The Other Side of the Story: True Protection
In his column "EPA: Environmental Justice for the Affluent," in the Tuesday, October 21 issue of The Dartmouth, Adam Siegel '98 argued that environmental injustices were not occurring in Convent, Louisiana. In fact, he argued that "ivory tower" environmentalists from organizations like Greenpeace and the EPA were ignoring citizens' needs in order to satisfy their own political ends. This argument is disturbing for a number of reasons. Primarily, it bothers me that Siegel's article is so disparaging of the EPA for its decision to block Shintech, a Japanese plastics and chemical corporation, from its construction of a new plastics plant in Convent, based on nothing more than a single article that he came across in the Wall Street Journal. Talk about "ivory towers!" What could be more biased against environmental protection and public health than the Wall Street Journal, a corporate journal financially supported and subscribed to by business interests such as Shintech? Fortunately, I am not writing to defend the Clinton Administration and the EPA from the bitter attacks made by exploitative corporations; in fact, I think that both the EPA and the Clinton Administration have done surprisingly little work towards real environmental justice for citizens like those in Convent. Instead, I would like to try to shed some light on what's actually going on in Convent.