Environmental Injustice alive in Sacramento

Officials at the Sacramento Municipal Utilites District proved, once again, that if your neighborhood is rich and organized, it will be spared the environmental impacts of building new infrastructure:

Seven people who usually devote their public service hours to the stolid realities of electricity were drawn Thursday morning into a passionate exploration of beauty, poverty and class.

Should one neighborhood, peopled with articulate and well-off homeowners, have a proposed power line rerouted when equally unsightly lines brand other neighborhoods?

The answer, for four of the seven directors of Sacramento Municipal Utility District, was "yes, but ... ."

Whenever projects are proposed remotely near less affluent communities, cries of environmental justice arise...and SMUD officials have only added fuel to those fires.