Environmental justice has found its way into President-elect Joe Biden’s transition plan as a “key consideration” for policy-making, and advocates are cautiously optimistic. And though a divided Congress is likely, they suspect an infrastructure bill — long promised but never delivered under the Trump administration — is a potential avenue for investing in communities that have borne the brunt of pollution and environmental racism.
These “frontline” communities, whose populations are predominantly Black or other people of color, are those that experience the first and worst consequences of climate change and other environmental problems.
The new administration’s ability to allocate 40 percent of clean energy and infrastructure investment benefits to these communities, as Biden called for in his campaign plan, will likely depend on whether Republicans retain control of the Senate following two Jan. 5 runoff elections in Georgia. Even with the potentially split legislature, however, those who have worked alongside Biden’s campaign or in previous administrations are convinced that the president-elect’s best chance to invest in environmental justice is through targeted infrastructure spending.
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Photo credit: Drew Angerer/Getty Images
Day: November 19, 2020
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Photo credit: NBC News
Over four years in office, the Trump administration has dismantled major climate policies and rolled back many more rules governing clean air, water, wildlife and toxic chemicals.
While other administrations have emphasized cutting regulations, calling them burdensome to industries like coal, oil and gas, the scope of actions under Mr. Trump is “fundamentally different,” said Hana V. Vizcarra, a staff attorney at Harvard Law School’s Environmental and Energy Law Program.
In all, a New York Times analysis, based on research from Harvard Law School, Columbia Law School and other sources, counts more than 70 environmental rules and regulations officially reversed, revoked or otherwise rolled back under Mr. Trump. Another 26 rollbacks are still in progress.
Photo credit: The New York Times
Researchers at Washington University in St. Louis published a paper late last year that found carcinogens present in the air of the St. Louis metropolitan area to be highly concentrated in Black and poor neighborhoods. They found that approximately 14% of the census tracks in the city had elevated cancer risk due to exposure to toxic chemicals in the air and that these air toxic hots spots were independently associated with neighborhoods with high levels of poverty and unemployment, and low levels of education. Census tracks with the highest levels of both racial isolation of Blacks and economic isolation of poverty were more likely to be located in air toxic hot spots than those with low combined racial and economic isolation.
This paper is important because the authors used an innovative geospatial approach developed by other researchers to identify spatial patterns of residential segregation in their study area. This approach captures the degree of segregation at the neighborhood level and identifies patterns of isolation of different metrics, which in this study was black isolation and poverty isolation. This approach differs from tradition methods that looked at the percentage of blacks or poverty in a neighborhood.
The authors used these two segregation measures – Black isolation and poverty isolation – to identify neighborhoods segregated by race and income in the St. Louis metropolitan area and evaluated the risks of exposure to carcinogens in the air in these areas. The cancer risk data came from the Environmental Protection Agency’s National Air Toxics Assessment and the census track sociodemographic data came from the American Community Survey. All spatial analyses were conducted using Arc GIS software.
These researchers found that census track levels of poverty, undereducation and unemployment were associated with toxic hot spots, while factors such as per capita income and median household income were inversely associated with toxic hot spots. These findings support other studies that identified disparities in exposures to ambient air emissions of toxic chemicals and that raised questions about whether residential segregation leads to differential exposure to air pollutants.
While the authors discuss a number of possible pathways connecting segregation and health, the relationship between segregation and exposure to air toxics is unclear. They discuss various factors that result in segregation leading to the “cycle of segregation” that includes neighborhoods with low social capital, few community resources and low property values which tends to attract more low income and minority residents and exposures to unhealthy air toxics.
The authors concluded that this study provides strong evidence of the unequal distribution of carcinogenic air toxics in the St Louis metropolitan area and that residential segregation leads to differential exposure to chemicals in the air that cause cancer.
As movements for racial and environmental justice escalate across the US, these struggles – which, as groups like the National Black Environmental Justice Network point out, must be seen as one – have a common foe: the fossil fuel industry. The same companies that drive environmental racism in Black and Brown communities through toxic and climate-changing pollution also fund police power in cities that stretch from Houston and Detroit to New Orleans and Salt Lake City. Read more.
