"'They Figured Our Neighborhood Is Black, So They'll Do It'"

"Residents of Southside Syracuse put up a fierce, well-organized fight to stop construction of a sewage plant and still lost".

"SYRACUSE, New York — Aggie Lane made her neighborhood’s pitch on July 11, 2005. Flanked by eight colleagues from the Partnership for Onondaga Creek, a citizens’ voice for the south side of Syracuse, New York, as well as a half-dozen supporters, Lane pressed the case for civil-rights claims targeting a county government bent on putting a sewage plant in her largely African-American community.

At the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s regional office in New York City Lane presented to a table full of civil-rights investigators and lawyers a PowerPoint detailing the Southside community’s struggles: the state highway dissecting the historically black neighborhood; the industrial plants dumping on residents; and now the sewage treatment facility threatening to add to the burden.

“We all know that a white, middle-class community would not put up with a sewer facility in a residential area,” Lane, herself a white, middle-class transplant to Southside Syracuse, said to the regulators."

Kristen Lombardi reports for the Center for Public Integrity August 13, 2015.

SEE ALSO:

"Bernie Sanders: Environmental-Justice Champion?" (National Journal)