The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency defines environmental justice as “the fair treatment and meaningful involvement of all people regardless of race, color, national origin, or income with respect to the development, implementation, and enforcement of environmental laws, regulations, and policies.” The concerns that arise in this complex environmental context extend beyond the scope of traditional legal research resources to include historical, social, scientific, and governmental documents that reside in unique archival collections. Through the conversation that follows, senior archivist William LeFevre of the Walter P. Reuther Library shares his experience and insights on how archival resources can provide essential support for legal researchers seeking to discover the foundations, background, and motivation underlying environmental justice concerns

LeFevre, William W

Thomas, Virginia C

English

Digital Commons@Wayne State University

Wayne State UniversityLibrary Scholarly Publications Wayne State University Libraries9-1-2014Researching Environmental Justice: AConversationVirginia C. ThomasArthur Neef Law Library, Wayne State UniversityWilliam W. LeFevreWalter P. Reuther Library, Wayne State UniversityThis Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Wayne State University Libraries at DigitalCommons@WayneState. It has been acceptedfor inclusion in Library Scholarly Publications by an authorized administrator of DigitalCommons@WayneState.Recommended CitationThomas, V. C. & LeFevre, W. W. (2014). Researching Environmental Justice: A Conversation. Michigan Bar Journal 93(9), 56-58.http://www.michbar.org/journal/pdf/pdf4article2430.pdfAvailable at: http://digitalcommons.wayne.edu/libsp/8956 Libraries and Legal ResearchMichigan Bar Journal      September 2014By Virginia C. Thomas and William W. LeFevreA ConversationResearching Environmental Justicehe U.S. Environmental Protec­tion Agency defines environ­mental justice as “the fair treatment and meaningful in­volvement of all people regardless of race, color, national origin, or income with re­spect to the development, implementation, and enforcement of environmental laws, regulations, and policies.”1 The concerns that arise in this complex environmental context extend beyond the scope of tra­ditional legal research resources to include historical, social, scientific, and govern­mental documents that reside in unique ar­chival collections.Through the conversation2 that follows, senior archivist William LeFevre of the Wal­ter P. Reuther Library shares his experience and insights on how archival resources can provide essential support for legal research­ers seeking to discover the foundations, background, and motivation underlying en­vironmental justice concerns.Thomas: Can you give some examples that would highlight the range of environ­mental justice cases and issues you’ve en­countered in your experience as an archivist?LeFevre: Well, I can, in fact. This is an area of intense interest to me simply be­cause we’ve had so many patrons over our many years here in the Reuther Library who have been interested in issues having to do with environmental justice.In our own collections, we have several really wonderful examples I’d like to high­light. First and foremost among those is the Thomas W. Stephens Papers.3 Stephens was a leading environmental justice attorney in Detroit who spearheaded the ultimately failed attempt to stop the Detroit garbage incinerator from being built. This is inter­esting from a historical standpoint, but also from the standpoint in 2014 as the areas around the incinerator are increasingly gen­trified and people who have moved into the newly improved neighborhoods are very un­happy the incinerator is there. They have problems with, for lack of a better term, smell pollutants—it smells like garbage in the neighborhood—and toxins spewed into the air from the incinerator.We also have the papers of Al Fishman,4 a leading Democratic operative in Michi­gan. Interestingly enough, his wife was a Radulovich, and you may remember the Radulovich Air Force case in the 1950s. Lt. Radulovich was denied an Air Force se­curity clearance as a meteorologist because he associated with known Communists—the Communists being his father, who had once subscribed to a Communist news­paper; and his sister, who was Al’s wife. Al’s been a crusader on many fronts since the 1950s, but he certainly was a crusader in the Detroit area and greater Michigan for causes having to do with environmental justice, dealing with everything from waste removal to anti­nuclear power organiza­tions in Michigan.Our collections also include the South­east Michigan Council of Governments collection.5 SEMCOG, as it’s called, is a multijurisdictional super­governmental or­ganization that deals with large areas of in­frastructure, including transportation, and the environment. The organization does big data studies on the area, and the collec­tion is often mined by environmental activ­ists and environmental lawyers