Using Visual Images to Achieve Environmental Justice: A Case Study of the Asarco Copper Smelter in El Paso,Texas

Introduction

Strategies and tactics used by environmental justice (EJ) groups have been well-documented in research literature. ¹ Lois Gibbs wrote that EJ groups use grassroots strategies to “build power at the local and state levels in a sufficient number of states to influence federal-level representatives and policies.” ² Tactics used to build this power include protest signs, marches, leaflet distribution, and civil disobedience when necessary. ³ The use of lay knowledge, that is, knowledge derived from the public, is a commonly used and important strategy in achieving environmental justice; this is why it is important for grassroots organizations to build positive relationships with other community members and grassroots groups.

Little work has focused specifically on groups' use of visual imagery in environmental justice struggles. In one of the only EJ studies to take a visual approach, the researcher conducted an in-depth critical visual discourse analysis of four EJ groups' logos and found that all four represented, in some way, the abilities of lay people to engage with experts and expert knowledge. ⁴ Despite little academic focus in the EJ literature, visual imagery is arguably a powerful tool. An abstract concept can be made more salient if it is presented in a visual manner. For activists in Woburn, Massachusetts, creating a map plotting clusters of leukemia set the stage for a major epidemiological study of drinking water from suspicious wells. ⁵ Similarly, NASA satellite pictures of the ozone hole over the Antarctic mobilized action against ozone depletion. ⁶

This investigation gauges student reactions to two images used in a recent attempt to reopen a copper smelter owned by the American Smelting and Refining Company (ASARCO) in El Paso, Texas. The first image was used by the community group Get The Lead Out Coalition (GTLO) to express their opposition toward reopening the smelter. The second image was used by ASARCO to highlight the jobs that would be available if the smelter were to reopen. Analysis of these reactions then informs a discussion regarding visual imagery in environmental justice and the creation of two alternative images related to the ASARCO case that advocate for environmental justice.

Despite their power, visual images and viewer reactions to them have not been focused on to a great degree in the literature. Only Kurtz ⁷ examines visual imagery, and she focuses on group logos as a window into how EJ groups symbolically represent themselves as opposed our focus on how the public understands visual images associated with an EJ case. As one of the first of its kind, this study is an exploratory examination into the use of visual images in environmental justice cases. The method of surveying students about environmental justice has been used before, ⁸ but not in relation to visual images.

This article contributes to existing research by specifically investigating how viewers react to visual images (i.e., photographs) created by opposing groups in an environmental justice debate. The global use of images in advocacy campaigns makes our study pertinent to environmental justice groups around the world. Our recommendations for the creation of new images and findings from this research are practically useful and can also be used to inform a larger-scale study of visual images and environmental justice in the future.

Contextual Background

The ASARCO smelter is located in El Paso, Texas, meters from Ciudad Juárez, Mexico and Sunland Park, New Mexico. The region is home to a population of over 2 million people that are predominately Hispanic and working class. The smelter was originally founded under the Mexican Ore Company in 1887 and that year, the smelter employed 250 people and smelted over 12,000 tons of lead. After a fire in 1901, ASARCO reopened with seven new lead furnaces; an additional copper smelter was added nine years later. ⁹

By 1969, El Paso had the highest concentration of lead air pollution in Texas. ¹⁰ In April 1970, the City of El Paso and the State of Texas filed a lawsuit against ASARCO for violating the 1967 Air Safety Code and Texas Clean Air Act. A settlement was reached and ASARCO was fined for pollution violations and ordered to pay for installation of emission control equipment, monthly soil and air sampling, and medical examinations for children with elevated blood-lead levels, as well as additional money for future pollution. That same year, the Center for Disease Control found that 53 percent of children aged 1 to 9 years living within 1.6 kilometers of ASARCO had blood lead levels that were considered dangerous to their health. ¹¹ By this time, the health effects of lead on children's development were well understood. ¹² In December 1971, the El Paso City-County Health Department discovered that ASARCO had emitted 1,012 metric tons of lead into the air since 1969. By the 1980s, the lead smelters had been shut down, yet ASARCO continued operations of the copper smelter. In a 1998 internal memorandum from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), it was discussed that ASARCO and subsidiary Encycle illegally burned over 5,000 tons of hazardous waste at the El Paso smelter from 1992–1997. Related to this incident, in February 2008, the TCEQ (Texas Commission on Environmental Quality) denied a request filed for a review of possible criminal conduct by ASARCO.

