The Bronx River and Environmental Justice Through the Lens of a Watershed

In this article, we examine the Bronx, New York, to explore not only the way diverse aspects of environmental injustice intersect within a particular context but also to argue that a broader, systems-based framing helps to see injustice in ways that are limited by a single lens. To make our argument, we discuss the case of Bronx borough—residing in its namesake Bronx River watershed (see figure 1)—where environmental injustices are not only distributional, but they are also created and exacerbated through upstream/downstream relationships. In other words, Bronx communities are at the receiving end of upstream environmental decision making; various forms of pollution are introduced and flow to Bronx communities downstream, which then intersect with already-existing distributional injustices. This perspective suggests the importance of a systems approach to understanding environmental justice (EJ) that brings attention to the problems created when different municipalities share a watershed, but environmental harms are disproportionately felt by individual communities.

Our systems approach to understanding EJ focuses on watersheds. A watershed is commonly defined as an area of land where all the water that falls drains to a specific point, like a stream, river, or lake. Watersheds connect social and ecological communities in many ways, and water is a key vector. Although academics and practitioners often push for watershed-based governance strategies to manage nonhuman resources (Baldwin et al., 2018), costs and benefits are uneven in geographies that are fragmented by political and cultural borders, preventing effective collaboration among municipalities (Epperly et al., 2018; Holifield & Williams, 2020; Kim et al., 2015). And although federal, state, and local regulations often restrict the disposition of wastes (such as sewage and trash) and encourage watershed-based collaboration, decision making is still localized and externalities can easily make their way downstream.

The geography of a watershed means that environmentally harmful decisions made in the upper watershed will most likely impact downstream communities through the conduit of the river, stormwater runoff, and other factors. This presents a particular challenge for under-resourced communities at the bottom of watersheds, as they are often tasked with solving problems locally despite not being able to control upstream decision making and behavior. Spirn’s (2005) conceptualization of “black bottoms” is a particularly useful way of showing how historical environmental decision making and institutional racism are the foundation for understanding site-specific environmental injustice in the downstream portions of watersheds. “Black bottoms” are a characteristic of some watersheds where decision making in more privileged upstream communities has negative socio-ecological impacts on disadvantaged downstream communities. Or, more specifically, poor communities of color located downstream—at the bottom of watersheds—take on a disproportionate risk and negative environmental impact from upstream decision making (Hill et al., 2018; Moga, 2010; Sanchez et al., 2014).

To make our argument, we present the case of the Bronx, supported by community science research and data collection that show high volumes of trash and sewage in the Bronx River, largely introduced upstream, that flow downstream into lower watershed communities nearly every time it rains. Not only does this pollution affect human health and prevent safe access to much needed urban green spaces, it has broader impacts on wildlife in the full length of the Bronx River and contributes to global issues such as marine debris and hypoxia. While there is significant local activism in the Bronx, working toward reclaiming spaces around the river for local communities (Campbell, 2006), these pollution issues suggest work must also be done upstream before any lasting progress can be made, demonstrating the importance of viewing justice at a watershed scale. In other words, the relational, but disproportionate, costs and benefits of environmental governance in a watershed requires a more broadly scaled view of socio-ecological systems and the possibilities of environmental injustice. To do so, in this article, we consider pollution as a way to trace relationships beyond municipal boundaries and show that characterizing a community such as the Bronx solely as “distributional” limits important understandings of both scale and justice.

This case and perspective helps to expand our view of EJ, nuance our ways of articulating it, and grow our tools for ameliorating it (Comer & Moran, 2017; Goldfischer et al., 2020). The conceptual roots of EJ can be found in the 1982 protests against the proposal to locate a toxic waste dump in Warren County, North Carolina (McGurty, 2000). National attention to EJ in the United States progressed further in 1994 when then President Clinton created Executive Order 12898, which required all federal agencies to identify and address environmental injustices when conducting business. A growing body of research coalesced around the issue of proximity, where high pollution levels disproportionately impact nearby communities, neighborhoods, or municipalities (Morello-Frosch et al., 2002). These conversations were largely characterized as distributional injustice, or the place-based geography of the “existence of inequity in the distribution of environmental bads” (Bullard, 1990, 1994; Schlosberg, 2018, p. 630).

