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Urban streams and rivers have chronic bacteria contamination in the United States, coming from multiple sources, following a variety of flowpaths to the waterway, and with differing downstream fates. Bacteria from human sewage, estimated through measures of Escherichia coli, pose the highest risk to human health. We analyzed four years of E. coli monitoring by community science groups to look for spatial and temporal drivers of E. coli densities in watersheds in the urban core of metro Atlanta, GA, with a wide range of racial and economic diversity as well as persistent patterns of segregation and racialized inequality. These watersheds are spaces of environmental injustice, with disproportionate impacts for lower-wealth and predominantly Black communities from flooding, soil contamination, and air pollution. While there were minimal differences in E. coli between watersheds with different Black and white populations, individual sites could be identified as hot and cold spots of contamination. Storm events increased E. coli at most sites, indicating a combination of runoff and sediment-sorbed E. coli explains about 50% of the temporal variability in E. coli densities. Long-term median E. coli levels were not strongly correlated to land cover or socio-demographic characteristics of the contributing watershed, but E. coli variability was lower in less densely urbanized areas. Temporal and spatial distributions of E. coli are controlled by complex interactions between sources and hydrologic transport that vary across watersheds. While direct correlations to racial demographics were not observed, the interactions between sewage as one environmental harm and the many others (air quality, soil quality, prison-industrial complex, etc.) present in minority and low-income urban communities emphasize the oversized burden environmental justice communities carry.
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Environmental Injustice: When the Grass is Greener on the Other Side
Environmental pollution is a global threat that is especially prevalent in heavily industrialized and urbanized areas. Pollution can be found in many forms, such as natural and synthetic pollutants from natural and anthropogenic processes. These impact individual, population, and ecosystem health. Additionally, urbanization and industrialization create landscape heterogeneity, which alters socioecological dynamics within environments—often through intentional and systematic processes. For humans, the subjection to and impacts of both pollution and land distribution have disproportionate effects on members of low-income and marginalized communities. Environmental injustice occurs when systemic biases like racism and classism fuel inequalities and inequities among individuals and their communities. The current activity combines predictive graphing and group discussions to help reinforce basic principles of environmental pollution and the sociocultural underpinnings that increase risks of exposure and impacts, using real-life examples of environmental injustice such as the Flint Water Crisis and Cancer Alley Louisiana. Utilizing the “Mapping for Environmental Justice” website, students will predict the cumulative environmental injustice burden across the State of Virginia, resulting from imbalanced land distribution, and compare public health data to examine those to be considered “at risk” based on various demographic characteristics. Students will then think critically and discuss the decision-making behind societal pollution and land management, which influence the presence and intensity of environmental injustices.
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- Award ID(s):
- 2120934
- PAR ID:
- 10538871
- Editor(s):
- Flowers, Sharleen
- Publisher / Repository:
- Quebes
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- CourseSource
- Volume:
- 11
- ISSN:
- 2332-6530
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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- Free Publicly Accessible Full Text
-
Accepted Manuscript1.0
- Journal Article:
- https://doi.org/10.24918/cs.2024.27
