Indeed, a recent study from the Environmental Justice Resource Center at Clark Atlanta University found that 80percentt of the total waste disposed of by BP was in six (of nine total approved) landfills and that those landfills are located in areas where the percentage of people of color is greater than their percentage in the corresponding county.
The state approved a landfill expansion in 1996 that added new capacity that was to have lasted 18 years.
Because it has a large, approved sanitary landfill, Troy has agreed to accept garbage from Columbia County, its neighbor to the south, which recently was forced by the state to shut down its only landfill.
While most of the 360 projects whose offsets have been approved are landfills, the biggest winner so far in this fledgling market may be Clean Harbors, a Massachusetts company whose hazardous waste disposal operation in El Dorado, Ark., has spent years destroying old refrigerants.
After he read aloud a supportive letter from Smith, the supervisors voted unanimously to approve the landfill location.
The county commission that approved the proposed landfill in 1998, convinced that it would not affect the civil rights trail because it would be set back from the highway by at least 500 feet, has a black majority.
"The task at D.E.C.," Mr. Fraser said, "was to prepare a siting plan to establish a framework to guide the state agencies," which would have to approve new landfills.
For instance, during the D-Lab: Waste class tour to the Casella Southbridge Landfill in Massachusetts last year, we learned that given current policies, Massachusetts has a maximum of 12 years of landfill space remaining if all landfill extensions are approved.
Edmiston said he does not expect Mission Canyon, or pristine Rustic and Sullivan canyons, ever to be approved for use as landfills.
The landfill still needs approved by the state environmental agency.
