From Flint, Michigan, to Standing Rock, North Dakota, minorities have found themselves losing the battle for clean resources and a healthy environment. This book provides a modern history of such environmental injustices in the United States and Canada.From the 19th-century extermination of the buffalo in the American West to Alaska's Project Chariot (a Cold War initiative that planned to use atomic bombs to blast out a harbor on Eskimo land) to the struggle for recovery and justice in Puerto Rico following Hurricane Maria in 2017, this book provides readers with an enhanced understanding of how poor and minority people are affected by natural and manmade environmental crises.Written for students as well as the general reader with an interest in social justice and environmental issues, this book traces the relationship between environmental discrimination, race, and class through a comprehensive case history of environmental injustices. Environmental Racism in the United States and Canada: Seeking Justice and Sustainability includes 50 such case studies that range from local to national to international crises.

PrefaceChapter 1 BackgroundWhat Is Environmental Justice?Types of Environmental DiscriminationPerpetrators and VictimsChallenges and SolutionsFuture OutlookChapter 2 Unifying ThemesIntroductionMining: Mother Earth or Mother Lode?Lead, Lead Everywhere: Flint, Michigan's Water Crisis in ContextThe Political Economy of Lead Poisoning and Other Water Quality IssuesCanadian Tar Sands: From Treaty Forest to MoonscapePipelines and Protests"Cowboys" vs. "Indians": Racial Stereotyping and Agent Orange in VietnamFarmworkers: Toxicity as an Occupational HazardExtermination of the Buffalo as Environmental WarfareEnvironmental Racism and the Demise of an Ice WorldChapter 3 Cases: United States EastIntroductionHouston, Texas: Segregation, Sewage, and Environmental RacismAnniston, Alabama: A Plague of PCBsDickson, Tennessee: Environmental Racism's "Poster Child"A 100 Percent Chance of Pig-manure Showers in North CarolinaBridgeport, Connecticut: A Spreading Web of ToxinsChester, Pennsylvania: Unwilling Capital of HazmatSouth Chicago: Life and Death in the "Toxic Doughnut"Race, Class, and Toxicity at Love CanalNorth Carolina: Protesting Unwelcome Toxic DumpsDonald Trump, Hurricane Maria, and Puerto RicoTriana, Alabama: Dumped On, CeaselesslyMalathion and the Rosebud Sioux in Mission, South DakotaHouston, Texas: Always Awaiting the Next FloodAkwesasne: Land of the Toxic TurtlesThe Toxics Plantation: Life and Death in Louisiana's "Cancer Alley"The Demographics of Death in New Orleans: Race, Class, and Hurricane KatrinaChapter 4 Cases: United States WestIntroductionMontana's Gros Ventre and Assiniboine: Gold Mining and Cyanide PoisoningThe Mothers of East Los Angeles Stand Down a Toxic Incinerator-and MorePueblo, Colorado: The Toxic Legacy of the "Pittsburgh of the West"Richmond, California: The Greens vs. Big OilAlaska's Pebble Mine: Corporate Gold vs. Natives' SalmonAlaska Natives: Swamped by WarmingThe Point Hope Eskimos: An Atomic Harbor and a Nuclear Dump as a Neighbor"The Most Bombed Nation on Earth"Utah's Goshute Asked to House Waste Uranium-but Were DeniedThe Laguna Pueblo and Anaconda's Jackpile Uranium MineThe Navajos' Nuclear LegacyThe Largest Uranium Spill in the United StatesHunting Grounds to Dumping GroundsThe Moapa Paiute: Good-Bye Toxic Ash: Solar In, Coal Power OutChapter 5 Cases: CanadaIntroductionGrassy Narrows, Ontario: The Continuing Toxic Toll of MercuryThe Aamjiwnaang of Ontario: Immersed in a Toxic BathDumping on Blacks in Africville, Nova ScotiaBritish Columbia: Native Canadians vs. Mining's "New Prosperity"The Crees: Hydro Quebec's Electric DreamsThe Lubicon Cree: Land Rights and Resource ExploitationThe Dene: Killed by the "Money Rock"The Inuit: Mother's Milk Is ToxicWho Is Liable for Ruining a Culture? The Inuit Sue the United States of AmericaSelected BibliographyIndex