Some people might have difficulty feeling empathy for prisoners which is normal because society teaches us to fear and view prisoners as inferior. What matters is your willingness to expose yourself to new information that might change the way you feel about things.
If you still have difficulty and doubts, perhaps this blog post is for you as I finally discuss how prisons and their locations inflict environmental injustice in surrounding communities. When we think about pollution, we often ignore how prisons are also sources of pollution that harm the environment and communities around them. If it is hard for you to care at least for our planet and non-incarcerated communities, I am not sure what to tell you.
In my other post, I discussed how air pollution affected the health of prisoners and staff but now I demonstrate how this pollution extends outside the walls of prisons. The toxicity does not contain itself within the walls of prison but rather harms the people and ecosystems outside prisons too.
Because prisons are inherently detested and ignored institutions, the hidden menace of pollution from them has stayed below the radar"- John E. Dannenberg
Prison Locations: Do you Live Near a Prison?
To start off, let's first take a look at where California's prisons are located. The interactive map below allows you to zoom in and out of cities to find prisons near you. You can also click on the icons if you want to learn the prison's name and for more information.
I used the map to look for prisons that appeared to be close to neighborhoods. Not too long in, I stumbled upon a state prison in Norco, CA named California Rehabilitation Center. I could not find the exact distance between the prison and the nearest neighborhood but then I found this on Google Maps:
The prison is right across an entire neighborhood. The only thing between them is the street and some fences. The barbed wires on the right and the trees and peaceful scenery on the left convey such a powerful statement. If you'd like to search this up, the prison's address is Fifth St, Norco, CA 92860.
Next, I used this site to track the level of pollution burden surrounding the prison and the neighborhood across from it. The map below shows that the location of the prison and its surroundings have one of the highest levels of pollution burden in the area.
While the map does not identify the source responsible for emitting the most pollutants, it is significant to notice that the areas further from the prison have lower levels of pollution. Another thing note is that the area closest to the prison also suffers from high levels of pollution. What this map suggests is that pollution crosses the boundaries of buildings, humans, and non-humans.
Contaminated Lands Are for Prisons
Prisons are purposely sited on the least desirable yet most contaminated sites as a way to save money. In fact, at least 589 prisons are within three miles of a Superfund cleanup site (1). For some background, a Superfund cleanup site is any site federally recognized for improper management of hazardous waste, which can include landfills and manufacturing facilities (2).
Cruel and unusual punishment for prisoners does not begin in prisons. Cruel and unusual punishment in prisons begin the moment that prisons are built on sites that are known to be hazardous. As Paul Wright, Executive director of the Human Rights Defense Center, puts it:
When trees have been cut down…and everything has been contaminated and poisoned in the process, the final solution is, okay now we’re going to build a prison here (3).
In California, the Victorville Federal Correctional Complex is now considered a military Superfund site because it was built on a former Weapons Storage Area (WSA) (4). In the past, the US Department of Defense buried and stored radioactive nuclear waste, tetraethyl lead, and munitions in that same land that is now a prison (4). The federal government recognizes that this contaminated land endangers human and environmental health yet the prison stands to this day.
Sewage Spills from Prisons
While some prisons are "out of sight, out of mind," the issues they inflict upon the environment cannot be ignored. The injustices in prison cross boundaries by also endangering aquatic and plant life outside prisons. Several reports of prisons spilling sewage into bodies of water have been reported, which I will include below:
The Monroe correctional complex in Seattle has spilled approximately half a million gallons of sewage water into Skykomish river and wetlands since 2006. In 2012, negligence and an effluent pump failure were responsible for a 400,000-gallon spill into Skykomish river, which went "unnoticed" for four days. The river is popular for being home to populations of steelhead trout and for being a place of outdoor recreation for tourists and locals (4), meaning that the gallons of sewage can potentially endanger the wellbeing of humans and non-humans that rely on the river.
In California, the Folsom State Prison was fined $700,000 for spilling 700,000 gallons of sewage into the American River (5).
In 2004, the California Men's Colony in San Luis Obispo was fined $600,000 for dumping 220,000 gallons of raw sewage into Chorro Creek. Also, this prison was responsible for spilling one-quarter of the 450 documented spills in California prisons from the early 2000s. Sadly, some of the spills ended up in Morro Bay which is a protected wildlife sanctuary (5). In 2019, this same facility dumped 33,000 gallons of partially treated wastewater into Chorro Creek for 12-15 minutes (6).
How Sewage Spills Endanger Humans and Non-Humans
Sewage spills can bring salmonella, hepatitis, E.coli, dysentery, cryptosporidium, among other infectious diseases into bodies of water that humans can come in close contact with (7). In fact, as many as 3.5 million people in the US get sick annually from fishing, swimming, and even by touching water they believed to be safe (7).
As for non-humans, sewage spills deteriorate the quality of the water by introducing metals and nutrients and can be deadly to aquatic animals (8).
Community Opposition to More Prisons
On a brighter note, more communities are starting to oppose the construction of more prisons due to the effects that they would have on their community and the environment.
For instance, in the 1980s, an organization from Los Angeles named MELA stopped the construction of a new prison in their neighborhood. Instead, they argued that the government should invest in socially beneficial projects (4).
Similarly, activists from the San Joaquin valley opposed the Delano ll prison because they argued that the new prison would increase traffic congestion, school overcrowding, and threaten vulnerable species like the Tipton kangaroo rat and the San Joaquin Valley kit fox (4).
Conclusion
Prisons are toxic not only for what they stand for- oppression, racism, violence- but also for the way they harm the environment. If you cannot empathize with prisoners, you cannot deny the fact that prisons contribute to an increase in air and water pollution.
The toxicity within prisons knows no boundaries and easily impacts the communities surrounding them. However, more transparency in environmental reports is needed from prisons. We must be more informed of how prisons pose risks to the public and environmental health. Perhaps this is what we need for more people to start opposing prisons.
Environmental Justice and Incarceration. (2017, June 13). Retrieved from http://chej.org/2017/06/13/environmental-justice-and-incarceration/
What is Superfund? (2018, November 30). Retrieved from https://www.epa.gov/superfund/what-superfund
Baptiste, N. (2017, June 8). Report: America's prisons are so polluted they are endangering inmates. Retrieved from https://www.motherjones.com/environment/2017/06/report-americas-prisons-are-so-polluted-they-are-endangering-inmates/
Pellow, D. N. (2017). Prisons and the Fight for Environmental Justice. InWhat is Critical Environmental Justice?
Anderson, R. (2017, December 5). California Prisons Struggle with Environmental Threats from Sewage Spills, Contaminated Water, Airborne Disease: Prison Legal News. Retrieved from https://www.prisonlegalnews.org/news/2017/dec/5/california-prisons-struggle-environmental-threats-sewage-spills-contaminated-water-airborne-disease/
Vaughan, M. (2019, November 14). Sewage spill at CMC dumps 33,000 gallons of wastewater — and a SLO creek was impacted.The Tribune. Retrieved from https://www.sanluisobispo.com/news/local/environment/article237376534.html
How Sewage Pollution Ends Up In Rivers. (n.d.). Retrieved from https://www.americanrivers.org/threats-solutions/clean-water/sewage-pollution/
Former National Compliance Initiative: Keeping Raw Sewage and Contaminated Stormwater Out of Our Nation's Waters. (2020, February 12). Retrieved from https://www.epa.gov/enforcement/former-national-compliance-initiative-keeping-raw-sewage-and-contaminated-stormwater-out
Comments