Landfill Siting and Environmental Justice Statutes

Landfills disproportionately impact low-income communities and communities of color. For this ongoing research project, I created a geospatial database of active solid waste landfills in eleven states. Environmental justice screening methodology developed for the coal ash project was applied for these sites, with the goal of expanding our knowledge of what policy measures produce tangible results.

A landfill in Pennsylvania is mapped with a half-mile and one-mile buffer zone indicated. Both buffer zones encompass residential areas. The environmental justice screening applied to these sites measures the proportion of people of color, Black/African Americans, and Latinx/Hispanics in relation to the proportion of these populations measured at the state, county, and local levels.