Creative Commons Photos: Shell Gas Station (Mike Mozart); Chase (longislandwins); Chevron (Roo Reynolds); Wells Fargo (Mike Mozart); BlackRock (Thomas Hawk)
Recent discoveries have found that large amounts of microplastics are coming down from the sky with rain. Researchers in the Western US were able to estimate the amount of microplastics in rainfall and found that approximately 120 million plastic bottles worth of microplastics in rain is pouring down on 11 protected areas in the US every year. Although the health detriments involved with inhaling or consuming microplastics is relatively unknown, the human impacts are likely highly detrimental. Plastics degrade into smaller and smaller pieces over time and release chemicals, making it likely that they will have consequential human and ecological impacts. Studies have already shown that some marine organisms, such as hermit crabs, have had large behavioral changes due to increasing microplastic exposure in the ocean. Read More
Photo from Getty Images
Over the course of the last three years, the Trump administration has rolled back or is in the progress of rolling back nearly a 100 of the country’s top environmental policies. The administration has worked to weaken and revoke many of the Obama-era regulations that were enacted to protect our environment and health. A majority of the rollbacks were aimed at reducing burden for the oil, gas and coal industries, while in effect, potentially increasing greenhouse gas emissions and creating poorer air quality. Read More.
After three years in office, the Trump administration has dismantled most of the major climate and environmental policies the president promised to undo.
Calling the rules unnecessary and burdensome to the fossil fuel industry and other businesses, his administration has weakened Obama-era limits on planet-warming carbon dioxide emissions from power plants and from cars and trucks, and rolled back many more rules governing clean air, water and toxic chemicals. Several major reversals have been finalized in recent weeks as the country has struggled to contain the spread of the new coronavirus.
In all, a New York Times analysis, based on research from Harvard Law School, Columbia Law School and other sources, counts more than 60 environmental rules and regulations officially reversed, revoked or otherwise rolled back under Mr. Trump. An additional 34 rollbacks are still in progress.
With elections looming, the administration has sought to wrap up some of its biggest regulatory priorities quickly, said Hana V. Vizcarra, a staff attorney at Harvard Law School’s Environmental and Energy Law Program. Further delays could leave the new rules vulnerable to reversal under the Congressional Review Act if Democrats are able to retake Congress and the White House in November, she said.
The bulk of the rollbacks identified by the Times have been carried out by the Environmental Protection Agency, which repealed and replaced the Obama-era emissions rules for power plants and vehicles; weakened protections for more than half the nation’s wetlands; and withdrew the legal justification for restricting mercury emissions from power plants.
At the same time, the Interior Department has worked to open up more land for oil and gas leasing by cutting back protected areas and limiting wildlife protections.
“Over the past three years, we have fulfilled President Trump’s promises to provide certainty for states, tribes, and local governments,” a spokeswoman for the E.P.A. said in a statement to The Times, adding that the agency was “delivering on President Trump’s commitment to return the agency to its core mission: Providing cleaner air, water and land to the American people.”
But environmental and legal groups said the rollbacks have not served that mission. Ms. Vizcarra, who has tracked environmental rollbacks for Harvard since 2018, said the agency under Mr. Trump has often limited its own power to regulate environmental harm, especially when it comes to climate change.
Many of the rollbacks have faced legal challenges by states, environmental groups and others, and some could remain mired in court beyond November, regardless of the outcome of the election.
Hillary Aidun, who tracks deregulation at Columbia University’s Sabin Center for Climate Change Law, said many of the rollbacks had not been adequately justified, leaving them vulnerable to legal challenge.
The New York Times analysis identified 10 rules that were initially reversed or suspended but later reinstated, often following lawsuits and other challenges. Other rollbacks were rebuffed by the courts but later revised by the administration and remain in effect.
All told, the Trump administration’s environmental rollbacks could significantly increase greenhouse gas emissions and lead to thousands of extra deaths from poor air quality each year, according to energy and legal analysts.
Below, we have summarized each rule that has been targeted for reversal over the past three years.
Are there rollbacks we missed? Email climateteam@nytimes.com or tweet @nytclimate.
