Environmental justice and expert knowledge in the wake of a disaster

various dimensions environmental justice in New Orleans. In particular, the hurricane served to highlight disparities in health and well-being that already existed in the region and to foreground the vulnerabilities of poor, working class, and minority communities. Disputes over local vs cosmo-politan knowledge and questions about whose science and whose knowl-edge ‘counts ’ in the reclamation of the city play out in the politics of rebuilding this historic place. The US environmental justice (EJ) movement of the past several decades, a hybrid of traditional environmental and social justice concerns, has primarily focused on two issues: (1) the siting and expansion of haz-ardous and undesirable facilities in poor and minority communities; and (2) the effort to remediate, relocate, and/or pay damages to members of poor and minority communities affected by pollution. Louisiana has been a focus of this movement, with citizens ’ groups fighting a variety of injustices from the siting of hazardous industries in minority communities to buildin