Environmental Justice in Arlington, Texas

Read about how community organizers in Arlington, Texas, prevented the construction of a fracking well.

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Environmental Justice in Arlington, Texas

After recent racial justice uprisings across the United States, legislative leaders have been pressured to address the racism built into their locales’ actions and infrastructures — and for Arlington, Texas, that meant examining the effect a fracking well would have on the community surrounding it, and ultimately rejecting its drilling.

Nationwide, according to the Environmental Protection Agency, fossil fuel projects are more likely to be built near communities where people of color, specifically Black people, and people in poverty live. That proximity means those communities are disproportionately impacted by pollution — and thus by respiratory illnesses, such as asthma and COVID-19. This environmental racism holds true in Arlington, where French energy company Total was planning to drill a fracking well near a predominantly Black and Latinx neighborhood, where residents experience high rates of poverty, childhood asthma, and now COVID-19.

Given that pandemic discrepancy, and after their constituents demonstrated against police violence and racial injustice, Arlington City Council passed a resolution in June affirming its commitment to equity for “residents of all racial, ethnic, and national origins in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic and acknowledging the devastating impact on seniors and members of the African-American and Hispanic communities.”

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