After World War II, black people in Houston found a rare opportunity to buy a nice home in the new community of Pleasantville, Texas. But in the years that followed, officials rerouted the Interstate 610 loop with a tailpipe on the other side of Pleasantville, and cement plants and other heavy industry grew nearby.
Just days after taking office in 2021, the Biden administration made huge promises to heavily polluted black, Latino, Native American and lower-income areas like this one, known as environmental justice communities.
To gauge how well Biden and his department kept those promises, The Associated Press spoke to about 30 environmental rights groups around the country, people who have spent years and sometimes decades trying to clean up places close to home — Superfund sites, petrochemical plants. plants and diesel refueling ports.
Many said this administration has done more than any previous one. With an ambition never seen before they say, federal officials have sought their advice, written tougher environmental protections and committed tens of billions of dollars in funding.
“When he was in office, he put money where his mouth was,” said Beverly Wright, who runs the Deep South Center for Environmental Justice and sits on the White House Environmental Justice Advisory Council. “I almost gasped when I saw the amount of money.”
But local attorneys interviewed are also concerned. Some said the Biden administration’s policies have been too weak to significantly reduce pollution and make a difference in their lives. Officials have even favored climate technologies that worsen conditions, they said.
These advances could be reversed if the Nov. 5 presidential election brings a Republican administration. Presidential candidate former President Donald Trump considers much of the legislation favored by these groups to be excessive.
The environment wins
Pleasantville, near Houston’s petrochemical heartland, received some of Biden’s funds. Bridgette Murray, founder of the group Achieving Community Tasks Successful, said residents wanted what many environmental groups want: information about what’s in the air. Now, a federal grant is helping them conduct air tests, he said, and they can show the results to regulators.
It doesn’t actually clean the air, Murray said, “but if we don’t do anything, change will never happen.” Continuous funding is needed to make it happen, he said.
The Texas grant is one of many. In each region of the country, the Environmental Protection Agency distributed large sums of money to an established group, which distributed to locals who knew the needs of their locality. For example, the nonprofit Health Resources in Action, based in Boston, Massachusetts, received $50 million for this.
Dwaign Tyndal, executive director of Alternatives for Community and Environment in Roxbury, Mass., which focuses on affordable, energy-efficient buildings and harmful diesel exhaust, called it “a real, significant federal investment in community-based organizations.”
Near Lake Charles in Sulphur, Louisiana, a hurricane-prone area, Roishetta Ozane feels surrounded by oil and gas facilities that she suspects are responsible for some of her six children’s health problems, including asthma and eczema. Ozane started the Louisiana Vessel Project, a mutual aid and disaster relief environmental legal group.
“I’m fighting for my kids and other people’s kids and grandkids to be able to play outside safely,” Ozane said, “and not be victims of climate pollution and also these climate disasters that we’re constantly dealing with here.”
He wanted the administration to curb the growth of gas facilities expanding to the Gulf Coast, and was pleased when it halted new export terminals. Recently, a court blocked the administration’s move.
The Inflation Reduction Act invested billions in Biden’s efforts — for the first time providing significant funds for environmental justice. The money went to school districts for clean school buses. The White House said the money from the federal “green bank” will go toward thousands of projects ranging from residential heat pumps to community cooling centers.
Officials have also written regulations that they said would significantly improve public health. Stricter air standards reduce cancer, and proposed mandates to remove harmful lead pipes prevent damage to children’s brain development and lower IQ. The White House and EPA also opened offices of environmental justice and developed a way to identify disadvantaged communities to help them receive benefits.
Indigenous rights and climate organizer Jade Begay said when it comes to government hiring, agencies that affect indigenous communities have been staffed more by people from indigenous communities who are tribal members. “They are now not only helping to transform these agencies, but also helping to implement these policies.”
The Biden administration came at the right time to push for these changes: supporters had built enough power to pressure the administration to embrace priorities, and there was widespread recognition that climate change was hurting the poorest communities the most. Something had to be done.
Dissatisfaction remains
But in almost all interviews with environmental rights groups, concerns were also expressed.
Anne Rolfes, director of the Louisiana Bucket Brigade, which helps communities along a key petrochemical corridor, said the Biden administration is listening to activists, inviting them for photo ops, but not enforcing the law aggressively enough to keep the state’s black population safe. .
“When you have an EPA that basically doesn’t stand up for its authority, a state like Louisiana, which is completely dominated by industry, can ignore the federal government. And they do,” Rolfes said.
EPA enforcement has increased under Biden, but Rolfes said federal officials still give states too much power to ignore clean air rules.
Some local organizations have found it difficult to navigate the federal bureaucracy and apply for money, despite the technical assistance available.
And there is anger over the Biden administration’s embrace of carbon capture and storage technology, which collects planet-warming carbon dioxide from industrial smokestacks so it can be stored, often in underground wells. Several activists said this could extend the life of dirty facilities because it opens the door for facility operators to claim they are climate-friendly. At the same time, their emissions continue to harm those nearby.
These plans “actually just perpetuate the problem of the climate crisis and perpetuate it as a problem for future generations,” said Ashley LaMont, director of national campaigns for the indigenous environmental rights group Honor the Earth.
That’s vital for states like Louisiana, which have many heavy industries and want to attract new carbon capture projects. Late last year, the EPA allowed Louisiana to take over from the federal government and implement its own program to issue permits for carbon capture wells. Officials implemented protections for residents that had been recommended by activists, but it’s a move that has angered many in the environmental justice community.
Jalonne White-Newsome, director of federal environmental law, said that when Congress passed the Inflation Reduction Act, it included incentives for carbon capture. The Biden administration had to comply with the law and has asked for feedback.
He said they have tried to embed principles of environmental justice into the “fabric and foundation” of the federal government.
“We’re not in the Promised Land yet,” he said, “but we’re getting there.”
The big obstacle is time. After nearly four years, some of the Biden administration’s programs have only just begun handing out money.
Republicans have called the EPA’s environmental justice funding a gift to radical leftist groups.
“We found that a lot of the money that goes out has really little to do with the environment and a lot to do with financial groups that are fundamentally engaged in anti-American activities,” said Senator Shelley Moore Capito. West Virginia, a member of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, in a public statement.
Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic presidential nominee, has supported President Biden’s environmental justice work, saying in December that he has “put equity at the center of all our climate investments.” A spokesman for the Harris campaign did not respond to a request for comment.
As for Pleasantville, Murray said its problems grew from segregation and the expansion of polluting industries over many years. It takes long-term, years-long work to make the air healthier.
“Unfortunately, in terms of solutions, we may not have enough time to make major improvements,” he said.
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Associated Press writers Matthew Daly and Matt Brown contributed from Washington, DC
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The Associated Press receives support from the Walton Family Foundation to cover water and environmental politics. AP is solely responsible for all content. See all of AP’s climate news at https://apnews.com/hub/climate-and-environment