Subsequent scholarship and activism has built on and diversified how we understand EJ (Bruno & Jepson, 2018; Martinez-Alier et al., 2014; Pulido & De Lara, 2018), placing issues such as identity and recognition front-and-center in their work (Schlosberg, 2018). In this view, Holifield (2015, p. 585) argues that EJ is, “better considered as a concept, topic, or phenomenon, for which there are numerous possible approaches to analysis.” In these diversified views, rather than just focusing on proximity to environmental “bads” (i.e., distributional injustice), issues such as capabilities, or the importance of access to environmental benefits, have become critical areas of focus (Heynen et al., 2006). Similarly, participation is recognized as a necessary component of the justice movement, whereby communities play an active role in determining their well-being through (in part) a healthy environment (Svendsen et al., 2016) as well as creating intergenerational equity and continuity (Baptiste, 2018). As justice continues to grow as a concern in environmental governance, EJ principles are increasingly applied to issues that often considered apolitical environmental challenges, such as stream restoration (Moran, 2010).

As such, Schlosberg (2013) notes, the field has evolved to become an organizational framework for understanding a much wider range of issues and places. Scholars have unpacked structural ways that EJ is embedded in ostensibly progressive strategies (Pearsall & Pierce, 2010). There are also diverse challenges within the EJ movement. Gender inequities are present; for example, women lead many smaller, grassroots organizations, but are typically less visible and hold less power than their male counterparts who are salaried in larger organizations (Buckingham & Kulcur, 2009). Recent scholars have pushed for an entirely new wave of EJ—critical EJ—that questions the assumptions of traditional EJ scholarship and embraces a deeper interdisciplinarity (Pellow, 2017; Pellow & Brulle, 2005).

In addition to articulating perspectives that expand our ideas about EJ, we seek to illuminate the advocacy work of under-resourced, marginalized communities in the United States, and more specifically, the Bronx. This writing is a collaboration between members of academia and the Bronx River Alliance (https://bronxriver.org), whose mission is to serve as a coordinated voice for the river and work with over 100 partners to protect, improve, and restore the Bronx River corridor so that it can be a healthy ecological, recreational, educational, and economic resource for the communities through which the river flows. The community science-based (Bonney et al., 2009) water quality monitoring programs were developed collaboratively with experts at the Bronx River Alliance and community leaders for source-tracking pollutants found throughout the river; thousands of local students and community members continue to participate in monitoring, engagement, and activism, using that data to amplify their call for access to clean water.

In the following section, we articulate a brief lineage of the EJ movement and its literature to illustrate the space for exploring the field in a watershed frame. We then present the case of the Bronx River watershed, including contextualizing the upper and lower watershed as well as the relationship among communities. We pay considerable attention to Bronx communities, where environmental injustice is a long-lasting challenge, and activism has been particularly strong. We conclude with an explanation of the importance of expanding the distributional justice approach and its importance for community collaborations.

We contend that scholarship should explicitly focus on broader networked systems, specifically watersheds, to bring attention to the disproportionate harms felt by downstream communities and how that experience is linked to upstream environmental governance. In this section, we present an abridged history of the Bronx River watershed that helps explain the relationship between Bronx communities and upstream municipalities. While often characterized as a distributional EJ community, we suggest these upstream/downstream relationships, coupled with a legacy of environmental degradation, industrialization, urbanization, and discrimination help to better understand the Bronx’s current conditions as an EJ community.

The Bronx River’s headwaters start just north of New York City (NYC) in Westchester County, New York, at the Kensico Reservoir and flow south for 23 miles (37 km), draining about 56 square miles (145 km²). The Bronx River is a figurative backbone running through the center of Westchester County to the north and Bronx County to the south, eventually creating an estuary at the confluence of the East River and Long Island Sound within the greater New York Harbor. It is unique in that it is one of the only rivers that flows directly into the city, although it is dwarfed in size and reputation by the nearby Hudson River. The Bronx River connects a diverse range of socio-ecologies in a relatively small watershed. Despite these connections, the differences across the watershed are stark. While upstream Westchester is one of the wealthiest counties per capita in the United States, its downstream neighbor, the Bronx, is the poorest urban county in the country, with almost 250,000 people living at or below the poverty line. This juxtaposition uniquely illustrates the ways that flows of water and waste connect different environmental governance structures that, many times, ignore or discount the needs of the poor or racially marginalized.

