Environmental justice experts spoke at university and city forums Tuesday to encourage students and area residents to fight for rights to a clean, healthy Syracuse community.

The Partnership for Onondaga Creek and the Student Environmental Action Coalition featured four notable environmental figures in discussions about Midland held at Hendricks Chapel and the South Presbyterian Church Tuesday evening to address students and city residents about the need for a fair sewage solution.

‘All the people who know science need to help to win this fight,’ said Lois Gibbs, executive director of the Center for Health Environment and Justice. ‘It’s got to be more than people in that neighborhood; it’s got to be people from the university, in other neighborhoods.’

Presenters offered various viewpoints from law to science about Midland’s effects on the residents of Syracuse, promoting city-wide involvement.

‘Families in this community should not accept this terrible, awful polluted facility,’ Gibbs said.

Midland, a proposed aboveground sewage plant, was slated by Onondaga County to be built in a mostly black neighborhood in downtown Syracuse, and became a continuing struggle between residents and the county.

‘Midland was going to be built (in an area) that is overwhelming African-American,’ said Alma Lowry, director of the Syracuse University Public Interest Law Firm.

The Midland community population is 83 percent black, Lowry said, and building the aboveground sewage plant in such a community raises questions of racism, especially when residents presented other, underground options.

Lowry said the SU Public Interest Law Firm recently filed a civil rights claim that stated the Midland project violates a Title 6 provision in the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

‘It’s intentional discrimination,’ Lowry said.

Gibbs agreed that the proposal to build the plant in the Midland area is unfair to its residents.

‘This is environmental racism,’ Gibbs said.

Gibbs, organizer for the Lowe Canal Homeowners Association, fought for environmental justice when she heard that her children’s elementary school building was built over a 20,000-ton toxic-chemical dump in 1978.

‘(I) feel frustrated after 25 years in this state that the same thing is going on,’ Gibbs said. ‘It’s sad that 25 years later we’re in the same boat.’

Gibbs continued to speak about the concentration of race in this matter, stating that politics is a big issue.

‘This is a fight of politics,’ Gibbs said. ‘(Politicians said) because they’re poor, because they’re black, it’s OK. (Blacks) don’t have the power.’

Sandra Steingraber, ecologist and cancer survivor, said some health effects of this plant could potentially be linked to colon and bladder cancer due to chlorine that releases poisonous gases.

The chlorine itself is inherently harmful, Steingraber said, where the chlorine near creeks, such as in Onondaga, evaporate and enter the air space.

Gibbs believes the government is allowing these chemicals to harm residents.

‘In America, we give licenses and permits to poison,’ Gibbs said.

Gibbs hopes students from the university will become involved in fighting against the project since its proposed location is close to SU.

‘It’s only five blocks from this neighborhood,’ Gibbs said. ‘Those in the university could be so much help.’

Published on October 12, 2004 at 12:00 pm