Environmental Justice, Sustainable Development, and the Fight to Shut the Poletti Power Plant

The campaign to shut the Charles A. Poletti Power Plant in New York City involved remarkably successful environmental advocacy. It also created one of those rare moments when the larger public can actually “see” the structural nature of environmental racism³ at the core of the environmental justice movement in the United States. Indeed, the Poletti saga offers an environmental justice primer of sorts, revealing the remorseless logic that views placing further environmental burdens on already-overburdened community as inevitable and natural. The successful campaign to shut the Poletti Plant also offers a ray of hope – it was a victory that dramatically improved environmental quality in an overburdened community. There is much to learn from a close examination of just how that happened – from what the successful advocates/activists did on the ground, and how they invoked ideas of justice and sustainability in pursuit of their environmental objectives. Yet, the Poletti campaign’s victory has largely faded into history.