Environmental justice and the demographic threshold: Are benefits reaching communities at risk?

The residents surrounding the Love Canal environmental disaster would not have met New York State's criteria for an environmental justice (EJ) community and its working-class residents would not have received any benefits under the state's current policy. In this article, we examine how states are defining the environmental justice community and consider the missed opportunities of non-EJ communities. Specifically, we look to nineteen existing state policies and identify the methodologies used for defining the environmental justice community as well as the benefits conferred upon these communities as a result of their designation. We then discuss the implications of the pervasive demographic threshold approach and its corresponding potential for misaligning environmental justice benefits with communities at risk.