Madison alders approved city’s first environmental justice policy this summer–without knowing it

Dane County and Madison have some of the worst racial disparities in the nation. Elected officials vow time and again to fix things, but when there’s a choice between doing less harm to vulnerable people or padding the bank accounts of big businesses and developers, liberal city and county politicians take care of business.

Despite its stated commitment to racial equity and social justice, the City of Madison has never adopted any city-wide environmental justice policies.

But in July, in what may be a first, Madison City Council members, while voicing strong misgivings, wrote environmental justice into a development plan. The wording added at the last minute to the Oscar Mayer Special Area Plan (OMSAP) [1] isn’t an iron-clad guarantee, and city officials may not have understood what they were doing, but for the first time a principle of protecting racial minority groups from toxic pollution is part of a city planning document.

At MEJO’s urging, Alder Syed Abbas added environmental justice language to the plan for the highly polluted Oscar Mayer site over the objections of city staff, who told council members it wasn’t necessary. Staff members claimed that state laws already include language requiring special attention be given to reducing the harm pollution does disproportionately to minorities.

But that’s not true. In fact, in 2012 when MEJO tried to persuade Department of Natural Resources regulators to include racial justice language in toxic cleanup laws, the regulators repeatedly insisted that their duty was to treat everyone the same — including racial minorities who bear a disproportionate burden because of decades of racist government policy allowing their homes and neighborhoods to be fouled by pollution.

In other words, the DNR’s line was “All Lives Matter” when it comes to protection from the health hazards caused by pollution. The agency’s policies haven’t changed since then.

We can see how well this approach has been working. Significantly higher proportions of people of color are dying from COVID-19 than white people, in part because of pre-existing conditions caused by inordinate exposure to pollutants.

Here’s the full blow-by-blow of how Madison’s first environmental justice policy was passed by alders–without realizing it.

[1] The language added to the plan is: “To address racial justice and social equity during the OMSAP redevelopment process which must include assessing and preventing human exposures to toxic chemicals at the site and/or released from the site among all people and particularly at-risk low income people and people of color.”