Pioneer of Environmental Justice Movement Looks Back

One of the pioneers of the environmental justice movement looked back on a decades-long career at an event commemorating the publishing of a landmark 1987 study he co-authored.

The study, called Toxic Wastes and Race, found that communities with high populations of nonwhite people were much more likely to be chosen as the location of landfills or other hazardous waste sites than predominantly white neighborhoods.

Charles Lee, now a senior policy adviser for environmental justice at the Environmental Protection Agency, said much has improved since then in the way environmental decision makers take race and class ...