The Bronx River watershed’s namesake borough, recent history, and its urban/suburban communities make it a similarly well-known and important place. Indigenous Americans and early European colonizers made significant use of the Bronx River as a resource for food, drinking water, and transportation (de Kadt, 2011; Sanderson, 2009). Once considered a potential drinking water source for a rapidly growing NYC (before looking to other watersheds, see, e.g., Hanlon, 2017), the Bronx River instead became a sink for dumping sewage, trash, and industrial waste. By the 1900s, the river already had a reputation as a significantly degraded body of water, known for its noxious odors, unnatural colors, and piles of trash. Throughout the last century, the river was straightened by the development of adjacent railroads, the Bronx River Parkway, and the Bronx Valley Trunk Sewer (DeVillo, 2015). These infrastructure changes disrupted natural processes, facilitated northward urbanization and suburbanization, exacerbated flooding, and provided opportunities for negligent behavior to occur up and down the length of the river while speeding up negative downstream impacts like degraded water quality.

As development expanded northward, so did the fortunes of the communities who lived along the Bronx River. By the 1950s, the upper watershed was quickly becoming a suburban refuge for NYC’s white middle and upper classes escaping both real and perceived urban dangers. Post–WWII, white flight meant that wealthier and more privileged communities were able to move beyond the city into the suburban, taking advantage of commuter trains and roadways to access employment in the city (Gandy, 2003). At the same time, middle-class manufacturing jobs left the Bronx community at an alarming rate, declining from over 50,000 in the 1960s to under 15,000 in the 1990s. Federal, state, and city leaders all but abandoned the Bronx in the 1970s and 1980s (Dreier et al., 2004), cutting services as it literally burned from landlords torching buildings for insurance money. Those left behind or choosing to remain were faced with urban neglect, culminating in under-resourced and increasingly marginalized communities (Gonzalez, 2004; Halle & Beveridge, 2013; Jonnes, 2002).

While suburban communities were growing, the challenges of urban communities grew with them. In the Bronx, mid-century industrialization meant an expansion of polluting industries (see below) and the ravages of urban renewal. Robert Moses, NYC’s stalwart and influential urban planner, led infamously racist projects. While acknowledging the importance of green space, Moses had little regard for the well-being of communities of color, focusing the creation of and access to environmental goods for white working-class communities through automobile infrastructure. Moses’ projects destroyed numerous homes and parks in poor communities of color, often by placing highways directly through the middle of neighborhoods (Zukin, 2010). Notably, the Cross-Bronx Expressway displaced 15,000 people through its development, cutting up neighborhoods to provide an easy route between the city and the suburbs (Dreier et al., 2004). The South Bronx’s location between three major highways—the Cross-Bronx, the Major Deegan, and the Bruckner—has made it a polluted urban island with its residents suffering the adverse effects.

By the 1970s, the fortunes of the Bronx River and its downstream watershed community mirrored NYC’s decline. Centuries of industrial and residential waste left the Bronx River a polluted mess, often avoided or unknown by the community around it (DeVillo, 2015). As NYC faced bankruptcy, services and resources for its communities and their environments became limited or nonexistent, and the once potential drinking water source and its downstream watershed ecosystem was at a nadir. However, in 1974, grassroots efforts coalesced (Martinez-Alier et al., 2014) to form the Bronx River Restoration Project (and again in the 1990s as the Bronx River Working Group), representing a groundswell of community groups that banded together, eventually creating the Bronx River Alliance. Today, the Bronx River and its riparian habitats are improving, and community groups are active. But despite gains made at the local level to improve access and promote engagement, polluted stormwater runoff from upstream communities and sewage overflows regularly cancels community programming, due to unsafe water conditions, and threatens to undermine restoration efforts like native fish stocking. This suggests that while local work continues to be critical—and where most of the responsibility for solving problems lies—there needs to be more emphasis on comprehensive coordination across the watershed to truly address environmental injustice at its source(s).

