Protests against the Dakota Access Pipeline have taken place in a number of locations because of worries about the pipeline’s impact on the environment and its proximity to Native American holy sites. Indigenous people from around the country, as well as the Sioux tribal nations, were vocal in their opposition to the project.

The Dakota Access pipeline was originally planned to go North of Bismarck, North Dakota, but was rerouted south away from the city that is majority white to the Native American land.

When a mining disaster left the coal company in Harriman, Tennessee, with 4 million tons of unusable coal that needed to be removed, It was shipped 300 miles away from the majority White area of Harriman to the majority Black town of Uniontown, Alabama.

A pipeline as part of a joint venture between the Valero and Plains oil companies had its route altered so that as it approached Memphis, Tennessee, from the West, rather than continue straight across to join the pipe coming from the East, it did a Southern loop through the Black Communities south of the city to go right back up to join with the rest of the pipeline.

That is the part of town where the less picturesque things are hidden in the background while they make the city hum and where they got built because they would otherwise be distasteful in the White areas to the North.

The huge loop brings the pipeline through a drinking water well field in southwest Memphis from which Black residents along with several nearby industrial businesses get their water. Unlike many major cities, Memphis’s water is all ground well based, so subterranean aquifers are important, and that is why, instead of going straight across where the White areas are, it loops around through the Black areas.

Louisiana has its Cancer Alley, an 85-mile stretch of land along the Mississippi River between Baton Rouge and New Orleans that is lined with oil refineries and petrochemical plants and whose residents are predominantly Black with a cancer rate 50 times higher than the rest of the country.

If you have ever driven to or from New York City on I-95, you have had the pleasure of driving the Cross Bronx Expressway the, the Sisyphus rock of highways that cuts through what used to be a very multicultural part of the city, more so than any other area, which is now a center for asthma cases.

Hospitals in Asthma Alley deal with five times the national average and 21 times the rate of other New York City neighborhoods there.

Every October, Pahokee, Florida, faces the arrival of “black snow”, a thick level of soot from sugar burning that pollutes the area. It is the time of year when farmers legally set their fields on fire to burn down everything but the cane which results in major pollution hitting predominately Black communities. This causes respiratory distress, increased asthma cases, and compromised immune systems.

Polychlorinated biphenyls (PCB) were dumped into a Cheraw, South Carolina, creek up to the 1970s. When Hurricane Florence hit in 2018, some of the remaining chemicals were disturbed and got into people’s houses and yards and causing the closure of a local playground because of the pollutants found in the soil after the storm.

Flint, Michigan, for those who feel that time heals all wounds, is still not healed. Because the city government did not take the proper steps when changing its water source, hundreds of children and adults were exposed to lead poisoning of from April 2014 to December 2015.

It became obvious over time that this problem was so easily dismissed because a majority of those affected were low-income people of color.

In 1978 liquid contaminated with PCBs was dumped along 240 miles of road in North Carolina. While cleanup was taking place, it was decided that it would be stored in a toxic waste facility in Warren County where it would affect the health and drinking water of the local Black community.

The 98% Hispanic Community of Harris/Manchester in Houston, Texas has become a concentrated region of oil refineries, chemical plants, sewage treatment facilities, and hazardous waste sites where up to 484,000 pounds of toxic chemicals are released throughout the area from 21 surrounding Toxic Release Inventory (TRI) facilities yearly. Because of then high levels of lead found in the children of a local elementary school, the school was forced to shut down and move its location.

Although known for its pollution what is not so widely known about Los Angeles is that Black, Latino, and low-income residents are more likely to live near oil and gas wells that spew toxic pollution and are more likely to live among power plants, oil refineries, and landfills.

Lived there.

Seen it.

The most polluted zip code in Detroit is 71% Black and the air pollution is so bad the sky often has a fiery orange glare. A 250-acre tank farm that has been expanding over several decades has received over 15 violations for surpassing federal and state emission guidelines in the past seven years.

Regardless of the city, county, or state, all these locations have one major thing in common. The people were there first, and the polluters moved in in later when the demographics of the area were settled.

In my present town a recent kerfuffle over the impending presence of a waste disposal site revealed a subtle prejudice about placement as the proposed location was not in a usual spot, but further North in the city by its border with the next town which unfortunately put it right in the middle of a white, picket fence, semi-rural area of the city.

Although intended to be unspoken, the NIMBY attitude slipped out and from a very unexpected person.

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