By Janet McCabe

Have you ever wondered what’s in the air you breathe? Is it clean? Is it dirty?

At EPA, we think about those questions all the time and we’ve made it our mission to improve the quality of the air we breathe in order to protect public health and the environment. We’ve worked for decades with states, local governments, tribes and other stakeholders to improve air monitoring technology to expand our monitoring networks and to update our regulations to ensure that they are protecting public health and the environment.

And that’s why I’m excited that this month we’re starting conversations with communities and other stakeholders with environmental justice concerns about the information we’re going to be getting from fenceline air toxic monitors at petroleum refineries.

During EPA’s public outreach on the 2015 petroleum refinery standards, we heard that communities wanted to know more about the emissions located in their neighborhoods. Taking this into account, EPA set a standard that will significantly improve air quality in neighborhoods near petroleum refineries because we now require fenceline monitoring of the toxic air pollutant benzene – a chemical that can cause respiratory problems and other serious health issues and can increase the risk of developing cancer. This is the first time that a rule will require companies to provide data to the public about toxic air emissions at the fenceline.

The monitoring and data collection requirements are outlined in our 2015 rule, but right now we’re focused on finding the best way to share this data.

So, we want to hear from you!

We want to know what kind of information is most important to you; how can it be presented in a clear, understandable and useful way; and what other information will help you make best use of the data. We know that the easiest way to answer these questions is to talk to you—our potential users—before we even start.That’s why we’re starting this process.

Here are the basics:

What: EPA standards for petroleum refineries require testing air at the fenceline for benzene. EPA will make the monitor locations and the associated data for benzene available on our website.

Why: Testing for benzene is a good way for refinery owners/operators to know if there are excess emissions they need to investigate. Because benzene is an indicator for other toxic chemicals, refinery owners/operators will have more readily available information about whether they need to take steps to reduce emissions to ensure they are complying with EPA’s rules regulating toxic air emissions.

Where: There are approximately 150 petroleum refineries in the United States, and many are located near communities, many are primarily low income and minority households. 

When: EPA’s rule requires that refineries begin air testing using reliable and accurate technology in 2018. EPA’s data system will begin receiving data in 2019. Once EPA receives the data, we will make it available to the public within 30 days.

To kick off the process of getting community input, EPA is holding webinars in June; the webinars will include an overview of the 2015 Refineries Rule, debut a draft web page design for sharing air toxics data from fenceline monitors, and give you an opportunity to provide feedback to EPA. Some of the questions we would like to discuss are:

• What information needs to be included on the web page to understand the data?
• What information and data on benzene do you want to see on the web page?
• Do you have other ideas for sharing the information besides a web page?
• What other information would be helpful for you?
• Other EPA information about air toxics? Links to EPA environmental justice tools?
• Is there other training or support that might be helpful?

Please join us for the community webinar and share your ideas or listen to ideas from others. We will also be holding sessions for industry and for state, local and tribal agencies.

Join us for a presentation  

Webinar Details:

Organizations                      Dates/Times                                                

• Communities                    June 22, 2016 @3:00-4:30pm EDT
  • Please call (800) 309-5450 and use 18500703 as the conference ID;
• Industry                             June 21, 2016 @2:00-3:30pm EDT
  • Please call (800) 309-5450 and use 18500534 as the conference ID;
• State/tribes/local             June 22, 2016 @1:00-2:30pm EDT
  • Please call (800) 309-5450 and use 18501701 as the conference ID.

Participants do not need to register for the webinar. To participate, at the time that corresponds with your type of organization, please click this meeting link: https://epawebconferencing.acms.com/fencelinedata

If you are unable to participate in the webinars, please visit the petroleum refinery website at https://www3.epa.gov/ttn/atw/petref.html to provide input. We will also post the presentation on June 21st.

You may send ideas about displaying refinery monitoring data to fencelineteam@epa.gov through July 31, 2016.

We look forward to hearing from you!

About the Author: Janet McCabe is the Assistant Administrator for the Office of Air and Radiation. Prior to joining EPA, McCabe was the Executive Director of Improving Kids’ Environment, Inc., a children’s environmental health advocacy organization, and was an adjunct faculty member in the Department of Public Health at the Indiana University School of Medicine.

About the Author: Rosemary E. Hambright graduated from William & Mary Law School in May 2016. She interned in the EPA’s Office of Enforcement and Compliance Assurance in the summer of 2015.