Perhaps more important for a conversation about justice and the politics of scale, the upper and lower sections of the watershed are starkly different today. Westchester County, which contains the northern two thirds of the Bronx River watershed (i.e., upstream), has a population of 980,244 with a density of 2,277 per square mile. The bottom third of the watershed sits in the Bronx, which has a population of 1,471,160 and a much higher density of 34,985 per square mile. Importantly, and at least a partial relic of last century’s white flight and redlining practices, is the non-white population of Westchester is 37% compared to 78% in the Bronx (see figure 2). Household incomes are significantly unequal between the jurisdictions too, averaging nearly 50% lower in the Bronx. But perhaps one of the starkest images of inequality can be found in recent measures of poverty (see figures 3 and 4). Over 28% of the Bronx lives below the poverty line, with African American and Latinx communities at 43% and 51%, respectively. Poverty levels in the Bronx were higher in 2019 than they were in the 1970s when the city was nearing bankruptcy. Thus, the watershed’s community demography tells a story of difference that ties closely to its geography and history.

Local grassroots efforts have long advocated against issues such as unhealthy housing and poor air quality, as well as for a more just, clean, and livable environment. Nonetheless, the Bronx clearly demonstrates an example of a distributional EJ community, wherein inequitable exposure or proximity increases the likelihood that the community will face disproportionate negative impacts (New York City Environmental Justice Alliance, 2018). In the brief history above, we demonstrate that the historical, social, and ecological impacts of NYC’s fluctuations between growth and decline are well documented, as are the associated forms of urban design, segregation, suburbanization, and institutional racism. In this section, we discuss how the Bronx has experienced several negative aspects of these processes despite community-based efforts to ameliorate and push back against socio-ecological challenges (Dreier et al., 2004), helping to see how Bronx communities experience distributional injustices but also face compounding, intersectional challenges based on more broadly scaled relationships to other communities.

Air quality is perhaps the most notable distributional EJ challenge in the Bronx. Although cities suffer air pollution from a range of sources (Dreier et al., 2004), the primary culprit is exhaust related to vehicle transportation. Living in close proximity to densely traveled roadways increases the likelihood of asthma attacks in children as well as contributes to higher rates of cardiovascular disease in the population more broadly (Health Effects Institute, 2010). Studies by the New York State Department of Health and the NYC Department of Health and Mental Hygiene found that portions of the South Bronx at the mouth of the Bronx River had levels of the most harmful air pollutants at a rate of 8.5 μg/m³, higher than the rest of the Bronx (7.8) and NYC (7.5), respectively. Inside of homes, community members are more likely to be exposed to allergens and vermin. In addition to physical ailments, asthma-related challenges create higher levels of household stress (Warman et al., 2009).

Bronx community members often point to the uneven distribution of waste transfer sites in local neighborhoods, with two dozen stations located in the South Bronx alone (out of 58 for the entire city) (Gandy, 2003). Waste transfer sites, which help move waste between different parts of the region, increase localized air pollution, foul smells, and diesel emissions. The Bronx’s disproportionately high rate of asthma is closely attributed to its proximity to trucking routes (New York City Environmental Justice Alliance, 2018).

Hunts Point Terminal Market is also a major contributor to local air pollution. Built in 1962, it is one of the largest food distribution terminals in the world. Occupying 329 waterfront acres (1.33 km²) in the South Bronx, it generates approximately $5 billion annually, selling over 60% of all the produce for the NYC area and employing 8,500 people. An estimated 130,000 trucks pass through the Market each year, accounting for higher-than-average serious pedestrian injuries and poor air quality (Hinterland et al., 2018). The majority (75%) of the surrounding community of approximately 12,000 residents are Latinx and suffer high adult obesity and diabetes as well as high childhood asthma rates, all at nearly double the citywide average and higher than in the rest of the Bronx (Hinterland et al., 2018). Despite the revenue generation and perceived benefits from having the Market located in the Bronx, the nearby surrounding community suffers the brunt of the adverse effects, while communities that are further away benefit. Not without irony, the majority of the Bronx is a food desert despite Hunts Point Terminal Market being the major food distribution center for the NYC area. Residents have limited access to fresh produce, with only one supermarket for every 20 bodegas (Hinterland et al., 2018).

