Environmental Justice in Arlington, Texas

After recent racial justice uprisings across the United States, legislative leaders have been pressured to address the racism built into their locales’ actions and infrastructures — and for Arlington, Texas, that meant examining the effect a fracking well would have on the community surrounding it, and ultimately rejecting its drilling.

Nationwide, according to the Environmental Protection Agency, fossil fuel projects are more likely to be built near communities where people of color, specifically Black people, and people in poverty live. That proximity means those communities are disproportionately impacted by pollution — and thus by respiratory illnesses, such as asthma and COVID-19. This environmental racism holds true in Arlington, where French energy company Total was planning to drill a fracking well near a predominantly Black and Latinx neighborhood, where residents experience high rates