The Promise of Jobs: Blackmail and Environmental Justice in Flint,Michigan,1991–1995

Introduction

In Flint, Michigan, the environmental justice movement has faced a host of problems related to urban decay and industrial decline, shaping the obstacles and opportunities for improving environmental outcomes. Central to the struggle has been the prevalence of environmental blackmail. A term first popularized in the 1970s, environmental blackmail refers to the corporate practice of promising jobs in exchange for high levels of environmental risk, or the related threat of moving business activity out of certain areas unless environmental regulations are relaxed.1 Cities facing acute deindustrialization like Flint are especially at risk for environmental blackmail. As this article shows through an analysis of the struggle to stop the Genesee Power woodwaste incinerator, even in a place reeling from deindustrialization and job losses, poor and minority residents challenged the environmental health for jobs tradeoff as configured by business and political elites.

Environmental justice in Flint has been the subject of several studies, particularly by legal scholars.2 Flint was the site of a celebrated environmental justice saga surrounding the Select Steel plant in the late 1990s. Yet this infamous case was preceded by a lesser-known, yet crucial movement to stop the development of a woodwaste incinerator in the heavily African-American area of North Flint, an effort that mobilized residents and activists and initiated a vibrant environmental justice movement in the Flint area. While the legal battle over the incinerator is a significant episode in the history of Flint's environmental justice movement, less is known about the political-economic context in which the struggle emerged, which is the focus of this article. Understanding the way that environmental blackmail has been deployed by political and business elites in economically struggling urban areas, and the means by which environmental justice activists have responded, can help activists better strategize to confront these challenges.3

The legal context for the environmental justice struggle in Flint is illuminating, yet a closer look at the political-economic context for siting polluting facilities is necessary to understand the numerous hurdles facing Flint activists and allies in other struggling industrial cities. Flint, like so many other industrial cities, has experienced severe economic challenges due to the declining industrial base. Factory closures and the flight of auto work to nonunionized places have devastated the local economy.4 The landscape bears witness to the economic challenges: shuttered factories on brownfield5 lots, crumbling homes, and abandoned neighborhoods create a landscape all-too-common in Flint. High rates of unemployment (between 9% and 20% during the 1990s), a declining tax base, and dwindling social services provided a situation ripe for abuse by corporate polluters. Wielding the jobs carrot and the economic misery stick, industries in Flint and, indeed, in economically-disadvantaged areas throughout the United States, have compromised the environment, creating toxic landscapes in exchange for a promised return to industrial prosperity.6

The Proposed Facility

The saga began when Genesee County Limited Partnership (later known as Genesee Power) proposed a 35 megawatt woodwaste-to-fuel power station in Genesee Township, a suburb just north of Flint, and in 1991 applied for a permit from the Michigan Air Pollution Control Commission.7 The incinerator would burn wood debris, drawn primarily from construction and demolition sites in the Detroit and Flint areas, supplying electricity to a local power company.8 Experts voiced serious concerns that the waste stream would be filled with demolition wood still bearing lead paint and other heavy metals like mercury and arsenic that would be emitted upon incineration.9 Indeed, the permit allowed up to 2.4 tons of lead emissions annually, though the surrounding residential area already faced disproportionately high burdens of lead exposure.10A Flint recycling center expressed serious concern over Genesee Power's ability to find relatively clean wood sources, warning the Michigan Department of Natural Resources (DNR) that it was likely Genesee Power would soon need to burn alternative, and more hazardous, waste sources. Yet with a pro-growth ideology operating among the political and business elites in Flint, and a state that had ceded much responsibility for environmental enforcement to the private sector, activists in Flint encountered numerous political obstacles in stopping the operation of the incinerator.11

Residents and activists believed that Genesee Power had targeted their area for siting the incinerator because they were mostly poor and black. Sister Joanne Chiaverini of the St. Francis Prayer Center launched the crusade to stop the power plant after inadvertently overhearing its mention at a restaurant in Traverse City, Michigan, an encounter which she regarded as providential.12 Along with Reverend Philip Schmitter, also of the Prayer Center, they rallied their neighbors to fight back against the development, noting, “The site selection is in the midst of a highly residential area of 14 schools, 8 mobile home parks, 2 low income housing projects (one of them a HUD housing project) and many blocks of single family dwellings.”13 Within the census tract, black residents accounted for 66% of the population compared to 31% for whites, while the county as a whole registered 78% white to just 20% black.14 Resident Lillian Robinson warned the Michigan Air Pollution Control Commission, “the location is an area primarily made up of working class, poor and minority groups. We are mandated to live there out of financial necessity. This isn't a population which has the means to pick up and relocate because of airborne contaminants.”15 One local businessman sympathized, “it appears that the proposed incinerator for Flint continues a national trend of siting incinerators and landfills in economically depressed, minority neighborhoods where local opposition is likely to be less effectively organized.” “This,” Schmitter and Chiaverini insisted, “is environmental racism.”16

Deindustrialization, The Promise of Jobs, and Environmental Blackmail

Despite activists' efforts, the Michigan DNR granted Genesee Power an air quality permit on December 2, 1992.17 City and county officials, the mayor of Flint, business organizations, and many citizens expressed their support for the plant primarily in terms of the jobs and economic benefit to the community, providing a potent argument in a community suffering from a declining industrial base.18 Genesee Power and its local government allies engaged in a campaign known as “environmental blackmail” or “jobs blackmail” to make the case that the economic benefits outweighed the health risks of the incinerator. The political-economic context of Genesee County structured the obstacles and opportunities for the local environmental justice activists, providing important lessons for those activists working within similar contexts.

