The movies helped to make Bayou La Batre famous – Forrest Gump featured the south Alabama town and Disney launched a bona fide pirate ship out of the namesake bayou during the filming of Pirates of the Caribbean: Secrets of the Black Pearl. Doubtless the place deserves to be in pictures, but neighboring towns might be wishing for a real-life change of scenery in Bayou La Batre.

After the Gulf Coast was devastated by Hurricane Katrina, a waste-water treatment facility had to be built immediately in Mobile County. The Bayou La Batre Waste Water Treatment Plant primarily serves the city it’s named for but it was built in the small community of Coden, whose citizens didn’t have the economic or political clout to stop the construction in their neighborhood. Due to its location in a high-velocity flood zone, Coden suffers the brunt of the waste and contamination from the water treatment plant. The Alabama Department of Conservation has restricted fishing in many of the major oyster reefs in the area and pollution from the plant has killed off much of the sea life. For a community where the economy has always depended so heavily on shrimping and fishing, the effects have been devastating.

This is just one scenario that Simone Washington gives as an example of “environmental injustice.” A board member of the Alabama Rivers Alliance, Washington is currently working on environmental justice initiatives being developed by Alabama Arise, a coalition of more than 150 religious, community and civics groups that promote a wide range of state policies and initiatives to improve conditions for the underprivileged. The group focuses on issues that span from public transportation, the death penalty and constitutional and tax reform.

“For Arise, our approach to Environmental Justice has been to focus on the disparate impact of the ADEM issuing permits for projects without doing a full impact assessment,” Washington says, “specifically whether the projects would pose a disproportional and unjust burden for communities of color and predominantly lower-income communities.”

According to Washington, poorer communities often bear a disproportionately large environmental burden from the establishment of such amenities as quarries and major landfills. Unlike larger, wealthier municipalities, small towns often lack the financial means to fight against development projects that pose environmental and public health risks. Providing financial and legal aid to low-income communities is part of the mention of Alabama Arise.

Environmental justice is still a relatively new initiative for Alabama Arise. Washington is working to promote awareness of situations like Coden’s throughout Alabama. Through the Arise Citizens’ Policy Project, Alabama Arise hopes to extend environmental justice responsibilities to the Alabama Department of Environmental Management (or ADEM).

The concept of environmental justice isn’t just a new initiative for Alabama Arise but a relatively new concept altogether. The need for impact studies to determine how particular areas will be affected by any number of new industrial or social developments is crucial in protecting smaller populations from being unfairly saddled with the bulk of negative consequences.

But considering that this movement is not yet fully galvanized, Washington believes that one of the biggest obstacles at the moment doesn’t lie just in preventing additional troubles like that of Coden, but in assessing pre-existing problems.

“There are lots of new companies coming in due to the recent industrial boom in Alabama, which is always going to add to the air and water pollution. Right now it’s hard to keep up with who’s doing what,” Washington says. “Environmental Justice is still in its infancy and awareness about the issue is still very weak. A lot of what we are trying to do is to raise awareness through workshops – to bring it to the public’s attention and say, ‘Why aren’t we doing anything about this?’

“We’ve been trying to ally ourselves with smaller community groups that have come to us looking for help,” Washington says. “They’ve played an important part in alerting us to the sorts of problems out there that we need to be addressing.”

Alabama Arise has partnered with several groups that are working on similar aims. By working with such associations as Wildlaw, Conservation Alabama, ADEM Reform Coalition (which boasts a roaster of 40 organizations) and a multitude of smaller community groups, Arise has added organizational support into several previously established projects.

“Being new to this issue, we have primarily followed the lead of the ADEM Reform Coalition on addressing this matter,” Washington says. “We have been supportive of their campaign to reduce the carcinogen levels in Alabama waterways and also to strengthen the Environmental Justice Unit of ADEM. We have also spoken out against the Family Farm Bill, and have worked with Wildlaw in support of the recent landfill bill in the Senate.

“We have also been active with the South Alabama Communities in addressing environmental justice issues post-Katrina, specifically, the water waste treatment facility in Coden and also addressing the constant threat of danger posed by the large concentration of natural gas companies in the Coden/Bayou La Batre area,” Washington adds.

Government agencies appear to be taking notice of environmental justice and the efforts of such groups as Alabama Arise. Last year, ADEM, in cooperation with the Environmental Protection Agency began offering environmental justice training courses for ADEM and EPA staffers. Washington expresses hopes that environmental justice will become a more prominent concern for such agencies.