Environmental Racism in Vermont

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Environmental Racism in VermontDoes it Exist?
Environmental Racism in Vermont Does it Exist?
GIS 195 SEMESTER PROJECT By Brian
Fernandes
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What is environmental racism and why is it an
important problem to correct?

• Environmental Racism is the targeting of minority
  communities for hazardous waste site locations
  and industrial development with discriminatory
  policy making and laws to back the actions up.
• Environmental Racism is a problem throughout the
  United States and the world and is causing poor
  health in many lower class and minority
  neighborhoods

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Objective

• This project will look to see if the relatively
  racially homogeneous state of Vermont suffers
  from environmental racism like much of the world
  and the United States particularly in the major
  cities and in the south.

• To discover if the socioeconomic status or racial
  makeup of specific geographic locations causes
  more hazardous waste sites to occur in the state
  of Vermont.

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• Los Angeles Population of Non-Hispanic Whites in
  relation to hazardous waste sites. This one
  example of the many extreme cases of
  environmental racism throughout our country that
  led me to explore if Vermont was affected by it.

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Methods
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• Map of Hazardous waste sites showing one of the
  two Vsprawl layers that I used as well as the
  location of all the hazardous waste sites in the
  state of Vermont

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• Census data layer obtained from the governments
  web site including census tracts and block
  groups. This image is the Burlington area and its
  hazardous waste site locations which shows a high
  concentration around the more densely populated
  areas that house much of Burlingtons poor and
  minority communities.

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Vermont Town Data for Minority Populations and
Populations Below the Poverty Level in Relation
to Hazardous Waste Site Locations and Frequency
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Selected Vermont Cities Comparison of
Relationships between Hazardous Waste Sites and
Minority Populations and Populations Below
Poverty Line
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Hazardous Waste Sites Within Burlingtons Census
Tracts and Block Groups
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What I Learned

• Although a positive correlation does exist it may
  not be strong enough to prove my original
  hypothesis.
• Census data and VCGI data layers are not specific
  enough to do the type of analysis that I had
  originally intended on doing.
• GIS technology is used widely in this field and
  in all census data collection.
• This type of analysis is very time consuming
  because there is so much data and it is hard to
  draw conclusions from it.