One Year Later, Gulf Oil Spill Continues to Impede Gulf Progress – Page 5 – Black Enterprise

News

One Year Later, Gulf Oil Spill Continues to Impede Gulf Progress

  • Waste Management
  • Previously, the Environmental Protection Agency has approved nine landfills in the Gulf Coast to receive the waste products from the BP Gulf Oil Spill. Five of those nine landfills were located in communities where a majority of residents are people of color, according to data compiled by Robert Bullard, director of the Environmental Justice Resource Center (EJRC) at Clark Atlanta University, and long time EJ advocate.
  • He found that a significantly large share of the oil-spill waste–24,071 tons out of 39,448 tons (61%)–was dumped communities where people of color live, Bullard wrote on DissidentVoice.org, a social justice blog. Many of those communities were located along “Cancer Alley”, a 85-mile stretch along the Mississippi from Baton Rough to New Orleans predominantly inhabited by African Americans and Latinos, and which has an increased incidence of cancer risk, allegedly due to landfills and petrochemical plants. As of this month, there are now 19 landfills designated to accept oil spill waste. The EPA says those landfills, which are not designed for hazardous wastes were used because waste from petroleum operations is exempt from hazardous-waste rules. Much of the waste included oil-stained gloves, boots, and boom used to clean up decontamination areas.
  • BP is required to sample and test collected waste weekly and the EPA is doing its own sampling to confirm, said EPA spokeswoman Betsaida Alcantara in a Miami Herald article. Residents near the landfills are concerned that oil spill waste will leak into groundwater or volatilize into the air.
Marcia is a multimedia content producer focusing on technology at Black Enterprise Magazine. In this capacity she writes and assigns stories to educate readers about social media; digital integration; gadgets, apps, and software for business and professional development; minority tech startups; and careers in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics). In 2012, she received two Salute to Excellence Awards from the National Association of Black Journalists and was recognized by Blacks in Technology (BiT) as one of the Top 10 Black achievers in the tech arena for 2011 at SXSW in Austin, Texas. She has spoken about technology on panels for New York Social Media Week, at The 2012 Rainbow/PUSH Wall Street Summit, as well as at Black Enterprise'ss Entrepreneurs Conference and Women of Power Summit. In 2011, SocialWayne.com chose her as one of 28 People of Color Impacting the Social Web, and through crowdsourcing she was listed as one of BlackWeb2.0's/HP's 50 Most Notable African American Tastemakers in Social Media and Technology for 2010. Since taking on the role of Tech editor in September 2010, she has conceived and produced five cover stories on Technology and/or STEM and countless articles, videos, and slideshows online.

×