Chapter 3 Environmental Racism

National patterns of siting waste facilities and other harmful facilities in low-income areas has given the claim for environmental racism some substance. Even here on the north shore of Lake Tahoe, we have seen how economic factors and race have played huge roles in decisions to jeopardize the environment and the residents. In Kings Beach there are sewage pipes that have broken in the past and leaked human waste into lake water. They built these sewage lines in Kings Beach because there are more low income residents and a majority hispanic demographic compared to the high-income, white majority towns that border Kings Beach on the west(Tahoe City) and Eastern side (Incline Village). Another example from Kings Beach, was when Waste Management was going to build a facility on a plot of land that is currently a wetland. The local governments saw an economic benefit from allowing thousands of pounds of garbage to be processed and moved and thought Kings Beach would not fight this idea. Luckily for our sake and the extremely fragile environment of Lake Tahoe there are people in this area that fought them off ensuring this facility was not approved, but again this provides evidence of how environmental racism can be occurring in your back yard and even in places like Lake Tahoe where the environment is so pristine, political forces and economic gains can out weigh the harms to society and the environment.