to pinpoint what goes on in the environment in both a macro and a micro sort of way; for exam­ple, to pinpoint changes caused by envi­ronmental toxins.Thomas: So all their science and strate­gies are made available to researchers?LeFevre: Yes. And then, certainly, there are charitable organizations like Focus: HOPE,6 which was concerned with the en­vironmental justice issues in neighborhoods around its campus. The papers of Coleman Young7 and Jerry Cavanaugh8 as mayors of the city of Detroit and the papers of city council members Maryann Mahaffey9 and Mel Ravitz10 can be explored for environ­mental justice information.Thomas: Haven’t labor unions taken a lead in identifying and pursuing environ­mental justice concerns that affect their memberships? Can you describe the types of content researchers might expect to find in their collections?LeFevre: Yes, and, as you might guess, because we are the Archives of Labor and Urban Affairs at the Reuther Library, this is of particular interest to our staff archivists. One of the interesting things about trade unionism in the United States in the twen­tieth and twenty­first centuries is that unions have traditionally been on the forefront of promoting not only major social and eco­nomic issues, but also issues dealing with the environment.TUnions have traditionally been on the forefront of promoting not only major social and economic issues, but also issues dealing with the environment.57Libraries and Legal ResearchSeptember 2014         Michigan Bar JournalNow, I’m thinking about a movie, The China Syndrome,11 about a meltdown in a nuclear power plant in California. That film was based on a book from the early 1970s called We Almost Lost Detroit,12 which was a history of the Fermi nuclear power plant disaster in which Fermi almost went criti­cal. Because of the design of the plant, had there been a breach, Detroit would likely have been uninhabitable to this day.Fermi is in Monroe County about 25 or so miles south of the city. When Fermi­I was being built by Detroit Edison, the chair was Walker Cisler, and he figures prominently in the book. He also figures prominently in the Reuther collections because the organi­zation that led the fight against that nuclear power plant was the UAW, and it was a very personal fight for Walter Reuther, who thought it was just a fantastically bad place to build a nuclear power plant. This is just one example of how labor unions have fought against environmental dangers that could disproportionately affect their work­ers and the communities in which they lived.Thomas: What are some of the other re­sources available in Michigan archives for investigating environmental justice issues?LeFevre: Throughout Michigan there are a host of different repositories that should be considered when you are talking about researching environmental justice. Chief among them is the Bentley Library at the University of Michigan.13 And among the interesting collections there are the papers of most of the governors of the state of Michigan. Their stances and, more impor­tantly, the replies to their stances—how Michigan citizens react to state action—can be found in this collection.Thomas: Would those items largely com­prise correspondence files?LeFevre: Yes, correspondence files—not to be missed. And so the papers of William Milliken,14 James Blanchard,15 G. Mennen Williams,16 and others can be mined for that.Other records that I find particularly useful for this research are the League of Women Voters records17 and its branch rec­ords, most of which reside in the Bentley Library. Since its inception, the league has been in the forefront of environmental is­sues. Its records on political candidates, both successful and unsuccessful, and its views on environmental justice issues are telling, not only for what they reveal about individ­ual candidates, but also for what was hit­ting the public eye at the time.The Bentley also has papers of non­profit and private groups like Citizens for Alternatives to Chemical Contamination18 and Michigan Citizens Against Toxic Sub­stances,19 two grassroots organizations that really battled to even the playing field when it came to chemical contamination of our air, water, and land.Finally, one collection that is very dear to my heart is the Mary Sinclair Papers.20 For anyone not familiar with Mary Sinclair, she was a leading environmental activist and anti­nuclear power activist in Michigan in the 1970s, ’80s, and ’90s. Among other things, she led the push to keep Consum­ers Power from opening a power plant in Midland and was ultimately successful. Her papers are very rich. In the 1970s, she was viewed as a bit of an outcast, fighting nu­clear power before the Three Mile Island incident, when nuclear power was thought of as being a savior. Then, of course, after Three Mile Island, more people rallied to her side. She was one of the few—a voice in the wilderness—who was getting infor­mation that may not have been classified per se, but may have been tough to get out of companies and the