ASARCO ceased smelter operations in 1999 after the price of copper dropped. The company filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in 2005. According to Devra Davis, ASARCO claimed bankruptcy in an effort to avoid paying cleanup costs at dozens of Superfund sites it had produced; the company's failure to take responsibility places the burden on the taxpayers. ¹³ In 2007, ASARCO began a bid to acquire an air permit to reopen its El Paso smelter due to rising copper prices. Despite organized bi-national protest, on February 13, 2008, the TCEQ voted to renew ASARCO's Air Quality Permit No. 20345. ¹⁴

With copper prices plummeting, the new Obama-led EPA announced that ASARCO would have to spend millions to update their equipment. ¹⁵ These two factors led ASARCO to announce that it would not reopen its copper plant as of February 6, 2008. In May 2009, the City of El Paso reluctantly accepted $52 million from ASARCO in bankruptcy court to fund clean up at the smelter site, citing that it was not enough money to properly rehabilitate the land. They argued that the figure also did not take into account the clean-up efforts that would also be needed across the border in Ciudad Juárez, where residents have also been affected by the smelter's pollution.

The issue of the smelter reopening had been framed in terms of “jobs versus the environment” by both ASARCO and its opponents. ASARCO led an effective public relations campaign using images to shape local public opinion to their favor. At that time, over 50% of registered voters in El Paso supported the opening of the smelter, ¹⁶ presumably because they believed it would create jobs. A pilot survey conducted in four El Paso neighborhoods found that public support for ASARCO relied heavily on the company's promise to stimulate the local economy even though the majority of those residents felt ASARCO's re-opening would be harmful to their health. ¹⁷

The Get the Lead Out Coalition (GTLO) is a grassroots organization and one of the main opponents to the re-opening of ASARCO. As an alliance of individuals committed to protecting the health of citizens and promoting sustainable growth in the Southwest border region, the group formed as a response to the discovery of toxic substances (i.e., cadmium, arsenic, and lead) in soil samples from the Sun Bowl Stadium adjacent to the ASARCO smelter. ¹⁸ Often in conjunction with ACORN (Association for Community Reform Now), the group hosted several events to raise awareness of the risks imposed by ASARCO. One of these was a march to El Paso's City Hall. GTLO also traveled, along with community members, in busses to the TCEQ hearings for ASARCO's permit renewal in Austin, Texas as a show of opposition against the smelter's re-opening. The group's “Faces Against ASARCO” campaign also used an image to influence public support. The image, created during the culmination of the campaign, is the image used for this study. Following the announcement that ASARCO would not continue to operate in El Paso despite the renewal of their permit, the GTLO Coalition has remained a vocal participant in the remediation process.

Data And Methods

First, we selected the two primary campaign images used in the ASARCO case—one from the GTLO and one from ASARCO. The GTLO image “Faces Against Asarco” (Fig. 1) was selected because it was the apex of the group's anti-ASARCO campaign. A considerable amount of organization took place in order to execute the image. Taken in September 2007 by the GTLO, Figure 1 depicts about 1,500 people coming together to protest the smelter. Black ash is visible around the rim of the stack's opening and the photo captures a portion of the air-shed and mountain range shared by El Paso, Texas; Sunland Park, New Mexico; and Ciudad Juárez, Chihuahua, Mexico.

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FIG. 1.

Get the Lead Out image, “Faces Against Asarco.”

The ASARCO image “I want to work for ASARCO” (Fig. 2) was selected because it reflects the company's basic strategy for generating public support, i.e., highlighting prospective jobs and economic growth to the community, and was used widely in the campaign. Figure 2 depicts about 75 people at the ASARCO plant. The ASARCO image does not encompass natural landmarks or the entirety of the iconic smoke stack. In comparing the images, both focus on crowds of people and appeal to community and family values, but neither image explicitly states its message.

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FIG. 2.

ASARCO image, “I want to work for ASARCO.”

This research consisted of two phases approved by the University of Texas at El Paso Institutional Review Board in February 2008. First, an open-ended questionnaire was administered to an undergraduate sociology course at the University of Texas at El Paso. A total of 34 students filled out the questionnaire, and their responses were imported into QSR International's NVivo 7 software for analysis. The open-ended questionnaire was used to (a) gauge student interpretations of the environmental images and (b) to find out if the images swayed student opinions on ASARCO. We assumed that students would be aware of this issue as it was reported on in the media regularly during this time and the smelter is located less than a mile from campus. This introduces a limitation into the research as it was possible that the students had already made up their minds about ASARCO before completing the questionnaire, or that, because the images used in the study were publicly displayed via the Internet, they may have already seen and been influenced by the images. However, the questionnaire was designed to distinguish the influences of the images by first asking students what their ideas of ASARCO were prior to their viewing the two opposing images. Thereafter, students were asked if and how the images impacted their opinions of ASARCO and its possible re-opening.

Respondents were between the ages of 18 and 50, with over half of the respondents falling between the ages of 18–25. Nineteen of the respondents (56%) were female and fifteen of the respondents (44%) were male. This is an approximate reflection of students at the University of Texas at El Paso (UTEP); in 2006, 55% of undergraduates were female and 45% were male. The total household income for the respondents generally varied, but the median income level was $30,000–$39,000/year. Twenty-nine of the 34 respondents (85%) were of Latino/Hispanic ethnicity, which roughly matches the percentage of Hispanic students enrolled at UTEP (86%). ¹⁹

Then, two alternative environmental images were created by the first author, based on knowledge gained during analysis of responses. The photographs were taken in 2007 and edited using Picasa software and InfranView graphic viewer. The purpose of this phase was to create visually effective images that could both educate and persuade people to resist environmental injustices, specifically those created by ASARCO.

