Race, Class and the proposed Cove Point, Maryland — LNG Terminal

While being a very bad idea, the pro­posed LNG ter­mi­nal at Cove Point Mary­land does not appear to be a blan­tant case of race or class based dis­crim­i­na­tion in its location.

I use JusticeMap.org (beta) to ana­lyze the pro­posed loca­tion.  You can see that the income for the imme­di­ate cen­sus tract is actu­al­ly high­er than the more dis­tant ones, and there are also more white peo­ple in the imme­di­ate area.

On the oth­er hand, if you look at the num­ber of peo­ple affect­ed — there are rel­a­tive­ly few peo­ple in the imme­di­ate area (1304) com­pared to the num­ber of peo­ple with­in 2.5 miles (7263).  If you com­pare the peo­ple with­in 2.5 miles to those at greater dis­tances you get a small increase in income and per­cent white as you move away from the location.

Not all facil­i­ty loca­tions are cas­es of racism or dis­crim­i­na­tion against the poor.  In this case, I’m guess­ing that the loca­tion of LNG ter­mi­nals is lim­it­ed by the need for water access — which can cor­re­late with nice scenic areas to live.  And they might require shal­low water which might be hard­er to find than land for facil­i­ties like a landfill.

You can ana­lyze the race/class demo­graph­ics for your area using JusticeMap.org by first click­ing on “Advanced” to load the advanced mode.  Then click on “Com­pare” to turn on the com­par­i­son mode.  Final­ly click on the map on the cen­ter point that you want to ana­lyze. You can increase the dis­tances in the com­par­i­son by zoom­ing out, and increase them by zoom­ing in. You can also add your own dis­tance by putting a num­ber next to Dis­tance, hit­ting sub­mit, and click­ing on the map to choose your cen­ter point.