Efforts to increase community capabilities—access to environmental goods—have also been met with site-specific challenges that are inextricable from the region’s history. Hunts Point Riverside Park, for example, was created in 2004 through grassroots activism from local community organizations, to transform an abandoned lot into green space (Kadinsky, 2016), the first park in the South Bronx in over 60 years. The park provides benefits and is well-used, but it is also adjacent to two major recycling centers that generate constant traffic from trucks and barges transporting material, often dropping metal and hazardous waste into the water. Likewise, Concrete Plant Park provides another example. Concrete Plant Park was originally a concrete plant, but the company went bankrupt, and the space was abandoned, becoming an illegal landfill until the NYC Department of Parks and Recreation eventually gained ownership of the land. In 2006, the community won a park-only plan and the rehabilitation followed, including the removal of more than 20,000 tires. The Parks Department also planted habitat for birds and aquatic wildlife, and unhoused families and individuals were relocated to suitable housing. Concrete Plant Park opened in 2009; however, it still sits on a river polluted from upstream and local sources as well as historical neglect. The NYC Department of Environmental Protection annually removes between 400 and 1,425 cubic yards of waste from the river, spurring the development of the Bronx River Alliance’s Project Water and Street Trash Elimination (WASTE) (more on this below).

Attempts like the above to improve the conditions in the Bronx through investment in new parks, waterfront access, and new development have not ameliorated the existing injustices (Halle & Beveridge, 2013) and often spur other issues such as green gentrification (Anguelovski et al., 2019; Checker, 2011; Gould & Lewis, 2017; Pearsall & Anguelovski, 2016). We suggest that solutions like these focus on proximity, ignoring more systemic root causes. Both in a distributional and identity-based framework, the Bronx clearly represents an EJ community, but centering issues as proximate often results in proximate solutions, which are ultimately less sustainable and less transformative. In other words, no number of actions to pick up trash in the downstream communities will have any significant impact until or unless upstream communities stop polluting in the first place. Only with a holistic, multiscalar approach to determining impacts can we begin to achieve sustainable and transformative restoration of habitats and communities.

While communities in the Bronx can clearly be associated with distributional justice challenges, situating them within a watershed creates a more complex, and more explanatory, picture. A watershed-scaled view demonstrates that the Bronx River watershed’s injustices are not only an outcome of historic development, environmental decision making, and urban exodus (Dreier et al., 2004; Gotham & Greenburg, 2014; Halle & Beveridge, 2013; McFarlane, 2010; Zukin, 2010), they are also inextricably linked to upstream municipalities. We assert that the relationships bounded by the Bronx River watershed create or exacerbate injustice in the Bronx.

Wet-weather events are often a catalyst and have particular relevance in Bronx River watershed communities. Whenever it rains or snow melts, precipitation either soaks into pervious landscapes or runs across impervious surfaces to form stormwater runoff. With a limited spatial extent of pervious surfaces, stormwater runoff builds momentum across the watershed, picking up pollutants and spilling into nearby sewer systems and streams. Depending on where this occurs in the Bronx River watershed, excess stormwater takes one of two pathways. In separate sewer systems—largely found in the upstream municipalities of Westchester County—stormwater runoff flows directly into the river, while in combined sewer systems—found in the Bronx—excess stormwater can trigger a combined sewer overflow (CSO) event, causing stormwater and untreated sanitary sewage to be released directly into the river at discrete outfalls located only in the South Bronx. In both instances, stormwater runoff may contain pollutants and trash from yards, sidewalks, and streets, much of which flows downstream to Bronx communities.

Since 2014, the Bronx River Alliance has studied fecal pollution indicators to monitor current conditions and document evidence of illicit discharges through Project Water Detecting River Outfalls & Pollutants. Volunteer stewards collect bimonthly water samples from May to October using a scientific protocol, tracking fecal pathogen information over time to detect unsafe conditions, create long-term datasets, and engage local community water advocates. When viewed spatially, it becomes clear that fecal pathogen levels are in exceedance of state and federal water quality standards throughout the watershed, irrespective of CSOs (see figure 5). This is despite Westchester County’s separate systems, as well as a greater percentage of natural areas to attenuate stormwater (see figure 6). Since pollutants flow downstream from their point of entry, Westchester County municipalities are responsible for contributing to unsafe conditions in Bronx communities. In addition to these illicit inputs, discharges of untreated sewage and stormwater have been permitted at CSOs to relieve backups at the Hunts Point Wastewater Treatment Plant, all of which are located in the South Bronx. These CSOs cause the release of foul and noxious odors, sewage slurries, flushed trash, and other pollutants, which are disproportionately borne by Bronx communities. Whether through legal means, illegal hookups, neglect, or negligence, the South Bronx bears the burden of most exposure to unsafe pollutant levels in their waterfront parks.

