Shasha Khan - Incinerators in areas with high BME populations
Shasha Khan, of the Croydon Green Party, wrote a guest blog post for Operation Black Vote in early October. Here is an excerpt, on incinerators being located in predominately poor, black and minority-ethnic communities:
Whilst staffing a Green Party stall at September's Thornton Heath Festival, I was reminded how local authorities are keen to put on a party to celebrate the multicultural nature of their borough. However, they appear much less inclined to consider the very same residents in decisions that inherently impact on the quality of their lives.
Dozens of schemes are cropping up across the country, where private contractors are signing waste contracts to build incinerators. The agreements are 25 or 35 year deals, locking councils into providing a continued waste stream. Emissions from an incinerator are associated with cancer, lung disease, kidney disease and birth defects. The new generation of incinerators drain away resources for recycling, release twice as much CO2 as a coal fired power station, and most importantly, are a danger to human health.
Hands up who wants to live next to such a site? Not me, I hear you cry! Locally, we have founded the Stop the Incinerator campaign in Croydon.
Who will end up living next to incinerators? Friends of the Earth have produced a report which shows that 50 per cent of the incinerators are situated in 10 per cent of the poorest wards in the country.
Back in October, the Croydon Green Party calculated the most plausible location for the incinerator is the existing Beddington Lane site in Sutton. The wards in Croydon that are immediately downwind from Beddington Lane are unsurprisingly poorer wards that make up Thornton Heath. They also have a higher proportion of BME residents.
Authorities are more likely to push an unpopular decision upon a community which doesn't have the technical, financial or legal expertise to fight it. Some would argue that if the outcome of a decision disproportionately affects BME communities then it is racist regardless of the intention. From north Croydon to New Orleans, it is the poorer predominantly non-white communities that are most affected, both locally and globally.
--
For the full text of Shasha's article, please see: Operation Black Vote, "A Burning Issue, a choking reality," 6th October 2009
Tweet
