Zoning Inequality: Environmental Racism and PODER
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The Impact of the 1928 City Plan
The 1928 City Plan for Austin, Texas, formally designated East Austin as the city's zone for Black and Mexican American residents and directed industrial development to the same area. The consequences of that decision became glaringly obvious over the following decades. By the 1980s, the 52-acre site housed fuel storage tanks containing more than 10 million gallons of toxic fuel. These tanks were operated by six major oil companies, including Exxon, Mobil, Chevron, Star Enterprises (now Texaco), CITGO, and Coastal States. The site was surrounded by various East Austin schools and households, where residents reported countless health issues such as headaches, asthma, nosebleeds, stomach issues, rashes, skin lesions, lung disease, and cancer. All of these health conditions were traced to the same source—the tank farm. This photograph serves as a physical manifestation of prior legislation and illustrates the sheer proximity of everyday life to industrial infrastructure that Austin city policy had permitted to remain there for decades.
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For years, residents reported headaches, nosebleeds, asthma, rashes, and cancer. They were largely ignored. By plotting reported illnesses against the geographic location of the tank farms, the map highlights an undeniable pattern and reveals how the consequences of the 1928 City Plan affected the health of East Austin residents. Rising illness rates caught the attention of environmental activist organizations like People Organized in Defense of Earth and her Resources (PODER), who sought to take action for their East Austin community.
Beyond the map, this record illustrates another example of public data that PODER used to build its case against case farms. Medicaid claims in the surrounding area demonstrate elevated illness rates, providing documentation linking health outcomes to the tank farm site. This record demonstrates how PODER’s campaign used a combination of mapping and public health data to argue that the harm inflicted on East Austin residents was measurable, concentrated, and remediable.