By Chris Levister

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger lets MTV "pimp" his 800-horsepower car that runs on renewable biodiesel. Redlands children dressed up in recycled newspaper for a fashion show. Riverside families planted trees and learned about the environment through games and speakers. San Bernardino Mayor Pat Morris drove a hybrid Toyota Prius.

SB City Councilman Rikke Van Johnson peeking under the hood of his 2006 hybrid Toyota Camry encouraged adults and children to use their voices and actions to make a difference.  

San Bernardino City Councilman Rikke Van Johnson drives a hybrid 2006 Toyota Camry. "We're adding more hybrid vehicles to the city fleet."

An Earth Day celebration held at Cal State San Bernardino was one of more than 1,300 events organized Saturday for a national campaign called Step It Up 2007. These efforts urged Congress to pass a bill that would demand an 80 percent cut in greenhouse gas emissions by 2050.

"It's easy to be numbed out by climate change," said Stacey Smith, a spokesperson for Step It Up. "We need to be working everyday to create a healthier world for our children."

While there is much to celebrate, there is also good reason to raise the red flag that all is not well in America. This is especially true for the physical environments where people of color live, work, play, worship and attend school. 

A 2005 Associated Press analysis found that African-Americans are 79 percent more likely than whites to live in neighborhoods where industrial pollution is suspected of posing the greatest health danger.

This year also marks the 20th anniversary of the United Church of Christ landmark 1987 Toxic Wastes and Race in the United States report. As part of the celebration, UCC commissioned a new study led by the nation's leading environmental scholars. The new report follows up on issues originally raised in the 1987 report which is widely considered to have sparked the environmental movement by linking race and income to elevated levels of environmental and industrial risk.

The study, conducted by researchers at four universities for UCC, examined census data for neighborhoods adjacent to 413 facilities nationwide that process or store hazardous chemical waste produced by refineries, metal plating shops, dry cleaners and battery recyclers, among others.

Though about one-third of U.S. residents are nonwhite, more than half of the people living near such facilities were African-American, Latino or Asian American, according to the report. California has the nation's highest concentration of minorities living near hazardous waste facilities.

In the Rialto-Colton area perchlorate has been detected in 20 drinking water wells. Testing and manufacturing of solid fuel rockets in the 1940s and 1950s is believed to be the primary source of the contamination. Area leaders and suspected polluters are embroiled in a fierce legal battle over cleanup and compensation. The loss of the wells has created a serious water supply shortage.

"The cause is simple, said Robert Bullard, a sociologist at Clark Atlanta University in Georgia and lead author of the study. "The most potent predictor of where these facilities are sited is not how much income you have; its race. You don't have many of these facilities in West Los Angeles, and you don't have many minorities in West Los Angeles either." 

"We think that we've gotten so far in civil rights and creating a more equal society," study coauthor Robin Saha said, "But when it comes to the environment, to the most basic things air and water we have a long way to go still."