Air pollution and emissions
Completed
In progress
Drilling and extraction
Completed
In progress
Infrastructure and planning
Completed
In progress
Animals
Completed
In progress
Toxic substances and safety
Completed
In progress
Water pollution
Completed
In progress
Other
Completed
In progress
These rules were initially reversed by the Trump administration but were later reinstated, often following lawsuits and other challenges.
The Center for Health, Environment & Justice team and I send our compassion, support and affection to those whose health and livelihoods may be affected by COVID-19. This is a worldwide crisis on a scale we have not seen in our lifetimes. We are thinking of you, your family, friends and neighbors.
As you know our team has always been about families, communities and people and at all times working on issues from the grassroots to the White House not the other way around. For the first time, the entire country now has a better understanding of the horrors of “sheltering in place.” Hundreds of our member’s communities, maybe you live in one, have been told to shelter in place because of an explosion from a pipeline, refinery, chemical plant and other releases.
I feel safe in my home, even though I’m in the high risk age range. I am also grateful that I have a place to stay with food, water and clean air, until the public health crisis is over. I can work from home, hold virtual meetings, talk with my friends through the phone, Facebook or e-mail. As terrifying as this virus is I still feel safe, maybe I shouldn’t.
Unfortunately, safe is not how so many of communities CHEJ works with feel, when asked to shelter in place because of an environmental release or explosion. There are a number of reason for their fears.
–No one told them something was going to happen and they should seek safe shelter, stock up on food, water and toilet paper.
–There wasn’t days of news castors telling folks what scientists think the real dangers are, what health symptoms people should look out for or the speed of the poison touching communities as it moves across the world.
–No federal or state health agency was working around the clock to ensure everyone exposed would receive critical health care if needed, regardless of whether they’re insured.
I invite you to read or reread the article we reprinted on our web from the New York Times authored by Ana Parras a local activist in TX.
In Texas and across the country, the E.P.A.’s gutting of the Chemical Disaster Rule is a matter of life or death.
While families across the country celebrated Thanksgiving with their loved ones, more than 50,000 people in Port Neches, Tex., were forced to evacuate from their homes and spend the holiday in makeshift shelters. The reason? Two explosions at the Texas Petroleum Chemical plant sent flames into the sky, injured eight people, and released plumes of butadiene, a carcinogen, into the air.
The disaster erupted six days after the Trump administration gutted Obama-era regulations meant to improve safety at 12,000 chemical plants around the country.
It’s too soon to say whether these now abandoned rules would have made a difference in Port Neches. But there is no question that the communities that surround these thousands of plants are less safe now.
This regulatory rollback gives chemical plants across the country a free pass, in pursuit of greater profits, to operate in a way that endangers families and workers.
There are over 2,500 chemical facilities in the Houston area. Manchester, the neighborhood where Texas Environmental Justice Advocacy Services works, is among those most affected by this negligence. There are 30 chemical plants and waste sites in the Manchester area that report to the Environmental Protection Agency. When an explosion happens, nearby neighborhoods, mostly Latinx and people of color, are exposed to this toxicity.
And these toxic blasts are not infrequent. The last chemical explosion in Houston to garner national attention was in March at the Intercontinental Terminals Co., a few miles east of Manchester. This explosion led to high benzene levels in the air, school closures and community shelter-in-place orders for days: stay where you are, turn off air conditioning. Some advisories told people to put a plastic tarp over their windows, sealed with duct tape, to prevent air from coming in.
Federal regulations were supposed to protect us. For years, organizations like United Steelworkers, Greenpeace and dozens of other community and environmental organizations pressured the E.P.A. to make chemical disaster prevention a priority.
The turning point happened in 2013 when an explosion at a fertilizer plant in West, Tex., 200 miles northwest of Houston, killed 15 people and injured over 260.
Later that year, President Barack Obama signed an executive order calling on federal agencies to create a task force. What emerged was the Chemical Disaster Rule, a proposal to improve plant safety and protect surrounding communities, which the former E.P.A. administrator Gina McCarthy approved one month before President Trump took office.
Two months later, the Trump administration blocked the regulations from taking effect, and now the E.P.A. has released a final rule that eviscerates the Obama-era requirements. The agency rescinded major accident prevention provisions, including requirements to consider safer technology, audits of accidents by outside parties and “root cause” analyses of accidents.