government. It’s good to see that archives around the United States collect the papers of people like her.The records of the Michigan State Ar­chives,21 especially the records of the vari­ous departments of state government, are broader than the Bentley’s. For example, the Department of Agriculture conducts numer­ous studies on toxins and pesticides in soils. The Department of Transportation studies the effects on the environment of automo­biles and the various toxins they spew. The state conducts many environmental studies. Anytime there is a big road project, or if there is a question about opening a coal fire plant within a city or a proposal for a concrete ash project, the state generates environmental studies. These studies can be mined for their findings, but also for the public response.On the regional level, city and county governments can be a great source of ma­terial. Grand Rapids, for one, has a city rec­ords center22 that has, among other things, the Sanborn Insurance maps that tell you about the insides of the various structures of the city buildings. It also has plat atlases that can be used to trace property owner­ship and even daily fire logs. There’s noth­ing like a fire log to bring out information about what chemicals were used in an of­fice building or plant. You’re going to learn a lot more than what the public knew be­fore there was a fire.An interesting thing about the archival records in all these areas is that you can of­ten take seemingly esoteric records and search them for a bunch of different data points beyond the primary purpose for which the records were created. The daily fire logs are a perfect example. When there’s a fire in condos that were formerly a ware­house for automotive supplies, one of the things the log is going to reveal after the fact is the kinds of accelerants that were in the building in its earlier incarnation.When you go to the Upper Peninsula, of course you have Michigan Technological University,23 which is really one of the great­est resources on the history of mining—the iron and copper mines and the environ­mental impact those have had, the tailings, and the leaching of mercury and other sub­stances that have been used to extract these metals.Thomas: When your patrons, particu­larly legal researchers, ask for assistance with questions on environmental justice is­sues, what kinds of information do they bring to you?LeFevre: There are two kinds of patrons, basically—those who have used archives before and have an idea of the kinds of things archives collect and how they dis­seminate that information, and those who On the regional level, city and county governments can be a great source of material.58 Libraries and Legal ResearchMichigan Bar Journal      September 2014haven’t used archives. Ultimately, especially as we get more content from our collec­tions online, we see a shift from traditional researchers who know how to use finding aids and guides to researchers who don’t necessarily know how to use these tools and don’t have a good understanding of what we mean when we say we have the Coleman Young collection,24 for example. Collection of what? And finding aids, though useful to the more experienced researcher, would be difficult for these individuals to use in interpreting where those subject headings might lead them.Because of the way discovery works, lawyers tend to take a “big bucket” approach when they step outside of traditional legal research—it’s a “vacuum up everything” sort of deal. Archivists can quickly help attorneys refine their search requests and zero in on specifically pertinent resources. I’ll give you an example. If someone comes into our reading room and asks for every­thing we have in the Reuther on labor, I say, “Cancel Christmas, because we’re going to be here for a while.” Very quickly, we have to go from 75,000 linear feet of rec­ords down to a few boxes of rec ords the individual needs. When a lawyer comes in to research a case involving a UAW union member who was exposed to industrial solvents at a plant, and the union member belongs to Local 157, the lawyer may be tempted to home in on the UAW Skilled Trades Department records, not knowing that the UAW Health and Safety Depart­ment25 has all the environmental records associated with that plant. As archivists, what we have to do is back up a little bit and ask, “What is it about Local 157 that is of interest to you? Membership records? Rou­tine correspondence? Environmental toxins in the plants? Because if it is, we may need to go into this collection over here.” The natural structure of archives and their find­ing tools make researching a multifaceted topic like environmental justice tough to do without the knowledge base of a subject archivist. You’re going to encounter a lot of red herrings.Thomas: What are some of the best prac­tices or strategies that attorneys can use to enable archivists to help them research more effectively?LeFevre: I would advise lawyers and oth­ers who are doing in­depth research into complex subject areas