After months of brainstorming, recruiting speakers, and hashing out logistics, the long-awaited day had finally arrived! The Symposium on Environmental Justice (EJ) for the William & Mary Environmental Law and Policy Review (ELPR) was about to begin. The previous summer while interning at EPA, I attended a workshop led by the Office of Environmental Justice (OEJ). The hosts of the workshop encouraged all participants to advance the principles of EJ by helping to educate others about these issues.

As the ELPR Volume 40’s Symposium Editor, I knew that this would be a great forum to highlight environmental justice concerns and successes. With the symposium, I hoped to raise awareness of EJ issues and to cultivate an intelligent and nuanced conversation that would hopefully reveal invaluable insights and inspire the audience to also work towards the promotion of environmental justice.

Since law students would be most familiar with a legal point of view, the first panel started with the OEJ’s Danny Gogal, who spoke about the events leading up to the signing of President Bill Clinton’s 1994 Executive Order 12898 on Environmental Justice. Patrice Simms, professor at Howard University School of Law, pointed out opportunities federal agencies have to incorporate EJ into their decision making processes. Likewise, Ryan Fitzpatrick of the U.S. Department of Transportation (former EPA intern alumnus) explained how Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 can prevent racial discrimination in a locality’s land use choices, which he illustrated with his recent work in Corpus Christi, Texas.

The second panel was designed with the aim of humanizing specific EJ problems. Dr. Erica Holloman of the Southeast CARE Coalition, a group created with an EPA CARE grant in 2011, highlighted cumulative impacts affecting the community in southeast Newport News, Virginia. The area is currently both sinking and experiencing sea-level rise; is located between a highway, a sewage treatment facility, and a shipyard; and sees disproportionately high levels of asthma and infant mortality. Additionally, Mike Walker of EPA and Virginia Ruiz of Farmworker Justice shed light on the challenges facing migrant farmworkers, particularly their exposure to pesticides and how the chemicals spread through physical contact to their families.

The next panel underscored innovative solutions being advanced on the ground. Dr. Andrea Simpson of the University of Richmond shared a study she completed in Memphis, Tennessee, where two grassroots environmental justice leaders had very different approaches in their methodology. The discussion focused on the advantages and disadvantages of each approach: by working independently, the first grassroots community had complete autonomy in defining their issues and the remedies sought. The other community benefited from the skill, experience, and resources of working with a large organization, which helped in swaying regional opinion.

The symposium ended by broadening the topic to an international scale. The final panel highlighted many domestic environmental justice concerns that also exist globally. Maryann Nolan Chong of USAID talked about preparing geographically vulnerable regions for disaster. Upasana Khatri of EarthRights International touched on the displacement of indigenous communities by conservation easements. Finally, Jesse Worker of World Resources Institute brought attention to obstacles preventing citizen’s access to justice in some foreign governments.

I encourage other law students who care about environmental justice to host their own events and especially to invite people from communities to share their perspectives. The symposium was productive because it is already generating new collaborations. For example, one of the ELPR student staff members approached a speaker for feedback. As a result, ELPR Volume 41 is publishing the resulting paper, which proposes a model ordinance for Newport News to require the city to incorporate environmental justice considerations into its sea-level rise adaptation planning.

Many students go to law school with a dream to make the world a better place. However, you don’t have to wait until after graduation to take your first step!

By Charles Lee and Kelly Maguire

Today marks an important moment in environmental justice history. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency issued its first-ever Technical Guidance for Assessing Environmental Justice in Regulatory Analysis (EJ Technical Guidance).  This guidance represents a significant step towards ensuring the impacts of EPA regulations on vulnerable populations are understood and considered in the decision-making process.

The EJ Technical Guidance improves our ability to perform some of the most important work we do. Better integrating environmental justice in EPA’s core regulatory function is essential to ensure that all Americans, regardless of their race, ethnicity, or income level, have access to clean water, clean air, and healthy communities. Technical guidance, reinforced by the meaningful involvement of the public and key stakeholders, helps to ensure that all communities are protected from pollution as the result of EPA rules.

So how does it work? The EJ Technical Guidance equips EPA rule writers with key analytic principles and definitions, best practices, and technical questions to consider potential impacts on communities with environmental justice concerns. Each component helps us take complex issues and think about them in a consistent, step-by-step approach, while ensuring that sound science is the foundation of EPA’s decision-making process.