Allies of the plant promised an economic boon for Flint, including $1.8 million yearly in taxes, 200 temporary construction jobs, and 30 permanent jobs.19 In 1992, reeling from plant closures, the unemployment rate in Flint climbed to 20% at a time when the United States as a whole faced 7.5% unemployment.20 To some, jobs—any jobs—seemed paramount to turning around Flint's fortunes. The clerk of Genesee Township, Robert Myers, beseeched the chief of the Michigan Air Quality Division, Robert Miller, to approve the permits for the incinerator. “As a citizen and elected clerk of this Township and a citizen representative of familys [sic] and mine also,” Myers wrote, “I whole heart[ed]ly support this project and I certainly hope and pray that you and the rest of the Air Quality Division Board do the same.”21 After all, Myers argued, “this Power Plant will bring about permanent jobs to the Township people with more job openings in the future. The township is about sure General Motors will close the Ternstead Fisher Guide plant, we badly need this plant.” Members of the Genesee County Board of Commissioners also urged that the Air Quality Division approve the plant because of the company's assurances of temporary and permanent jobs.22 Additionally, they made the case that the incinerator would provide a net environmental benefit by utilizing wood waste that would otherwise end up in a landfill. A city long built on the automotive industry, Flint officials now labored to create a new, more diversified economic identity for the region. The incinerator represented one building block of their vision.23

Building Grassroots Resistance to Jobs Blackmail

Opponents tried to turn the economic argument on its head, claiming that a green economy could replace the declining industrial base. Dirty industries threatened not just the health and security of residents living in close proximity to the plants, but the long-term economic health of the county, they argued. The St. Francis Prayer Center engaged in extensive educational outreach, working to empower the residents to challenge the jobs blackmail. Chiaverini and Schmitter resisted the notion that the only way forward was by allowing noxious plants in poor and minority sections of Flint, but instead urged economic recovery built on a more environmentally sustainable and healthy foundation, noting, “We reiterate our offer to be part of any committee to attract healthy, environmentally safe businesses to Genesee Township.”24 Area activists suggested that “we as human beings are unique and creative enough to help design other means of generating a tax base for that which has or will be lost.”25 Resisting environmental blackmail provided a starting point for discussions about urban sustainability, and indeed in recent years Flint has garnered much attention for its efforts to reinvent Flint as a greener, healthier, and more financially sound city.26

The National Environmental Policy Act of 1969 opened the door for greater citizen participation in environmental policy. The Michigan Environmental Policy Act of 1970 went even further than federal legislation to make possible citizen participation at the state level. Yet corporations and intransigent government agencies employed numerous strategies for evading meaningful public participation. Publishing weighty environmental impact reviews/statements, holding hearings in places inaccessible to poor and minority populations, and providing inadequate review periods are just a few examples of the strategies employed.27 Convincing poor and minority residents of Genesee County to participate in environmental policymaking was an important aspect of grassroots mobilization. Developing environmental science literacy among the residents helped to overcome some of these obstacles, and many, like Glenora Roland, remarked on the sense of empowerment it provided. “We are low income,” Roland admitted, “but have researched the [e]ffects of the many toxic substances from wood burning,” and confidently spoke of the danger of “lead base[d] paint from old structures.”28 Roland and others understood that they would have a difficult time influencing policymakers: “Those of us who suffer most from these kinds of decisions,” she remarked, “have the most difficult time in making an impact on the decision makers.” Armed with a scientific understanding of the dangers of incineration, they demonstrated much confidence when facing company and government officials.

The Flint chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) educated its members on the nature of environmental racism, making the case that it was a vital new dimension in the struggle for civil rights.29 NAACP-Flint feared that economic recovery would provide the rationale for weakening environmental protections in African-American neighborhoods. Chapter President E. Hill De Loney called out the mainstream environmental movement for focusing on elitist issues and ignoring the struggles of poor and minority communities: “While we support the struggle of the environmental movement i.e., saving the wetlands, [preserving] the National Parks, and deterring the extinction of the spotted owl, it is becoming shockingly clear that the real and most endangered species are people and communities of color.”30 The African American community in Flint already faced extraordinary health injustices, De Loney remarked, warning that the health of the black community must not become the “sacrificial lamb” on the altar of industrial economic recovery. “Should families in this area be asked to take on this subtle form of capit[a]l punishment?” De Loney asked. “Are they expendable?”