While sewage is undoubtedly the most egregious form of pollution, trash is also a ubiquitous justice challenge in the Bronx River. In the summer of 2016, a New York/New Jersey Baykeeper (2016) study found that at any given time, 165 million plastic pieces are floating in New York Harbor. According to the NYC Department of Environmental Protection, between 86% and 92% of total floatable trash they collect from the waterways around NYC comes from the Bronx River. These results spurred the creation of a study documenting the quantity and materials of the trash as well as what portion originates in Westchester County versus the Bronx. To assess these suppositions, in 2016, the Bronx River Alliance began conducting a trash assessment and abatement program called Project WASTE.

The ongoing assessment of trash collected through Project WASTE suggests that the majority is either Styrofoam (69%) or plastic (21%), with Styrofoam pieces accounting for over 61% of all trash collected (see figure 7). Because Project WASTE records common brands, Dunkin’ Donuts has been documented as a major contributor of Styrofoam to the Bronx River, with over 600 cups and 1,100 pieces of cups removed to date. These cups and other Styrofoam containers are highly friable, contaminating the surface of the water where aquatic organisms, birds, and other wildlife forage. Additionally, Styrofoam and plastics can attract other pollutants to their surfaces, such that when a fish mistakes it for food, the fish also absorbs the toxins on the pieces. This eventually passes through its tissues up the food chain to humans through fish consumption.

Using a count-analysis of trash collected at discrete locations within the river, the Bronx River Alliance found that a statistically significant portion of the trash in the Bronx River is attributable to Westchester County, likely due to street trash entering the river directly via storm drains. In NYC, the Department of Environmental Protection is retrofitting storm drains to have catchment basins or floatable caps to prevent street trash from entering effluent, whether in separate or combined sewer areas. However, Westchester County lags behind in installing proper grating, the most basic form of street trash interception. Evidence indicates a knowing lack of compliance with state and federal permits and standards. Furthermore, in the tidal portion at the mouth of the river, trash captured in the Concrete Plant Park trash boom floats back and forth twice daily with the tides, sometimes for weeks, before the NYC Department of Environmental Protection removes it, creating a health concern for community members, anglers, and wildlife, while leaving an aesthetic blight on one of the only green spaces available in the area.

Bronx River Alliance research further indicates a clear explanation: Upstream communities are contributing to high levels of fecal bacteria and trash flowing directly to the river. This pollution gradually migrates to dense, urban areas, particularly affecting under-resourced communities. Those upstream-to-downstream challenges then compound existing environmental injustices in the Bronx. In sum, all the sewage and trash pollution flow down to the communities in the South Bronx, where additional pollution is added, exacerbating injustices, and disproportionately affecting those least responsible for the pollution.

The disproportionate costs and benefits that play out through systems suggests a watershed-scaled view can provide a stronger understanding of regional environmental injustice. Here, we have presented both spatial relationships and historical narratives in a watershed to illuminate more complex understandings of EJ, and we argue that the field of research should more deliberately build this approach into our collective analysis. For the Bronx, this specifically means that declining infrastructure and a lack of enforcement and/or appropriate penalties has perpetuated a downstream flow of sewage and trash to already overburdened, under-resourced communities. This flow of pollution—shifting impacts and responsibilities downstream—brings attention to the problems created when diverse municipalities share a single watershed. Bronx communities, already facing environmental challenges, have to cope with challenges from infrastructure decision making and maintenance, as well as upstream decisions.