In fact, the Science Advisory Board (SAB) states “the [EJ Technical Guidance] represents major philosophical and communication steps for the agency and EJ communities with a major goal of the guidance being to incorporate EJ analysis into the framework of regulatory analysis.”  For the first time, EPA analysts will have a coherent set of methods to use when assessing potential environmental justice concerns in national rules.

The finalization of the EJ Technical Guidance realizes the last commitment made under Plan EJ 2014, and sets the stage to deliver on key aspects of the draft EJ 2020 Action Agenda, EPA’s next environmental justice strategic plan for 2016-2020.  Through EJ 2020, EPA will use the EJ Technical Guidance to ensure that environmental justice is appropriately analyzed, considered and addressed in EPA rules with potential EJ concerns. This will be accomplished by implementing guidance, training, monitoring, evaluation and community involvement, including periodic assessments of how EPA is conducting EJ analyses. A hallmark of EJ 2020’s approach will be continuous learning and improvement. However, we know we still have much work to do, including development of advanced methods and guidance for analyzing cumulative risks and impacts.

As community engagement and involvement is a critical component of environmental justice, the EPA invites you join us in a webinar to learn more about the EJ Technical Guidance. These webinars will be hosted on June 23^rd, from 1:00 to 2:00 pm EST, and July 11^th, from 3:00 to 4:00 pm EST. You can register for both events at this link: http://ej-tech-guidance-webinar.eventbrite.com (Each of the two webinars will offer the same information).

We are excited about this step in the long journey towards ensuring environmental justice for all communities. We fully agree with the Administrator, when she emphasized that “by improving our ability to conduct strong, consistent analysis of environmental justice in regulatory actions, the EJ Technical Guidance marks a major milestone in our continued efforts to ensure environmental justice is considered in all aspects of the agency’s work.  Looking ahead, it offers an important advance that will bring better protection to America’s vulnerable populations for years to come.”

About the authors: Kelly Maguire is an environmental economist in EPA’s National Center for Environmental Economics.  Her work focuses on methods for considering environmental justice in regulatory analysis and valuing health risk reductions for all populations. Charles Lee is the Deputy Associate Assistant Administrator for Environmental Justice at EPA. Mr. Lee is widely recognized as a true environmental justicepioneer. He was the principal author of the landmark report, ‘Toxic Wastes and Race in the United States’.

By Denise Tennessee, US EPA 

On Saturday, May 6, 2016, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency celebrated the graduation of the inaugural class of the Region 4 Environmental Justice Leadership Academy: a program initiated by our Office of Environmental Justice and Sustainability (OEJS). During the ceremony at Kennesaw State University in Georgia, we honored 21 graduates from five Southeastern states.

Two OEJS staff, Ms. Sheryl Good and Ms. Daphne Wilson, recognized that many communities throughout the region – which includes Kentucky, Tennessee, North and South Carolina, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia and Florida – are burdened by inequitable environmental concerns. While we do provide support through funding opportunities and technical assistance programs to our communities, we saw that the agency could do more to assist in building the capacity of community leaders so that they may better address their environmental challenges.

Thus, the idea for the Environmental Justice Academy was born.

The EJ Academy is an in-depth leadership development program that offers community leaders the knowledge and skills needed to be more effective in identifying and addressing the environmental and public health challenges in their communities.

We are proud of our graduates for having completed this rigorous nine-month program.

Each module of the EJ Academy focused on one element of the EPA’s Collaborative Problem-Solving (CPS) model, which is a seven-step process for bringing about positive change and community revitalization. The CPS model emphasizes the need for community leaders, community members and their stakeholders to work together to establish mutually beneficial partnerships and solutions.

Participants were taught how to leverage human, social, technical, legal and financial resources to ensure successful collaboration and negotiation as well as how to increase the capacity of all community members as a means to establish long-term progress.

In addition to lectures by internal and external subject-matter experts, in-class exercises and homework assignments, the participants were asked to identify an environmental challenge in their community. Throughout the program, the participants were asked to apply their new skills towards designing and implementing solutions to engage their community to overcome this challenge. With individualized feedback, guidance and assistance from the experts brought in by the EJ Academy, participants were able to complete a community portfolio, which may assist them in securing funding, describing community resources and challenges, and establishing credibility amongst stakeholders, as well as an action plan to guide organizational activities.

