Environmental Justice

Governor Murphy signs historic Environmental Justice legislation into law during a ceremony in Newark on September 18, 2020. (Edwin J. Torres/Governor’s Office).

What comes to mind when you read my headline? You might think of climate change, or some other environmental issue, like air quality. But Environmental Justice or EJ, as it's often referred to by government folks, is about people.

Environmental Justice refers to the fair treatment of all people (regardless of race or income level) in regard to the development, implementation and enforcement of environmental regulations, policies and laws. It's about equity and ensuring that the benefits and detriments of projects are spread evenly across all communities. It likely comes as no surprise that historically projects with detrimental impacts, like poor air quality, have been built in neighborhoods with a majority of minority, low-income residents. These residents are also traditionally under-represented in public outreach for these projects, so they have little say in what is happening in their neighborhood.

Last month Governor Murphy signed legislation into law that requires the state Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) to evaluate environmental and public health impacts on overburdened communities when reviewing permit applications. Overburdened communities are defined as those in which 35 percent of households are classified as low-income, 40 percent of households are minority or 40 percent of households have limited English proficiency. This data comes from the U.S. Census. In enacting this law, New Jersey became the first state in the nation to require permits be denied if an environmental justice analysis determines the new facility would disproportionately impact an overburdened community.

“Today we are sending a clear message that we will longer allow Black and Brown communities in our state to be dumping grounds, where access to clean air and clean water are overlooked,” Governor Murphy said in a statement announcing he had signed the legislation. “This action is a historic step to ensure that true community input and collaboration will factor into decisions that have a cumulative impact for years to come."

The new law requires the DEP to evaluate the impacts of the following facilities:

• Major air polluters (like gas fired power plants)

• Incinerators

• Sewage treatment plants

• Recycling and scrap metal facilities

• Landfills

So why am I writing about environmental justice? As an employee of a federally-funded public agency, we are required to comply with Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and other regulations that address Environmental Justice. That's a rather official way of saying that we have to ensure that we are not discriminating against anyone on the basis of race, ethnicity, income or ability. We conduct and require our grantees to conduct equity analyses to ensure we are not disproportionately impacting these residents.

That's me conducting public outreach for our long-range plan, four years ago, at Bloomfest in Newark.

I'm not a planner or an engineer, but I do oversee our public outreach efforts and equity is always a concern. For example, we're using an online survey and virtual public meetings to gather input for our long-range transportation plan. (Normally we'd go out into the community, as pictured, but we're severely limited due to the pandemic.) New Jersey is one of the most diverse states in the country, and yet the majority of the people who have participated in our plan outreach are white, middle-aged men.

For the first time we held an event entirely in Spanish (rather than using a translator at an English language event). We only had a small number of attendees, but their feedback was phenomenal. But this group was only a small fraction of the overall responses.

We use diverse images, we hold events on different days and at different times to try and make them more accessible, we advertised in six languages, and yet we haven't attracted a diverse crowd. So we're re-thinking our approach and reaching out to community groups that work with diverse populations to ask them to co-sponsor our outreach in hopes that we can get responses that are more representative of our region.

Perhaps people are just sick of virtual meetings at this rate, or perhaps there's more we could be doing. Have an idea or suggestion? I'd love to hear your thoughts!

This blog post is an assignment for the Communication Media Design course at NJIT.