Area activists worked against the narrative that the economic problems confronting Flint could be solved by siting noxious facilities in low-income and minority neighborhoods. De Loney took an expansive view of what constituted the “environmental problems” confronting Flint's black residents, including “joblessness, homelessness, hunger, violence, and infant mortality.”31 NAACP-Flint saw Genesee Power not as a savior for a community reeling from the economic consequences of deindustrialization, but as a “death warrant” and the black community as the “sacrificial lamb.” Among these residents, the jobs argument fell flat.

Obstacles to Grassroots Participation

NAACP-Flint, the St. Francis Prayer Center, and their allies, collided with powerful economic and political interests in the Flint area, interests that were determined to shut down the participation of affected residents. The Michigan DNR—intentionally or not—erected severe barriers to public participation in decision making. DNR scheduled a hearing on December 21, 1993 to review the pending air permit filed by Genesee Power. The St. Francis Prayer Center and its allies railed against this “charade” of public participation. The Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights under the Law challenged the DNR to provide greater opportunity for area residents to voice their concerns.32 By convening at 3:00 in the afternoon, they argued, most working people were barred from participating. More importantly, rather than holding the meeting near the proposed incinerator, it was located in Lansing, some 65 miles from Flint, “effectively barring participation by those living around the site.”33 The Lawyers' Committee charged the DNR with “denying the rights of affected community residents to effectively participate in decision making that could permanently alter their environment, their health and the health of their children.” When Schmitter and Chiaverini confronted the DNR with their concerns about the time and location of the hearing, they were told that the Department was under “pressure from the company” due to a “deadline” the company needed to meet.34 Schmitter and Chiaverini questioned for whom the DNR worked.

The intricacies of law and regulations made it incredibly difficult for grassroots activists to get results without legal counsel. Chiaverini, Schmitter, and community residents went to great lengths to beseech officials at every level of government. But they were flying blind, so to speak, and lacked the experience to untangle the bureaucratic rules and regulations at the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to find the proper channels for making civil rights complaints about the siting. Initially the EPA dismissed their claims because they did not use precisely the right language to initiate a Title VI complaint under the 1964 Civil Rights Act, in which they alleged discrimination on the basis of race. Lawyers for the center would later scold the EPA for imposing complicated regulatory burdens on those seeking environmental justice: “[Chiaverini and Schmitter] were unfamiliar with the technicalities of filing a race discrimination complaint,” the lawyers argued, and this was symptomatic of a “dilemma [that] is not unique and indeed plagues many communities which lack the resources to hire counsel at the early and critical stages in the permitting processes.”35

Activists and their allies beseeched local and state authorities to intervene on civil rights grounds, but the officials were unmoved. In January 1995, EPA Office of Civil Rights Director Dan Rondeau wrote to the National Law Guild, rejecting its October 1994 complaint that the incinerator violated Title VI of the Civil Rights Act.36 The EPA found that the 1994 complaint came well after the 180-day window to file such actions. In the process of researching the legal grounds for the complaint, however, the EPA's Office of Civil Rights discovered a letter from the St. Francis Prayer Center dated December 15, 1992, less than two weeks after Michigan granted Genesee Power a permit. In it, the St. Francis Prayer Center alleged Title VI violations. The letter never reached the Office of Civil Rights, but was filed in the wrong office. Due to the records mismanagement, the EPA elected to open a Title VI investigation of the Genesee plant, despite the more than two years that had passed since the permit was granted.37 The EPA ultimately dismissed the complaint, yet it established an important precedent for activists to argue Title VI violations in environmental justice cases, and opened up new avenues for activists in Flint to challenge environmental injustices.

Conclusion

Ultimately, activists and their allies were unable to stop the operation of the woodwaste incinerator, which went online in November 1995.38 Subsequent court rulings limited the amount of lead the facility could discharge and expanded citizens' rights to environmental assessments, yet these were only partial victories, far from completely shutting down the plant as activists had hoped.39 Although environmental justice battles are often characterized as wins/losses in a zero-sum battle, the outcome is more complicated. Many of the participants remarked on the empowerment that environmental justice activism gave them, some of whom would later be involved in a struggle to stop the construction of a metals recycling plant by Select Steel in the late 1990s, and still others who remain involved in ongoing urban sustainability and environmental justice efforts. The effects of mobilizing the community paid dividends beyond the Genesee Power struggle. In the case of the Genesee Power fight, the outcome was less significant than the struggle's lasting effects for movement-building.

Communities facing economic turmoil are vulnerable to environmental blackmail, and the struggle in Flint shows that deindustrialization is not merely an economic problem, but an environmental one as well. Residents rejected the jobs-for-toxic pollution bargain as proposed by business and political elites, setting an example for resisting dangerous industries while promoting a more sustainable foundation for Flint's future. Flint continues to struggle with major environmental inequalities and economic challenges, yet a citizenry organized against environmental threats can also be a path forward toward a more environmentally and economically sustainable and healthful Flint.