Throughout the program, the EJ Academy assisted participants to identify and secure potential partners, to interact directly with technical experts from the EPA and other organizations, to network with regional community leaders to establish mutually beneficial relationships, and to match with nearby academic institutions in EPA’s College Underserved Community Partnership Program (CUPP) to provide technical assistance for the implementation of each respective project.

Please contact R4_EJAcademy@epa.gov for more information.

People interested in applying for the next EJ Academy class should reside in a Region 4 state and be able to demonstrate that they are actively involved in a leadership capacity in a community that has been disproportionately impacted from environmental contaminants.

Congratulations to the inaugural Environmental Justice Academy graduates. We have graduated a remarkable class. We feel strongly that each and every one of our graduates has the ability to make a visible difference in the communities that they serve. Their achievement underscores our commitment at the EPA to help improve the health and viability of all communities, including some of the most vulnerable populations. We look forward to watching the incredible things that these graduates do!

And stay tuned to the Environmental Justice in Action blog because we will be highlighting the stories and work of our amazing EJ Academy graduates!

About the Author: Denise Tennessee is the Director of the EPA’s Region 4 Office of Environmental Justice and Sustainability in Atlanta, Georgia. She is responsible for implementing the environmental justice, pollution prevention and source reduction programs, and the Partnership for Sustainable Communities initiative in eight southeastern states. With over 34 years of professional experience, she has also worked at the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.

About the Author: Ruth A. Etzel, M.D., Ph.D. is Director of the Environmental Protection Agency’s Office of Children’s Health Protection and a senior advisor to the Administrator.  Before joining EPA, Dr. Etzel was Professor of Epidemiology at the School of Public Health at the University of Wisconsin – Milwaukee.  .  She previously served as the Senior Officer for Environmental Health Research at the World Health Organization.  

Whether at parks and playgrounds or inside homes and schools, exposure to environmental pollutants is a constant concern in many communities. For children, such exposure poses a greater risk to their health than to adults because their bodies and immune systems are still developing. This makes them more susceptible to the negative health effects caused by environmental pollutants.

But not all children face equal risks to these pollutants. Racial and ethnic minority children and children in low-income familiesmay be disproportionally affected by exposure to pollution and climate change. For children of color from low-income households the likelihood is even greater.

Due to the unique risks that these children face every day, EPA has taken action to address these public health concerns. The EPA Office of Children’s Health Protection supports and facilitates the Agency’s efforts to protect children’s health from environmental threats. EPA works to develop air quality standards, safe drinking water standards and chemical regulations that specifically address the fact that children are not little adults – and therefore may require a heightened level of protection.

Additionally, we strive to raise awareness by providing educational resources to communities on the unique threats faced by children and the ways that families can mitigate these risks. Although we continue to take steps necessary to uphold our mission of protecting children’s health, we know EPA does not work alone.

Parents rely on pediatricians, pediatric nurse practitioners, community health workers, and other professionals for information related to environmental pollutants and their impact upon children’s health. However, there are many health professionals who consistently go above and beyond to expand understanding of children’s environmental health issues.

In recognition of this invaluable work, we are now accepting applications and nominations for the 2016 EPA Children’s Environmental Health Excellence Award, which recognizes individuals and organizations within the United States who have made a significant impact on increasing the number of health professionals who can address children’s environmental health concerns.

Candidates will be selected based on the following criteria:

• Program/project increases the number of health professionals (e.g., nurses, doctors, social workers, professors, and healthcare providers) who are able to address children’s environmental health issues;
• Program/project assists health professionals to understand, diagnose, and develop prevention messages for children’s environmental health issues that they encounter; and
• Results and outcomes that support the effectiveness of the project/program.

Please submit your application or nomination on our website, on or before Wednesday, June 15^th, 2016.

For more information, please visit our website and don’t hesitate to contact us if you have questions concerning the award application.

About the Author: Charles Lee is the Deputy Associate Assistant Administrator for Environmental Justice at EPA. Mr. Lee is widely recognized as a true environmental justice pioneer. He was the principal author of the landmark report, ‘Toxic Wastes and Race in the United States’. He helped to spearhead the emergence of a national environmental justice movement and federal action including Executive Order 12898, EPA’s Office of Environmental Justice, the National Environmental Justice Advisory Council, and the Federal Interagency Working Group on Environmental Justice.

