Children play near the Phillips 66 Refinery in Wilmington, California, in 2016. After decades of protest from community activists, the refinery is planning to close this year.
Photo by Rick Loomis, courtesy The Los Angeles Times/Getty Images
“Environmental justice has always been local, and it will be even more important that we raise up our game at the local level, at the state level and within institutions outside of the federal government.”
— Jalonne White-Newsom
Sandra Turner-Handy was excited to learn that her nonprofit organization — Detroiters Working for Environmental Justice — had been awarded a grant from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency last fall. The organization planned to use the funds for a project that would help residents in particularly polluted parts of the city monitor the quality of air inside their homes.
But by late January, the promised funds had not arrived, prompting Turner-Handy to contact her EPA project officer to ask about the status. On Jan. 27, she received a reply that “we do not have information to share on this topic and are awaiting guidance from OMB on the executive order.” It was the last communication Turner-Handy would receive from the project officer, whom she assumed was fired as part of the Trump administration’s recent massive cuts to the federal workforce.
The executive order mentioned in the email refers to the new administration’s complete takedown of environmental justice work across the federal government. The directive undercuts decades of progress tackling environmental health risks for vulnerable people. It calls out environmental justice as part of a sweeping directive shuttering all work — including programs, positions, initiatives, funds, activities and equity-related grants and contracts — related to diversity, equity and inclusion.
“This gives polluters a green light to operate without a conscience to the wrongness of the harm they are doing,” Turner-Handy told The Nation’s Health. “It shows a direct contradiction to protecting the physical, emotional and social well-being of our country’s residents when it comes to environmental hazards that lower residents’ quality of life.”
The directive put in jeopardy hundreds of projects across the nation that would tackle fundamental environmental challenges associated with flooding, poor drinking water, contaminated soil, air pollution and more, Matthew Tejada, PhD, senior vice president of environmental health at the Natural Resources Defense Council, told The Nation’s Health.
“The loss of the environmental justice program is a loss for our entire society,” said Tejada, who served as deputy assistant administrator in the Office of Environmental Justice and External Civil Rights during the Biden administration. “We’re seeing folks who can’t make payroll. We’re seeing folks who had shovel-ready projects to deal with issues of flooding, climate disasters and air pollution. Those projects are all on hold, and anybody who has dealt with those sorts of projects knows you can’t really just stop it and then restart it.”
A warehouse, background, increased truck fumes near the home of Rebecca and Mike Hernandez in Perris, California, in 2021.
Photo by Gina Ferazzi, courtesy The Los Angeles Times/Getty Images
Further complicating matters, the Office of Management and Budget on Jan. 27 released a memo directing federal agencies to immediately halt all grant funding related to DEI, environmental justice and foreign aid. Federal judges intervened, issuing temporary restraining orders, but the freeze was reinstated, leaving grant awardees like Turner-Handy confused about next steps and concerned that marginalized communities might be left hanging in the polluted air.
Environmental justice leaders across the nation responded to the new administration’s actions with shock, distrust and anger. Many vowed to continue their work to fight for environmental justice even in the face of an ill-informed presidential executive order that seeks to erase decades of work.
In the weeks following the directive, dozens of federal employees who work in environmental justice — including about 170 employees at EPA’s Office of Environmental Justice and External Civil Rights — were placed on paid administrative leave pending further notice. That agency’s work was established in 1992, under a different name, by President George H.W. Bush.
In another jarring move, data related to environmental justice disappeared from federal websites, including access to the Council on Environmental Quality’s Climate and Economic Justice Screening Tool. The map-based tool identifies marginalized communities in need of federal funding and was implemented as part of President Joe Biden’s Justice 40 initiative, which aimed to direct 40% of the overall benefits of certain federal climate, clean energy, affordable and sustainable housing, and other investments to communities overburdened by pollution.
“We’re outraged,” Leslie Fields, JD, chief federal officer for the Harlem, New York-based WE ACT for Environmental Justice, told The Nation’s Health.
Deleting the data undermines environmental justice work and may keep communities in the dark about pollution affecting them. Without data, communities will struggle to make informed decisions, protect their health and fight against polluting industries, Fields said.
During his tenure, Biden made strides in elevating environmental justice through a series of strategic initiatives and policies aimed at addressing the disproportionate environmental burdens faced by marginalized communities. Key actions included establishing the first White House Environmental Justice Advisory Council, which ensured that the voices and lived experiences of communities with environmental justice concerns would be heard and acted on at the highest levels of government.
“To have the highest levels of leadership acknowledge environmental racism, acknowledge that climate change exists and acknowledge that we need practices and policies to make sure that those folks and communities that have been ignored, under-invested in and over-polluted were raised up in a way like never before, was critical and crucial,” said Jalonne White-Newsome, PhD, CEO of Empowering a Green Environment and Economy LLC and former White House federal chief environmental justice officer.
But while federal support for environmental justice is crucial, the real power of the movement is at the local and state levels, White-Newsome said.
“Environmental justice has always been local, and it will be even more important that we raise up our game at the local level, at the state level and within institutions outside of the federal government that will continue to support the work,” she said.
In the absence of federal intervention, foundations and corporations will need to “step in and step up,” White-Newsome said, including corporate partners in private industry who have footprints in the vulnerable, marginalized communities that experience the most egregious forms of environmental racism, under-investment and over-pollution.
Echoing the call-to-action, Vernice Miller-Travis, MS, executive vice president for the Metropolitan Group, said environmental justice will continue to thrive.
“It might not thrive at the federal level, but our work has never been predicated on the federal government,” she said.
No federal research on the disproportionate impact of environmental hazards on communities of color even existed 40 years ago when the environmental justice movement first started to emerge in the U.S., Miller-Travis said.
“There was not even an acknowledgment that what we were identifying was real,” said Miller-Travis, who was a contributing author to the landmark 1987 report “Toxic Waste and Race in the United States.”
The report, from the United Church of Christ Commission for Racial Justice, is widely regarded as the spark that ignited the American environmental justice movement.
The way forward might best be visualized through the lens of the Civil Rights Movement’s strategic and organized approach to collaborating with community organizations, policymakers, researchers, educators and activists, she said.
“We need to take a page out of the Civil Rights Movement’s book,” Miller-Travis told The Nation’s Health. “They were always strategic. They were constantly movement-building. They were always mobilizing people and they were always telling their own story.”
Adrienne Hollis said she shares her own personal story to help audiences connect with the environmental justice movement. Growing up in Mobile, Alabama, “there were things that Black people could and could not do. It wasn’t written down on any paper, but we couldn’t go to Pensacola Beach.” Instead, Black families visited to a murky body of water in Alabama.
“We didn’t know then that we were swimming across the river from what later became a Superfund site,” said Hollis, PhD, JD, vice president for environmental justice, public health and community revitalization for the National Wildlife Federation.
Hollis is proud that environmental justice is one of the National Wildlife Federation’s three pillars.
“The overall feeling is that yes, we’re upset, yes, we’re angry, and because of that, we have renewed energy to fight,” she told The Nation’s Health “Nobody’s giving upon any of this. We’re doubling down, tripling down on addressing these inequities.”
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- Copyright The Nation’s Health, American Public Health Association
