(The Center Square) – The city of Chester, Pennsylvania’s first, is situated along the Delaware River, just southwest of the Philadelphia Airport. For decades, it’s held a reputation for poverty, pollution and crime.
It could, Chester Mayor Stefan Roots believes, become a beautiful waterfront city again – if environmental justice is served.
“When I think of justice, I think of punishments and arrests and people going to jail. That doesn’t happen around here,” said Roots. “Chester is Delaware County’s waterfront. We want to enjoy the waterfront like other communities enjoy their waterfront. It can be the economic engine that drives Chester to the future.”
What’s getting in the way? Chester is home to 11 distinct industries daily emitting carcinogens into the air.
Each of these industries is evaluated for pollution as if in a vacuum. There is no law that requires the Department of Environmental Protection to consider the broader landscape of pollution in an area before issuing a permit.
That means – like has occurred in Chester – you could put a factory next to the nation’s largest incinerator next to a sewage treatment plant next to an oil refinery next to a railyard next to an airport next to the highway, each emitting the maximum allowable pollution from their operations, and it would be perfectly legal in Pennsylvania.
The people of Chester and some House legislators want to change that by instituting a law that would allow the department to evaluate the cumulative impact of pollution before issuing new permits.
Their opponents, and even many of their allies, say that’s unlikely to happen.
Penn America, a New York-based company, has plans for a new liquid natural gas plant. Supported by labor unions who want to generate more jobs and a Republican majority in the Senate who wants to “unleash” the state’s energy resources, any legislation that might obstruct projects like this one has long odds.
But that doesn’t stop the community, medical professionals, doctors, scientists, and other advocates from ringing the alarm for Chester and beyond. A public hearing of the House Environmental and Natural Resource Committee at Widener University was standing room only as legislators heard testimony on the bill.
Zulene Mayfield founded Chester Residents Concerned for Quality Living, or CRCQL, in 1992. As early as 1993, the group petitioned the Environmental Protection Agency for a risk assessment of Chester. The results, published in 1995, showed that the risk of cancer, respiratory disease, kidney disease and heart disease was already higher than the acceptable limit.
Mayfield says the only changes that have occurred in the 35 years since have been for the worse.
“Our children literally cannot breathe, and the PA legislators, the EPA, the DEP, the DER, have done nothing, nothing to protect my community, the people that I love and given our kids just a chance to survive,” she said.
The organizer was overcome with tears reading a list of the city’s rates for certain cancers, which are well above the national rates and still rising.
“I am having a hard time reading these because every month I get a call that somebody I know has died from cancer,” she said.
Pockets of heavy pollution exist across the state in both rural and urban communities. These communities are almost always low-income and very often home to large populations of people of color.
Chester Health Commissioner Dr. Kristin Motley noted that these pockets exist somewhere in each of the committee members’ districts. She showed maps highlighting the nearly 2,000 Environmental Justice Zones across the state, which can be accessed through the DEP’s website.
The zones are one of the casualties of an executive order from the Trump administration cutting Diversity Equity and Inclusion efforts from federal funding and excising it from the government.
“Even though the children from these communities have different races and different ethnicities; they all live in households with different income levels; they will pursue different career paths even, but they do have one thing in common,” said Motley. “They will have a higher risk of asthma. These children will have a higher risk of cancer. These kids will have a higher risk of heart disease and other preventable health conditions because of where they live.”
Committee chair and one of the bill’s sponsors, Rep. Greg Vitali, said that the bill would likely only move forward with a strong campaign of public pressure, urging those in the room to spread the word and keep pushing the legislature. Lawmakers would need to get in a room with other stakeholders to address some of the bill’s roadblocks.
“There are some concerns with the bill from the trade unions, but there’s also opportunity,” said Rep. Chris Rabb, D-Philadelphia, who first introduced the bill and has seen it stall in two prior legislative sessions. “Our union brothers and sisters are not the enemy. In fact, we need them more than ever, and they are impacted by environmental racism as well.”
