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Hydronarratives: The Confluence of Water and Environmental Justice

Water Dumping by Bush Administration to Protect Big Business

Earl Blumenauer: Arsenic is perhaps the most dramatic example where we're seeing people in Bangladesh going blind because of the concentration of arsenic. We're having an ongoing struggle with our EPA right now about what the appropriate levels are. One of the first challenges for the Bush administration was they were going to relax the standards for arsenic, some 50 times larger than the EPA recommended allowance. Martin Sheen: The Bush administration made the choice to protect big business at the expense of the environment, supporting the easy solution of dumping industrial waste into the nearest river or lake.

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A Case of Injustice
An Issue of Environmental Injustice
The arsenic contamination in Bangladesh is an example of environmental injustice because it disproportionately affects poorer, marginalized groups and was largely caused by rapid industrialization. Urban and industrial waste is often polluted with arsenic and finds its way into groundwater. The Bush administration augmented this issue when they allowed for the dumping of industrial waste into nearby rivers or lakes in promotion of “big business”. Dr. Bilqis Hoque, director of environment and population research in Bangladesh, explains how because rivers are contaminated villagers are forced to drink arsenic contaminated groundwater. If companies did a better job disposing of their waste and avoided polluting the rivers in Bangladesh, the marginalized communities would have alternative options to drinking the contaminated groundwater.

An Issue of Slow Violence
The arsenic crisis is the epitome of a slow violence case due to its silent, long-term effects. Rob Nixon defines slow violence as “violence that occurs gradually and out of sight, a violence of delayed destruction that is dispersed across time and space.” The effects of arsenic poisoning take between ten to twenty years to set in, making it an example of gradual and out of sight violence. The delayed destruction of arsenic poisoning has come with great magnitude in the form of tens of thousands of deaths but has largely not been combatted with effective solutions. While industrialization is not entirely to blame for the contamination of the groundwater, by polluting alternative water sources they have certainly contributed to the violence.
A Lack of Help
Bangladesh’s government and nonprofit organizations have not done enough to mitigate the contamination issue. Bangladesh’s government efforts have fell very short of adequate in attempts to solve the issue. Their largest measure was painting the contaminated wells red, which as shown in the image above, does nothing to prevent villagers from using the wells as they have no alternative water source.

While Bangladesh’s government may not have the funds to ameliorate the issue, NGOs have not done much better in working to solve the problem. One reason for this is that wealthy nations show indifference to environmental crisis in poorer countries, as Rob Nixon points out. Even Carol Bellamy, the head of UNICEF, admitted that her aid organization was too slow to respond as broadly as they could. She also acknowledged that if the issue had taken place in the United States there would have been bottled water delivered to everyone. Although NGOs have made some efforts, they have failed to optimize governance, have only operated in about half of Bangladesh’s village communities, and have been more focused on immediate environmental disasters like earthquakes and tsunamis, neglecting the effects of slow violence.