Latinos Getting Fracked?
January 10, 2013
2012 closed with an interesting note: As noted in this article from Reuters, the term “fracking” was more popular than “climate change” in US online searches.
Fracking, the common term for hydraulic fracturing, was across the news in 2012 as shale oil and natural gas extraction took off. For anyone unfamiliar with the term or process, it is essentially breaking up rock with pressurized fluid in order to release oil and natural gas. But the process comes with reports of concern about the side effects on the environment and nearby communities—and as the Matt Damon-produced movie “Promised Land”, hits the theaters, fracking is cresting to be a key environmental debate.
But does fracking resonate as a Latino issue? Are there a significant number of affected Latino communities? Is the opposition to fracking embedded with Latino faces?
In Environmental & Food Justice, Environmental Justice scholar Dr. Devon Peña highlights a crucial point:
“The majority of anti-fracking activists are white, urban, and middle class. A growing number of the low-paid and at-risk workers hired by the natural gas and oil exploration, drilling, and extraction companies are rural, poor, Black, and Latino.”
This tends to pit at-risk communities with the workers in the fields, and with Latinos being framed as enemies in the process instead of as potential allies. The concern is that the anti-fracking movement could suffer from the same concerns of other conservation efforts.
As Dr. Peña also states:
“Indeed, a continuing challenge for progressives in the U.S. today is the need to build a bridge between environmental and immigrant defense and workers’ organizing rights movements. The divide between the green, the brown, and the blue needs attention.
The most recent evidence of this comes from the anti-fracking movement centered in the Marcellus shale communities of Pennsylvania and New York. According to one source, the overwhelmingly white and middle class anti-fracking movement in that region is attacking the Latino workers exploited by the natural gas companies in the current drive to extract as much as possible before tougher regulations kick in – if they do and that seems far from certain. White eco-activists are once again demonizing Latino immigrant workers.”
But Latino communities may also be at risk from the environmental effects of fracking. Low-income communities and especially communities of color have long lived with concerns over contaminated water. But contaminated water from fracking is a relatively new issue that did not really take off until this past decade with rural white communities—and it may be that for Latino communities it is simply underreported, especially in areas of Southern California and the colonias of Texas.
In California, with the discovery and development of what is known as the Monterey Shale, fracking may be added to the host of environmental challenges Latinos face there. While a big focus has been on how it will affect Monterey County agriculture and wine country, the shale field extends into the San Joaquin Valley, home to many Latino communities.
The process is moving forward, and many of the debates had in other parts of the country are arriving in California. With its significant Latino population, it will be interesting to see how Latinos continue to be part of the debate at the state level and nationally. Some Latino voices have made it part of the dialogue. But in order avoid some of the pitfalls of other conservation issues, the environmental debate over fracking may be in need of some Latino perspectives.
January 10, 2013
2012 closed with an interesting note: As noted in this article from Reuters, the term “fracking” was more popular than “climate change” in US online searches.
Fracking, the common term for hydraulic fracturing, was across the news in 2012 as shale oil and natural gas extraction took off. For anyone unfamiliar with the term or process, it is essentially breaking up rock with pressurized fluid in order to release oil and natural gas. But the process comes with reports of concern about the side effects on the environment and nearby communities—and as the Matt Damon-produced movie “Promised Land”, hits the theaters, fracking is cresting to be a key environmental debate.
But does fracking resonate as a Latino issue? Are there a significant number of affected Latino communities? Is the opposition to fracking embedded with Latino faces?
In Environmental & Food Justice, Environmental Justice scholar Dr. Devon Peña highlights a crucial point:
“The majority of anti-fracking activists are white, urban, and middle class. A growing number of the low-paid and at-risk workers hired by the natural gas and oil exploration, drilling, and extraction companies are rural, poor, Black, and Latino.”
This tends to pit at-risk communities with the workers in the fields, and with Latinos being framed as enemies in the process instead of as potential allies. The concern is that the anti-fracking movement could suffer from the same concerns of other conservation efforts.
As Dr. Peña also states:
“Indeed, a continuing challenge for progressives in the U.S. today is the need to build a bridge between environmental and immigrant defense and workers’ organizing rights movements. The divide between the green, the brown, and the blue needs attention.
