Intersectional and Entangled Risks: An Empirical Analysis of Disasters and Landfills

Landfills are environmental hazards linked to harms, such as the production of greenhouse gases and the accumulation of toxins in natural and human systems. Although environmental justice research has established such unwanted land uses as hazardous waste sites occur in poor communities and communities of color, less is known about the relationship between landfills and gender. As a driver of global climate change, there is also limited research into the relationships among disasters, landfills, and climate-related risks. To fill this gap, the current study uses an intersectional approach to theorize and empirically analyze relationships among landfills, disasters, race, class, and gender. We employ negative binomial regression to analyze a unique U.S. dataset of landfill counts, total number of disasters, and socio-demographic characteristics, including the use of two-way interactions among race, sex, and socioeconomic status variables, and number of federally-declared disasters that influence landfill counts. Findings suggest that intersecting axes of social location (specifically gender and race) are not multiplicative when it comes to landfills or the environmental risks they pose, but we argue may be entangled—that is related in non-linear and complicated ways. Using intersectionality theory, we interpret the findings to indicate that women of color are agents of resistance enacting their own forms of power against dominant structural arrangements that produce and maintain environmental injustices. Conclusions and implications for environmental justice, intersectionality, and climate risks are further discussed.

Resolving "Resolved": Covenants Not to Sue and the Availability of CERCLA Contribution Actions

The Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act (CERCLA)—as part of its dual goals of cleaning up hazardous-waste sites and ensuring that the polluter pays for that cleanup—gives private parties two mutually exclusive causes of action: cost recovery and contribution. Contribution is available in limited circumstances, including if the party has “resolved” its liability with the government. But CERCLA does not define this operative term. Federal courts are split over how the structure of a settlement resolves liability. Several courts follow Bernstein v. Bankert, which held that any conditions precedent and nonadmissions of liability strongly suggest that a party has not yet resolved its liability. The Ninth Circuit’s recent case, ASARCO LLC v. Atlantic Richfield Co., said liability is resolved if the settlement determines the party’s obligations with “certainty and finality.” Bernstein deviates from CERCLA’s text and policy, leading to serious inconsistencies in the interpretation and application of the statute. ASARCO injects uncertainty into the statute, which disincentivizes settlements. When the stakes are the reallocation of billions of dollars and the amelioration of the most notorious environmental disasters, getting it right is paramount. This Note proposes a bright-line rule—liability is resolved when the settlement contains any covenant not to sue, conditional or unconditional—and argues that this reading cleans up many of the issues the current circuit split imparts on the statute.

The Environmental Protection Agency’s Use of Community Involvement to Engage Communities at Superfund Sites

The Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) Superfund program was established to identify, assess and clean up the nation’s worst hazardous waste sites to protect human health and the environment. Community involvement is an important part of the Superfund program for at least three reasons. First, involving communities in decision making at Superfund sites is a statutory requirement. Second, community involvement is important so that clean up decisions will support reuse in the surrounding community. Third, because even after cleanup many sites have residual contamination that warrants administrative and legal controls to protect health and the environment, community members should understand these controls to both help protect community members and any limitations on site reuse. Community feedback informs both proposed actions and local reuse decisions. While the EPA recognizes that the agency performs many activities that are helpful to support community involvement, there are areas in need of improvement and further research would be helpful for communities in the future.