Paul Mohai, a professor at the University of Michigan School for Environment and Sustainability, began studying environmental justice in the late 1980s, just a few years after the movement began.
"Given the magnitude of the disaster in Flint, the role that public officials’ decisions played that led to the poisoning of the city’s water, their slow pace at acknowledging and responding to the problem, and the fact that Flint is a city of almost 100,000 people indeed makes this the most egregious example of environmental injustice and racism in my over three decades of studying this issue."
They include serious shortcomings related to distributive justice, procedural justice, corrective justice and social justice.
The concentration and overrepresentation of poor people and people of color in a space that also suffers from environmental contamination is "a classic characteristic" of a community suffering from environmental injustice, Mohai wrote.
"Furthermore, that Flint residents’ concerns were dismissed and that the government was slow to respond, even when it finally acknowledged the problem, is also a classic pattern that communities suffering from environmental injustices face."
"Flint’s Emergency Managers were not elected by the community, were not accountable to the community, and did not live in the community.
… The lack of local representation, the ignoring of resident complaints, the discounting of the scientific evidence, the disrespectful treatment of the residents concerned about the water quality and health impacts are all evidence that the principle of procedural justice in Flint was violated."
Corrective justice.
Social justice.
"What stands out about the Flint Water Crisis … is the apparent indifference and lack of concern that harm might be created," Mohai wrote.