The most recent evidence of this comes from the anti-fracking movement centered in the Marcellus shale communities of Pennsylvania and New York. According to one source, the overwhelmingly white and middle class anti-fracking movement in that region is attacking the Latino workers exploited by the natural gas companies in the current drive to extract as much as possible before tougher regulations kick in – if they do and that seems far from certain. White eco-activists are once again demonizing Latino immigrant workers.”
But Latino communities may also be at risk from the environmental effects of fracking. Low-income communities and especially communities of color have long lived with concerns over contaminated water. But contaminated water from fracking is a relatively new issue that did not really take off until this past decade with rural white communities—and it may be that for Latino communities it is simply underreported, especially in areas of Southern California and the colonias of Texas.
In California, with the discovery and development of what is known as the Monterey Shale, fracking may be added to the host of environmental challenges Latinos face there. While a big focus has been on how it will affect Monterey County agriculture and wine country, the shale field extends into the San Joaquin Valley, home to many Latino communities.
The process is moving forward, and many of the debates had in other parts of the country are arriving in California. With its significant Latino population, it will be interesting to see how Latinos continue to be part of the debate at the state level and nationally. Some Latino voices have made it part of the dialogue. But in order avoid some of the pitfalls of other conservation issues, the environmental debate over fracking may be in need of some Latino perspectives.
A Tale of Two Communities of Color and Contaminated Water
November 20, 2012
This past week two stories stood out identifying two communities of color different in many ways but connected by a common challenge: contaminated water.
One story, from the New York Times, pointed out the issues with contaminated water faced in small predominately Latino communities in the Central Valley, California. “Don’t drink the water” is no joke here, but rather a sad reality and norm for low-income communities of color. It should be fair to ask HOW this happen as well as WHY. As the NY Times story points out:
“It is the grim result of more than half a century in which chemical fertilizers, animal wastes, pesticides and other substances have infiltrated aquifers, seeping into the groundwater and eventually into the tap.”
The irony is that many of these communities are farm-working communities that work the very fields and industries that poison their drinking water —and in that process these communities bear the cost of food production in more than one way. First, we rely on communities like these to serve as a labor force for the food we consume, the dairies and crops of California’s bountiful bread basket. But the political and economic forces that govern these areas keep many of these communities in poverty with low wages or uneven enforcement of the few regulations in place to protect them. Second, these communities struggle with limited access to the basic needs some of us take for granted, such as drinking water.
These communities are asked to pay twice for water. They pay first for the tap and second in the purchase of bottled drinking water. Furthermore this pushes habits we consider detrimental to sustainable living: In the larger conservation community we stress the detrimental environmental effects of bottled water and yet that is the safest and healthiest option for these communities absent state and regulatory action.
The other story exposed the loopholes benefiting oil and gas companies to dump contaminated water on the Wind River Reservation, Wyoming. NPR broke the story, specifically pointing out how what goes on there is illegal in most of the country— with the implication that a reservation is not seen as like most of the country. The shocking part is that this is permitted, directly and indirectly, by the Environmental Protection Agency, the very agency that is supposed to regulate this type of practice to protect people and the environment. As this article from KERA News points out, quoting a Duke University environmental scientist:
“I was shocked when I heard this. I was very surprised this was allowed. It’s just something that we should know better by now. We should know that dumping our waste onto the surface of the ground is a bad solution…Are we doing something on tribal lands we wouldn’t allow somewhere else? I think that’s something we have to be asking ourselves.”
Those are good questions, but questions and issues that not all communities face— Yet common enough in communities of color.
November 20, 2012
This past week two stories stood out identifying two communities of color different in many ways but connected by a common challenge: contaminated water.
One story, from the New York Times, pointed out the issues with contaminated water faced in small predominately Latino communities in the Central Valley, California. “Don’t drink the water” is no joke here, but rather a sad reality and norm for low-income communities of color. It should be fair to ask HOW this happen as well as WHY. As the NY Times story points out:
“It is the grim result of more than half a century in which chemical fertilizers, animal wastes, pesticides and other substances have infiltrated aquifers, seeping into the groundwater and eventually into the tap.”