such as this not to spend a lot of time looking at archival find­ing lists and guides. I would get a hold of the subject specialist, because the special­ist will cut through everything and be able to provide any content, or alternatively, tell you the content you’re looking for doesn’t exist but that you have data points for simi­lar content.In this increasingly globalized informa­tion economy where we expect everything to be online and easily findable and under­standable, archives tend to be a bit of an anomaly. Because of the way the informa­tion is indexed, arranged, and described, sometimes it’s not easy to interpret.Even in this information age, the best approach to conducting archival research is often seeking out the person who has actu­ally arranged and described the rec ords. Through finding aids and guides, the archi­vist has provided indexing to a certain level. But the knowledge base the subject archi­vist has is much deeper and is essential to reaching the level of specificity researchers need to retrieve relevant content. nENDNOTES 1. U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Environmental Justice <http://www.epa.gov/environmentaljustice/>. All websites cited in this article were accessed  August 15, 2014. 2. This interview was conducted on July 23, 2014,  at the Walter P. Reuther Library in Detroit, MI, and was edited for publication purposes. 3. Walter P. Reuther Library, Thomas W. Stephens Papers <http://www.reuther.wayne.edu/node/3877>. 4. Walter P. Reuther Library, Al Fishman Papers  <http://www.reuther.wayne.edu/node/2516>. 5. Walter P. Reuther Library, Southeast Michigan Council of Governments (SEMCOG) Records  <http://www.reuther.wayne.edu/node/2872>. 6. Walter P. Reuther Library, Focus: HOPE Records <http://www.reuther.wayne.edu/node/2543>. 7. Walter P. Reuther Library, Coleman Young Papers <http://www.reuther.wayne.edu/node/6493>. 8. Walter P. Reuther Library, Jerome P. Cavanagh Papers <http://www.reuther.wayne.edu/node/2362>. 9. Walter P. Reuther Library, Maryann Mahaffey  Papers (Unprocessed).10. Walter P. Reuther Library, Mel Ravitz Papers, Parts I  & II <http://www.reuther.wayne.edu/node/2818>.11. The China Syndrome (Columbia Pictures 1979).12. Fuller, We Almost Lost Detroit (New York: Ballantine Books, 1975).13. Bentley Historical Library <http://bentley.umich.edu>.14. Bentley Historical Library, William G. Milliken papers 1961–1982 <http://quod.lib.umich.edu/cgi/f/findaid/findaid-idx?c=bhlead&idno=umich-bhl-8924>.15. Bentley Historical Library, James J. Blanchard Papers 1982–2002 <http://quod.lib.umich.edu/b/bhlead/umich-bhl-9940>.16. Bentley Historical Library, G. Mennen Williams papers 1883–1988 <http://quod.lib.umich.edu/cgi/f/findaid/findaid-idx?c=bhlead&idno=umich-bhl-86393>.17. Bentley Historical Library, Finding aid for League of Women Voters of Detroit Records, 1930–1988 <http://quod.lib.umich.edu/b/bhlead/umich-bhl-89482?rgn=main;view=text>.18. Bentley Historical Library, Citizens for Alternatives to Chemical Contamination Records 1978–1997 <http://quod.lib.umich.edu/cgi/f/findaid/findaid-idx?c=bhlead&idno=umich-bhl-0289>.19. Bentley Historical Library, Michigan Citizens  Against Toxic Substances records 1973–1999 <http://quod.lib.umich.edu/cgi/f/findaid/findaid-idx?c=bhlead&idno=umich-bhl-03107>.20. Bentley Historical Library, Mary P. Sinclair papers 1967–1999 <http://quod.lib.umich.edu/cgi/f/findaid/findaid-idx?c=bhlead&idno=umich-bhl-85380>.21. Michigan Historical Center, Archives of Michigan <https://www.michigan.gov/mhc/0,4726,7-282-61083---,00.html>.22. City of Grand Rapids, Archives and Records Center <http://grcity.us/city-clerk/Pages/City-Archives-and-Records-Center.aspx>.23. Michigan Technological University, University Archives and Historical Collections <http:// www.mtu.edu/library/archives/>.24. Walter P. Reuther Library, Coleman Young Papers <http://www.reuther.wayne.edu/node/6493>.25. Walter P. Reuther Library, UAW Health and Safety Department Records <http://www.reuther.wayne.edu/node/2911>.Virginia C. Thomas, BA, AM, MBA, JD, is the di­rector of the Arthur Neef Law Library and interim director of the Walter P. Reuther Library and Ar­chives of Labor and Urban Affairs at Wayne State University. She serves on the State Bar of Michi­gan Libraries, Legal Research, and Legal Publica­tions Committee.William W. LeFevre, CA, CRM, is a certified ar­chiv ist and certified rec­ords manager and is the senior archivist at the Ar­chives of Labor and Urban Affairs on the campus of Wayne State University. He has served as secretary of the Institute of Certi­fied Records Managers and as a director of ARMA International and president of its Detroit chapter. He currently chairs the ARMA International Ed­ucational Foundation.

Researching Environmental Justice: A Conversation

https://digitalcommons.wayne.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1093&amp;context=libsp

Researching Environmental Justice: A Conversation

Abstract

Similar works

Full text

Available Versions

Digital Commons@Wayne State University