Research Results

Presentation of alternative images

The first author created two additional protest images in order to convey salient findings (i.e., the most common concerns of surveyed students) that emerged during analysis of responses. These findings were: a concern for health and the environment, intergenerational equity, and the importance of having adequate information when making a decision.

Image #1 (see Fig. 3), titled “Be the Voice” is asking parents to protest on behalf of their children. The idea for this image emerged from the importance that students gave to concerns of family and intergenerational equity, i.e., the notion that parents should leave their children with an environment just as healthy as or healthier than the one they inherited. In addition, the focus on children is warranted because they are the first to be affected by environmental toxins, like lead. The image was taken during the Faces Against ASARCO event.

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FIG. 3.

Be the Voice.

Image #2 (see Fig. 4), titled “Think of the Future” is a black and white image depicting the silhouette of the ASARCO smelter. This image contains a caption with factual information, something the students noted was missing from the two images presented earlier. The purpose of this image is to inform viewers that ASARCO not only pollutes but that it has also broken the law and violated community trust by burning illegal materials. It also alludes to the concept of intergenerational equity discussed earlier by urging the viewer to think about the future consequences of reopening ASARCO.

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FIG. 4.

Think of the Future.

Discussion

Over the past forty years, the environmental justice movement has grown and diversified; however, the power of corporate interests and government entities has also grown and fighting them has become increasingly difficult. In order to fight back and protest these inequities, a variety of strategies have been used by those seeking to make a change. Visual methods can be a powerful tool for grassroots organizations, ²¹ and the selection and/or creation of an appropriate visual image can help further a cause by catalyzing emotional opposition, attracting more people to protest, and thus creating power in numbers.

Our survey data showed that in general, the images did elicit emotional responses from the viewers. In fact, some emotional ambivalence was introduced as the images stimulated feelings that countered previous perceptions of ASARCO. For example, several students felt bad for the workers after viewing the ASARCO image, even though they had not previously thought about the workers and had instead focused on the environmental harm associated with the smelter. Survey data also suggested that appealing to cultural values is important in creating effective images. Both GTLO and ASARCO did this, through the image of families and collective struggle in the GTLO image and through Hispanic workers and material success in the ASARCO image, which resonated with students. In addition, we found that many students felt they needed more information about the case in order to take a stand. The lack of text, especially in the GTLO image, caused confusion in terms of whether the image was pro- or anti-ASARCO.

A concern for intergenerational equity (responsibility to future generations) was also present among students. In another survey-based project examining the importance of environmental justice values in solving environmental conflicts, ²² students felt that responsibility to future generations, species, and the environment were most important. They rated procedural justice (fairness in the process of environmental decision making) and distributive justice (equal distribution of environmental benefits and hazards) as less important. It seems then that using protest images that focus on impacts on children and the earth would be effective in many settings.

In this article, we take a critical or reflexive realist perspective, ²³ which identifies the existence of biophysical environmental problems while recognizing that how we understand these problems is the product of framing. We assert that environmental harm has been caused by ASARCO. As compared to other cases, there is little material uncertainty about risks associated with lead contamination. Within this broad realist framework, we take a constructivist perspective in our examination of how the ASARCO case was constructed and framed in images by a community group and the company and how these frames shaped students' understanding of the issue. Thus our assertions that including information about environmental harm in protest images as a way to make the message more powerful is in line with our reflexive realist approach. While the constructivist-realist debate still exists in environmental sociology, scholars integrate them through perspectives such as critical or reflexive realism. Here, we recognize that the framing of this environmental issue has been very central to how the case is understood by local people, but also that environmental harm has been caused.

Conclusion

This analysis and creation of the new images leads us to the following list of suggestions for environmental groups designing protest images:

Use text to make the point of the image clear

The power of images does not need to be contended, as Douglas Kellner points out, “a media culture has emerged in which images […] help produce the fabric of everyday life.” ²⁵ Local members of the GTLO acknowledged this strong capability and created a campaign that centered around one photograph to combat the smelter's presence in the city. By comparing this image with ASARCO's, this research reveals how images are used within environmental justice struggles and how images influence viewers. The viewer is enticed to see potential employment benefits of resuming operations at a copper smelter. While economic concerns often rank high in working-class communities such as El Paso, student participants in this research voiced concern about environmental injustices, as they have in other projects ²⁶ and expressed interest in job creation that would be safer and fairer for themselves, their children, and future generations.

Acknowledgments

The authors acknowledge Dr. Frank Perez at the University of Texas at El Paso for his help with an earlier iteration of this manuscript.