I recently asked a number of my EPA colleagues what they were most proud of about the EJ 2020 Action Agenda (or what we call EJ 2020).  Each of them expressed how EJ 2020 represents an intensive effort across all regions, program offices, and by all levels of the organization to focus our attention on how to best connect communities most-in-need of environmental help with EPA’s practical solutions.

During the past year, EPA has been hard at work developing EJ 2020, the agency’s strategy for environmental justice for 2016-2020.  Building on Plan EJ 2014, as well as decades of significant environmental justice practice within communities and among our governmental partners and stakeholders, we have crafted a strategy that envisions an EPA that integrates environmental justice into everything we do, cultivates strong partnerships to improve on-the-ground results, and charts a path forward for achieving better environmental outcomes and reducing disparities in the nation’s most overburdened communities.

EJ 2020 has been developed based on stakeholder input representing the real environmental challenges facing American communities today. This strategy takes a big step forward by holding ourselves accountable for measureable progress in achieving better environmental outcomes and reducing disparities.

EJ 2020 has three overarching goals:

1. Deepen environmental justice practice in EPA’s programs to improve the health and environment of overburdened communities;
2. Work with partners to expand our positive impact in overburdened communities; and
3. Demonstrate progress on significant national environmental justice challenges.

EJ 2020 will involve every EPA office in every region of the country. It consists of eight priority areas and four significant national environmental justice challenges.

• Under Goal I, we will focus on: Rulemaking, Permitting, Enforcement, and Science.
• Under Goal II, we will focus on: States and Local Governments, Federal Agencies, Community-Based Work, and Tribes and Indigenous Peoples.
• Under Goal III, we will focus on: Lead Disparities, Small and Tribal Drinking Water Systems, Fine Particle Air Pollution, and Hazardous Waste Sites.

Each of these priority areas and environmental justice challenges have their own section in the strategy which outlines the agency’s objectives, the plan for achieving them, and how we will measure success.

By achieving our vision, we will help to make America’s vulnerable, environmentally burdened, and economically disadvantaged communities healthier, cleaner and more sustainable places in which to live, work, play and learn.

Our vision and goals for 2020 were informed by the input we have received from the communities we serve, our partners and all stakeholder groups. Last year, we conducted extensive outreach and sought input on the draft framework for the EJ 2020 strategy.  Today, we share the final draft of the EJ 2020 Action Agenda for a second round of input and public comment.  In sharing the details of EJ 2020, we invite your feedback on how to make it a stronger strategy, as well as your thoughts on how we can best implement its commitments. To review the final draft of EJ 2020, please visit EPA’s EJ 2020 website- https://www.epa.gov/environmentaljustice/ej-2020-action-agenda.

Our public comment period will be from May 23, 2016 to July 7, 2016. Also, we will have two webinars where we go over the Action Agenda, and they are scheduled for Thursday, June 2nd from 2 to 3:30 EST, and June 7th, from 3:00 to 4:30 EST. 

Please also sign up for our EJ listserv to find out when we will have webinars in the next few weeks. You can learn about EJ 2020 and how EPA will advance environmental justice to make a more visible difference in the environmental and public health landscape over the next five years.

Author: Eve Pytel

About the author: Eve Pytel serves as Director of Strategic Priorities at Delta Institute, a non-profit organization that works throughout the Great Lakes region to build a resilient environment and economy through sustainable, market-driven solutions. As Director of Strategic Priorities, she helps drive organizational strategy and manages programs that focus on sustainability, new markets, and waste material. 

Where there’s a combination of vacant or unused land and high unemployment, there’s potential for transformation and growth. The challenge is achieving transformation in a way that returns values to local residents. The Steel City of Gary, Indiana, like many legacy cities (former industrial powerhouses), has endured outmigration, corporate abandonment, and the foreclosure crisis.  But thanks to strong city leadership, dedicated local partners, and the Obama Administration’s Strong Cities Strong Communities Initiative (SC2) support, Gary, Indiana is now positioned to transform its vacant and abandoned lots into assets, catalyzing a circular economy which continually reinvests in itself.

