Black Lives Matter in Engineering, Too! An Environmental Justice Approach Towards Equitable Decision-Making for Stormwater Management in African American Communities

This dis­ser­ta­tion dis­cuss­es the unique chal­lenges and strug­gles faced in South­ern com­mu­ni­ties, choos­ing East Tam­pa as a case study, of stormwa­ter man­age­ment due to the preva­lence of trop­i­cal storms and hur­ri­canes in these areas. Specif­i­cal­ly, it details how the areas where these chal­lenges are the hard­est may inter­sect with areas of these com­mu­ni­ties with a high African Amer­i­can pop­u­la­tion. It also dis­cuss­es envi­ron­men­tal engi­neer­ing man­age­ment as a whole, though it goes into par­tic­u­lar detail about stormwa­ter man­age­ment. While the paper most­ly focus­es on East Tam­pa, it also goes into detail about Wash­ing­ton D.C.; Atlanta, Geor­gia; and an area not in the South at all, Port­land, Ore­gon. A key event that this dis­ser­ta­tion ref­er­ences is how this inter­sec­tion has dis­pro­por­tion­ate­ly affect­ed com­mu­ni­ties in the past with Hur­ri­cane Katrina.

The study ref­er­ences that com­mu­ni­ties of col­or, par­tic­u­lar­ly African Amer­i­can com­mu­ni­ties, are more like­ly to expe­ri­ence the effects of cli­mate change direct­ly due to expo­sure to stres­sors such as air and water pol­lu­tion. The goal of this paper and its research, specif­i­cal­ly, was to “ana­lyze the rela­tion­ship between stormwa­ter man­age­ment best prac­tices and envi­ron­men­tal jus­tice in US cities”. This study also unique­ly chose to inte­grate crit­i­cal race the­o­ry into its discussions.

East Tam­pa, in par­tic­u­lar, is a major­i­ty-black com­mu­ni­ty. The study goes ana­lyzes the var­i­ous invest­ments made in the com­mu­ni­ty of East Tam­pa, point­ing out that most invest­ments were made into infra­struc­ture projects, includ­ing stormwa­ter revi­tal­iza­tion. It men­tions a needs assess­ment con­duct­ed in East Tam­pa, con­nect­ing this needs assess­ment with rel­e­vant envi­ron­men­tal engi­neer­ing design principles.

East Tam­pa as an area has strug­gled with stormwa­ter man­age­ment, being locat­ed in a par­tic­u­lar­ly flood-prone area. As such, var­i­ous projects have been con­duct­ed over the years to address this issue, includ­ing work­ing on var­i­ous stormwa­ter ponds in the area. The study ana­lyzes these ponds for sus­tain­abil­i­ty and the pub­lic per­cep­tion of these ponds.

CEE sub­jects: Con­struc­tion Engi­neer­ing and Man­age­ment, Envi­ron­men­tal Engi­neer­ing, Water Qual­i­ty and Health, Earth Sys­tems, Envi­ron­men­tal Flu­id Dynam­ics, Envi­ron­men­tal Pol­i­cy and Sus­tain­able Infrastructure

• Why was East Tam­pa cho­sen as a case study? Was it cho­sen due to its suit­abil­i­ty or due to researcher bias — and if it was researcher bias, what should have been done instead?
• This dis­ser­ta­tion men­tions the dif­fer­ence between Sus­tain­able Devel­op­ment Goals and Envi­ron­men­tal Jus­tice Prin­ci­ples — are these goals and prin­ci­ples real­is­tic and pos­si­ble to achieve? If not, should they be adjust­ed or changed, and in what ways?
• Do you think in depth analy­sis of com­mu­ni­ties and respec­tive engi­neer­ing man­age­ment prac­tices are use­ful? How can we use the infor­ma­tion gained in this study for future engi­neer­ing projects?

• Peer reviewed articles 
  • this dis­ser­ta­tion