Abstract
Previous water injustice research focuses predominantly on inequities and power relations in water use, management, governance, and rights. This article charts a new research direction with a case study of the unequal distribution of surface water toxic release hazard levels across census block groups in California’s Bay-Delta region in the year 2000. The article draws on secondary data and geographic information systems, as well as spatial regression analyses to test intersectional environmental inequality hypotheses regarding the determinants of surface water cumulative areal-weighted modeled hazard scores (CAWMHS)—a new environmental health hazard indicator derived in this study from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Risk-Screening Environmental Indicators database. Spatial error regression models demonstrate that black disadvantage and isolated Latino disadvantage are the strongest and positive demographic determinants of surface water CAWMHS, net of other factors. Findings have scholarly and practical implications for environmental inequality and water injustice research and policy.
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