In 2013, Gary’s staff met with the Delta Institute to discuss strategies to improve the city’s environmental and economic health. A year later, Delta partnered with Gary and University of Chicago to convene a regional symposium around deconstruction and proactive blight management. EPA and the Department of Housing and Urban Development SC2 staff supported the conversation by participating, as well as presenting and providing technical assistance to community stakeholders on the EPA Residential Demolition Bid Specification Development Tool.

Gary residents were initially concerned that a deconstruction program would benefit Chicago firms and workers and not Gary, so Delta provided training to Gary contractors to enable them to compete against outside contractors. Delta also set up procurement tools to prioritize local bids and the usage of local workers.

Since the regional conversation, I have been working with local partners including the City of Gary to test collaborative and innovative solutions to activate these vacant and under-utilized properties in a way that achieves the goals of economic, environmental, and social benefits envisioned by Gary residents. Some of these innovative solutions include:

• Revitalizing brownfields by planting trees and vegetation. Through a process called phytoremediation, the natural functions of plants can remediate contaminated soil, sludge, sediment, ground water, surface water, or waste water. With funding from the U.S. Forest Service, we’re working to implement this interim strategy on five acres of brownfields in the Great Calumet River. Through phytoremediation, we’re cleaning up the water and soil, absorbing stormwater, reducing the flow of contamination into Lake Michigan, and improving the aesthetics of the site.
  

  A home in Gary, Indiana that will soon be deconstructed.

• Removing blighted homes and harvesting materials through deconstruction. Currently in Gary, almost 6,000 homes sit vacant, and in those homes, there is great economic value for Gary. While many of these homes will end up being demolished, the City of Gary will incorporate deconstruction as a strategy to harvest building materials for reuse. Compared to the singular benefit of demolition, deconstruction offers many benefits including blight reduction, employment and training for local workers, fuel for local building material markets, and the diversion of materials from our already-taxed landfills. This month, 12 Gary homes will be deconstructed by local workers, and thanks to DIYers, woodworking artisans, and collectors, you can buy them, and thanks to a grant Delta received from the Knight Cities Challenge, the lumber and architectural salvage harvested from the homes will eventually go to a local marketplace where DIYers, woodworking artisans, and collectors can buy them. Delta received from the Knight Cities Challenge, the lumber and architectural salvage harvested from the homes will eventually go to a local marketplace where DIYers, woodworking artisans, and collectors can buy them.
  

  Workers deconstructing a home.

• Aggregating newly vacant land for conservation purposes. Demolition and deconstruction leaves land vacant and idle. We’re working with the City of Gary to bring together local government agencies and conservation groups to create a strategy to utilize the publicly owned properties that are currently or will be vacant in the next year for green space that can provide environmental and recreational benefits for Gary.

While we are testing these various vacant land management solutions in Gary, the strategies are applicable to all cities – especially Legacy Cities. I hope our work in Gary can change the narrative around vacant and abandoned land, so that cities like Gary across the country recognize the potential economic, environmental and social value that these properties can offer back into local communities.

Authors: Gustavo Velasquez, Assistant Secretary for Fair Housing and Equal Opportunity, and Harriet Tregoning, Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary for the Office of Community Planning and Development, U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.

A zip code should never define a person’s destiny or prevent a child from reaching their aspirations. Yet there is no longer any question that a connection exists between where you live and what lifelong outcomes may be likely for you and your family. Research on poverty and economic mobility published last year by Harvard economists offered sobering evidence of the power of a child’s environment to shape his or her future health and wellbeing.

We all want the same things for our families: a safe and affordable place to call home, access to jobs, transportation options, healthy food, good schools and opportunities for our children. That is why we at the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) published a rule last year to better equip communities with the data and tools they need to identify fair housing issues and break down barriers in access to opportunity and fair housing choice.

For 48 years, federal agencies and recipients of federal funding relating to housing and urban development have been obligated by the Fair Housing Act to “affirmatively further fair housing” (AFFH). However, as data and information systems have evolved, we all have access to new resources to assist us in this endeavor. The AFFH final rule provides certain HUD program participants with guidelines, plus the data, tools and technical assistance they need, to conduct an in-depth and localized analysis of fair housing issues in their jurisdictions and regions.