The irony is that many of these communities are farm-working communities that work the very fields and industries that poison their drinking water —and in that process these communities bear the cost of food production in more than one way. First, we rely on communities like these to serve as a labor force for the food we consume, the dairies and crops of California’s bountiful bread basket. But the political and economic forces that govern these areas keep many of these communities in poverty with low wages or uneven enforcement of the few regulations in place to protect them. Second, these communities struggle with limited access to the basic needs some of us take for granted, such as drinking water.
These communities are asked to pay twice for water. They pay first for the tap and second in the purchase of bottled drinking water. Furthermore this pushes habits we consider detrimental to sustainable living: In the larger conservation community we stress the detrimental environmental effects of bottled water and yet that is the safest and healthiest option for these communities absent state and regulatory action.
The other story exposed the loopholes benefiting oil and gas companies to dump contaminated water on the Wind River Reservation, Wyoming. NPR broke the story, specifically pointing out how what goes on there is illegal in most of the country— with the implication that a reservation is not seen as like most of the country. The shocking part is that this is permitted, directly and indirectly, by the Environmental Protection Agency, the very agency that is supposed to regulate this type of practice to protect people and the environment. As this article from KERA News points out, quoting a Duke University environmental scientist:
“I was shocked when I heard this. I was very surprised this was allowed. It’s just something that we should know better by now. We should know that dumping our waste onto the surface of the ground is a bad solution…Are we doing something on tribal lands we wouldn’t allow somewhere else? I think that’s something we have to be asking ourselves.”
Those are good questions, but questions and issues that not all communities face— Yet common enough in communities of color.
EJ in L.A
L.A has been quite the laboratory for Latinos and environmental issues.
Definitely because of the huge Latino population there, but also because
of the very clear environmental problems that the communities are
exposed to. Communities and groups have mustered the strength to start
the fight against the problems and also have begun to redefine what it
means to be an environmentalist in the contexts of the barrio.
A 2009 story in Newsweek paints a general picture of how the issues play out in the LA area, and how a "Green Latino Movement" displays that environmental issues are not a "luxury of the elite" (that has been a main complaint of the "environmental movement", that it's a white middle class endeavor, basically a cause for those that have the time and can afford it...)
I think more and more of these stories will be coming out. When I was doing research on these topics (the fruits of which I hope I'll be able to condense soon enough...) I was finding that it was there were few mainstream publications and news outlets mentioning the struggle, and of course, community groups have few resources to devote to websites and media outreach. But big organizations are beginning to take up the issues (for good and bad) and be more responsible about them, and the grassroots are not going to be going away.
I want to close now by saying that I think the Newsweek article does a fair job of providing some of the main "ideas" or issues when it comes to Latinos and the environment, which are:
1) It is about community and familia
2) The health aspects of the issues are just as, if not more, important than "traditional" environmental issues (wilderness preservation and the like)
3) Latinos need access to green spaces, and such spaces are valued as family spaces
4) Latinos do have a history of wise resources use and conservation
5) Latinos need to be part of the discussion and solutions, not just the "victims"
A 2009 story in Newsweek paints a general picture of how the issues play out in the LA area, and how a "Green Latino Movement" displays that environmental issues are not a "luxury of the elite" (that has been a main complaint of the "environmental movement", that it's a white middle class endeavor, basically a cause for those that have the time and can afford it...)
I think more and more of these stories will be coming out. When I was doing research on these topics (the fruits of which I hope I'll be able to condense soon enough...) I was finding that it was there were few mainstream publications and news outlets mentioning the struggle, and of course, community groups have few resources to devote to websites and media outreach. But big organizations are beginning to take up the issues (for good and bad) and be more responsible about them, and the grassroots are not going to be going away.
I want to close now by saying that I think the Newsweek article does a fair job of providing some of the main "ideas" or issues when it comes to Latinos and the environment, which are:
1) It is about community and familia
2) The health aspects of the issues are just as, if not more, important than "traditional" environmental issues (wilderness preservation and the like)
3) Latinos need access to green spaces, and such spaces are valued as family spaces
4) Latinos do have a history of wise resources use and conservation
5) Latinos need to be part of the discussion and solutions, not just the "victims"