giuseppina, 2014. "Environmental justice and air pollution: A case study on Italian provinces," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 106(C), pages 69-82.
    4. Kathryn Furlong & Marie-Noëlle Carré & Tatiana Acevedo Guerrero, 2017. "Urban service provision: Insights from pragmatism and ethics," Environment and Planning A, , vol. 49(12), pages 2800-2812, December.
    5. Cristina Marcillo & Leigh-Anne Krometis & Justin Krometis, 2021. "Approximating Community Water System Service Areas to Explore the Demographics of SDWA Compliance in Virginia," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 18(24), pages 1-11, December.
    6. Carpenter, Angela & Wagner, Marcus, 2019. "Environmental justice in the oil refinery industry: A panel analysis across United States counties," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 159(C), pages 101-109.
    7. Shenggang Ren & Duojun He & Tao Zhang & Xiaohong Chen, 2019. "Symbolic reactions or substantive pro‐environmental behaviour? An empirical study of corporate environmental performance under the government's environmental subsidy scheme," Business Strategy and the Environment, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 28(6), pages 1148-1165, September.

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