“Environmental justice” came into the federal lexicon in 1994, when then-President Bill Clinton directed federal agencies to develop strategies for addressing the environmental impacts of their actions on minority and low-income communities.

More than 25 years after Executive Order 12898, advocates told a recent hearing of the House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on the Environment and Climate Change, Congress should enact legislation that would codify the order, making environmental justice a mandate and federal agencies accountable.

“There is often a breakdown between the [regulations] on the book and how that translates to improving residents’ lives on the ground,” said Mildred McClain, executive director of the nonprofit Harambee House/Citizens for Environmental Justice in Savannah, Ga. “The Clinton executive order takes steps to address this, but an executive order can be overturned with the stroke of a pen. We need Congress to codify agency accountability into law.”

Focusing on environmental justice provisions in several Democratic bills, the hearing on April 15 underlined the gap in partisan approaches to the impacts of pollution and climate change on low-income and disadvantaged communities across the country. For Democrats, the need to address these issues is a long-overdue imperative.

“No one bill will undo the generations of injustices, racism and discrimination against frontline communities,” said Rep. Paul Tonko (D-NY), chair of the subcommittee. “That’s why we need a comprehensive strategy that deals with [the] disproportionate impacts and supports the revitalization of communities, which will come from reducing and remediating pollution.”

The Democrats’ comprehensive strategy is their Climate Leadership and Environmental Action for our Nation’s (CLEAN) Future Act, introduced earlier this year. The 981-page bill includes the codification of EO 12898 and, echoing President Biden’s “Justice 40” initiative, commits 40% of federal spending in the bill to benefit low-income and disadvantaged communities. (See Battle Lines Drawn over CLEAN Future Act.)

The Republicans said CLEAN and other environmental justice bills discussed at the hearing are an attack on fossil fuel jobs and communities. They argued that renewables would raise electricity bills for low-income families who already spend a large portion of their income on energy and have been hit hard by the COVID-19 pandemic.

“Environmental justice is central to an agenda to eliminate fossil fuels in the power sector by 2035, the consequences of which will leave workers, families, children and entire communities in poverty,” said Rep. David McKinley (R-W. Va.), ranking member on the subcommittee. “How is that outcome any different than the injustices created in the past?”

Rep. Diana DeGette (D-Colo.), sponsor of a bill that would require the EPA to develop protocols for evaluating the “cumulative impacts” of different kinds of pollution or climate events on environmental justice communities, responded:

“I can understand how my colleagues on the other side of the aisle would like to talk about renewable energy versus traditional energy and how they’d like to debate that and how they’d like to change the subject,” DeGette said. “But what I really can’t understand is how [none] of the members is willing to talk about how we address, clean up environmental justice areas.”

Operationalizing a Just Transition

The issue of cumulative impacts was raised by more than one of the panel of six speakers at the hearing — all of them people of color, a rare occurrence at any congressional hearing.

Angelo Logan is campaign director for the Moving Forward Network, a coalition of groups working on the environmental impacts of ports and freight traffic on nearby low-income communities. Cumulative impacts must be addressed “head on,” he said.

“Continuous permitting of polluting facilities in already overburdened communities perpetuates environmental racism,” Logan said. “Any serious environmental justice proposal must contain a cumulative impacts policy that includes permit denial within the strategy.”

But Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-Wash.) characterized such provisions as federal overreach. She criticized a section of the CLEAN Future Act that would, she said, restrict permitting of sources of pollutions in already “overburdened” communities, “whether or not the project contributes to the burden.

“There’s no room here for state or local decisions [or] what workers or communities want,” she said.

Advocates responded by talking about the importance of community involvement in permitting and other policy processes, pointing to bills, like Rep. Yvette D. Clarke’s (D-NY) Climate Justice Act, which would create a 22-member Climate Justice Working Group, with eight members from frontline communities. Clarke says the group would have two primary directives: establishing criteria and metrics that can be used to identify climate-burdened communities and developing guiding principles for federal agencies to ensure that such communities benefit from federal clean energy initiatives.

Communities of color are “operationalizing the just transition” to clean energy, said Elizabeth Yeampierre, executive director of UPROSE, a grassroots organization working on health and climate issues in the Sunset Park area of Brooklyn, N.Y. “The people who are exposed to the problems are the ones who have the solutions,” she said. “We are coming up with the mechanisms, economic frameworks, recommendations for infrastructure, developing leadership and passing policy.”

For example, Yeampierre said UPROSE has launched a cooperatively owned community solar project that will provide residents 15% savings on their monthly electricity bills.

She also argued for a holistic approach to environmental justice issues, stressing the interconnectedness of social, economic and environmental injustice.

“We really can’t even talk about climate change without talking about racial justice,” Yeampierre said. “Anyone who doesn’t understand that is someone who’s basically pretending that history has not taken place.”

The GOP Alternative

Introduced in March, the Republican alternative to the CLEAN Future Act is a package of bills called Securing Cleaner American Energy, said Rodgers. The package includes authorization of the Keystone XL pipeline and support for carbon capture, green hydrogen and nuclear energy, while also recognizing states’ primary authority for regulating methane emissions from oil and natural gas production.

The package has no specific environmental justice provisions but does contain bills that would prohibit bans on hydraulic fracturing and would streamline permitting for natural gas pipelines and power plants.

The one glimmer of a middle ground at the hearing surfaced in the testimony of Shay Hawkins, CEO of the Opportunity Funds Association, a trade association for opportunity zone investors. Under the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, investments targeting economic development in officially designated low-income “opportunity zones” can receive tax breaks.

Hawkins said that 244 opportunity zones overlap Native American communities, many in remote areas that have historically relied on fossil fuels for “reasonable, low-cost energy that is secure in its delivery.” But he noted that clean energy businesses and projects are also taking root.

“There are 475 solar energy installations in opportunity zones, 127 wind farms have been developed and 15 battery plants are providing electricity right now,” Hawkins said.