There is much we can learn from Bronx communities and their activism within a watershed frame. First, framing environmental injustice as a distributional problem situates problems locally. This framing matters as it often both characterizes a community (e.g., as an “EJ community”) and orients solutions as a local responsibility (sometimes recast as empowerment by placing locals in some sort of control). Activism and community become proxies for the actual need to scale up socio-ecological responsibility well beyond regulatory action. Environmental challenges are often much bigger than the community themselves and the capacity they have to solve them, as the case study here demonstrates. Seeing these problems as local hides the connections to upstream communities, in some cases absolving those municipalities from responsibility. On the other hand, seeing from the perspective of a watershed makes those connections clear. Examining injustice through watersheds allows for thinking about the modes of dispossession caused by socioeconomic, and specifically racial logics that underlie some of the Bronx’s polluted waterways (Ranganathan, 2016). It gives credence to the flaws in thinking that pollution is only a proximate issue and therefore only creating proximate solutions. Using the watershed as a unit of analysis allows for the unmasking of larger mechanisms that tie local processes to regional effects.

Second, as a broader academic and activist community interested in EJ, we must think more about what it means to talk about phenomena at a watershed scale. On the one hand, watersheds are critical to our freshwater systems; therefore, analyzing upstream/downstream relations is important for resources and the communities that depend on them. But, on the other hand, we also know that most people don’t think in terms of watersheds, instead connecting environmental issues with their favorite park or garden. Terminology and jargon can hinder engagement and deter long-term collaboration. Framing EJ in a watershed may bring an increasingly diverse community of people to the table, but collaborators must think more about how they frame and communicate the issues.

Third, community collaboration is important for improving socio-ecological conditions (Jager et al., 2020). As the work here demonstrates, community groups are diverse and provide much needed resources—such as the ongoing science in those communities—as well as creating bridges to other groups and community members (Luebke, 2013). The Bronx River Alliance, for example, represents over 100 community groups who serve as partners and advisors while advocating for change and participation. If nothing else, they are most capable of helping outsiders realize what kinds of externalities they are not considering in their current (in)actions. But more often than not, organizations like the Bronx River Alliance are the most adequately positioned to transcend political boundaries and take on leadership roles in putting a watershed approach into practice and enacting change. For example, in 2020, the Bronx River Alliance undertook a watershed plan update, convening those who needed to be at the table, including community groups from across the watershed, the Bronx Borough President’s Office, and Westchester County Planning. The Bronx River Alliance is using their data to drive restoration decisions, giving a pathway from community-level participation that supports a formalized plan and restoration project fruition, ultimately getting a little closer to the goal of fishable and swimmable waters in the region. In another example, the Bronx River Alliance was able to spread the word about the Long-Term Control Plan meetings. Community members raised so many objections that the Department of Environmental Protection withdrew their preferred alternative and developed a new one, taking community input into greater consideration.

Environmental (in)justice is clearly an ongoing problem that becomes more and more complex as we deconstruct each geography. Here, we are suggesting a multiscalar EJ that not only focuses on places but also considers the broader political ecology of system-wide relationships to understand the injustice in those places. The Bronx River Watershed is a compelling case study for conducting a more broadly scaled analysis that is beyond traditional distributional EJ research. It also provides a solid model for understanding the importance of community collaborations. Today, Bronx River water quality is getting better, and collaboration across the watershed is improving, in no small part due to the community members who have organized for justice. But multiscalar approaches must be addressed before long-term progress can be made.

• How does scale impact environmental justice decision making?

• What are the different approaches to environmental justice?

• What challenges does a watershed play in socio-ecological governance?

• What perspective does the Bronx River watershed add to environmental justice?

• In working with communities, what are some roles that academic researchers can take on to aid in applied research?

• What aspects of a community and community group’s context should researchers be aware of before working in these spaces?

• What roles should community members play in the research process?

The writing was coequal. Research and analysis were conducted by Michelle A. Luebke and the Bronx River Alliance.

First and foremost, we would like to thank community members who we have worked with and continue to advocate for the places they live, learn, work, play, and worship. We would like to acknowledge the Bronx River Alliance and the funders of their community science programs for their help in supporting research and advocacy goals. We also would like to recognize Christian Murphy, Ecology Coordinator at the Alliance, who is continuing to support communities in their relationship to the Bronx River. We would also like to thank the reviewers and editors for strengthening this article. Finally, we would like to thank Korin Tangtrakul for creating images and maps.

The authors have no competing interests to declare.

Westchester Community Foundation.