While Texas has the largest number of chemical facilities in the country, Illinois, California, Iowa and Louisiana are riddled with them, too. As The Houston Chronicle has documented, no state is spared from having at least one facility that could have toxic or flammable chemical accidents with consequences that extend beyond the site.
The E.P.A. calls these communities — areas that could be affected by a release from a chemical accident — “vulnerable zones.” One in three children in America attends a school in a vulnerable zone. This means that over 19 million children are at risk of exposure to the harmful chemicals that these plants use, store and can emit when they produce plastics, pesticides, adhesives and other products.
Our neighborhoods in Houston are a case in point. The oil and gas facilities and chemical plants along the 52-mile Houston Ship Channel have turned the air in Harris County into a public health hazard, significantly increasing the likelihood of residents’ developing cancer and respiratory problems — and shortening the lives of children. Children living near the Houston Ship Channel are 56 percent more likely to develop leukemia than those who live more than 10 miles away.
To me this issue is personal. Yes, explosions from chemical facilities can be deadly. But the long-term impact of exposure to toxic chemicals also kills. In 2016, I was found to have hypersensitivity pneumonitis, a rare autoimmune system disorder that arises from breathing in dust or toxins repeatedly. The doctors blamed indoor air, but I am convinced that exposure to chemicals in Houston led to my condition. In this town, there’s little distinction between the air indoors and what’s outside.
When traveling — I am now at the U.N. Climate talks in Madrid — I bring a portable oxygen machine in case I need it. I am unable to walk long distances, and I move slowly because of my shortness of breath. Public speaking is difficult, as is any exertion. My life expectancy is not long (10 years, one doctor told me). I hope it is more.
In my family, lung diseases are the norm. My diagnosis came the same year that my father, Gregorio V. García, died of lung cancer at 79. He worked in the Asarco Refinery in Corpus Christi, Tex., and was a member of United Steelworkers for 30 years. Workers in these refineries are the first exposed to toxic substances. Many, like him, have died of cancer.
Plants like the nearby Valero facility emit a slew of poisonous chemicals like benzene and hydrogen cyanide into our neighborhoods. Far too often, they fail to meet Clean Air Act requirements.
During Hurricane Harvey in August 2017, I felt what it was like to breathe in a concentrated amount of toxic air. On the day of the worst flooding, my husband and I drove his pickup truck into Manchester to document what was happening at the Valero refinery. We saw water running from Valero into Hartman Park, where children gather to play baseball and soccer, and down the streets we knew well. As we drove, we had to cover our nose and mouth with our hands. My lips turned numb. The odor was so strong that it made me nauseated.
Three days later we found out that we had driven into one of the largest benzene spills. Benzene is clear, colorless and flammable. To date, this spill has not been adequately addressed by the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality.
In Houston, we struggle to get chemical facilities to follow the law. We ask our state to protect us from chemicals that no one should breathe. Now the federal government is ending safeguards that the E.P.A. only a few years ago said the industry needed to protect the lives of workers, emergency medical workers and communities like mine.
My life should not be a pawn for leveraging industry profits. Nor should those of my neighbors and their children. Families and workers in these neighborhoods deserve to be safe.
As disasters continue to happen, we — those most affected, those who breathe and live and play in toxicity — condemn the E.P.A.’s decision to repeal the Chemical Disaster Rule. We are denied basic health protections simply because the industry does not want to invest in our safety.
Families and workers across the country should not have to pay the ultimate cost of this administration’s refusal to do its job: our lives.
Ana Parras is a co-executive director of Texas Environmental Justice Advocacy Services (@tejasbarrios).
Although the elderly are the most in danger of infection from the virus, those that have developed preexisting conditions due to constant exposure to pollutants cannot be forgotten. Individuals in these communities are commonly low-income and/or minority populations and have to travel great distances in order to receive medical services. Former Army Surgeon General William C. Gorgas explained that it is in times of stress and danger that we need to be our most brave and unselfish to those that are most vulnerable. Read More.
California has some of the strictest air quality standards in the country. These standards have come to the benefit of farmers when a decrease in ground ozone has resulted in an increase of $600 million in crop production a year. Read More.