Industrial land use and associated point-source pollution are known to have adverse impacts on water quality, aquatic biodiversity, and human health. A focal point of many environmental justice studies is the disproportionate impacts of industrial pollution on socially vulnerable communities. Current studies, however, typically focus on specific cities, states, or geographic regions with a spatial resolution no finer than the county level. Our study is the first to provide empirical evidence of how industrial land use may disproportionately affect the quality of freshwater environments in socially vulnerable communities at a national spatial extent and census tract spatial resolution. We analyzed data from the US Environmental Protection Agency’s National Rivers and Streams Assessment (NARS), US Census Bureau’s American Community Survey (ACS), National Land Use Dataset (NLUD), and the US Geological Survey’s National Hydrography Dataset (NHD) to identify associations between the percent of industrial land use and water quality, aquatic biodiversity, and social vulnerability indicators across the conterminous United States between 2008–2010. Our statistical models revealed the association between the racial and educational makeup of communities, and various abiotic and biotic metrics that reflect the quality of the freshwater environment present in their locales. Our findings help to provide a more complete understanding of the impacts of industrial land use at a fine resolution in the United States and may be used by stakeholders to prioritize assistance for socially vulnerable communities facing the greatest environmental stressors.