Additionally, the AFFH rule addresses HUD’s responsibility – under the 1994 Executive Order 12898 – to consider the environmental justice effects of federally assisted projects. One of the required components of an Assessment of Fair Housing (AFH) is a measurement of environmental health.  The image above shows how measures of environmental health are provided in the new AFFH data and mapping tool, a free and publicly available tool that can be used by anyone to map fair housing issues in their community, including segregation, environmental health, and access to opportunity. HUD also encourages communities to use other sources of data, like EPA’s EJSCREEN in order to assess environmental health as part of their assessments of fair housing.

Between this year and the next, over 100 communities across the country will be examining their local and regional fair housing landscapes and engaging their communities in the development of their Assessment of Fair Housing to comply with the AFFH rule.

Even if your community’s assessment is not due for several years, the data tool is available for your use now. Proposed fair housing assessment tools, which local governments, states, insular areas, and public housing agencies will be using to complete their assessment, are also out for public comment under the Paperwork Reduction Act at this very moment. We want to hear from you!  Take a look at the types of data and analysis HUD will be asking program participants to prepare and some of the guidance HUD is providing on the HUD Exchange website. Then tell us what you think about the proposed tools by submitting public comments on regulations.gov. The deadline for submitting comments on the assessment tool for states and insular areas is 11:59 PM ET on May 10, 2016; comments on assessment tools for local governments and for public housing agencies must be submitted by 11:59 PM ET on May 23, 2016.

Like the obligation to affirmatively further fair housing, segregation and unequal access to opportunity are not new. But we are introducing new data and tools to assist communities with their obligation and to overcome barriers to fair housing choice. Enabled with these data and tools, communities can make informed decisions, establish locally-determined fair housing goals, and take meaningful actions to become more inclusive, healthy, and sustainable.

Some regions have already piloted a related fair housing planning process, the fair housing and equity assessment, through HUD’s Sustainable Communities Initiative, with great results. The findings of these assessments prompted local decision-makers to reevaluate the way they invested in and planned for public infrastructure, services, transit, and housing – learn more here.

We look forward to hearing from you!

Author: Simone Walter

About the Author: Simone joined the EPA’s Office of Environmental Justice after serving as an Agro-business Advisor in Madagascar with the United States Peace Corps. She is currently pursuing a Master of Science in Environmental Sciences and Policy at Johns Hopkins University.

I met Pablo Fajardo Mendoza in 2009 while we were both working with Environmental Law Alliance Worldwide (ELAW). Pablo came to ELAW to obtain legal assistance for his case in the Ecuadorian Amazon against a large industrial oil company, which at the time was one of the largest environmental legal battles in history.

He was the first Goldman Environmental Prize recipient that I have had the honor of meeting.

Known as the Nobel Peace Prize for environmental activists, the Goldman Environmental Prize is awarded annually to grassroots change agents from each of the world’s six inhabited continents: Africa, Asia, Europe, Islands & Island nations, North America, and South & Central America.

Pablo’s English was improving; my Spanish was still pretty bad. But, as we worked alongside each other, I became fascinated by his story. How does a person have the resiliency, against all odds, to defend their community and their environment?

On the 18^th of April 2016, another six individuals joined Pablo in being named Goldman Environmental Prize recipients.

Pablo, with his unwavering commitment to protecting the environment and defending communities devastated by inequitable development, is a beacon of environmental justice.

But so is Máxima Acuña – a subsistence farmer, who has withstood ongoing lawsuits, brutal assaults, and violent eviction attempts by peacefully protesting against the construction of a mine on her land in the northern Peruvian highlands. And Leng Ouch – an attorney who surmounted great personal risk by going undercover to expose the illegal logging practices of corrupt tycoons that were robbing rural Cambodian communities of their livelihoods.

While some Prize recipients have faced direct, visible danger, all of them have had to fight against laws and systems that do not protect those who are most burdened by environmental harms and most vulnerable to those risks. Like Edward Loure who works to empower Tanzania’s indigenous pastoral and hunter-gatherer communities by securing their legal rights to land and environmental stewardship. Or Luis Jorge Rivera Herrera who led a 15-year campaign to gain federal protection for the Puerto Rican Northeast Ecological Corridor, which is a critical nesting ground for the endangered leatherback sea turtle. As well as Zuzana Caputova, an attorney for the only public interest environmental law organization in Slovakia, who established a legal precedent by successfully campaigning to shut down the landfills that were poisoning her community.

I once thought that these types of stories were confined to places outside of the United States in countries where political strife was commonplace and environmental protection was not legally codified. What I learned from the Goldman Reception, which is hosted annually by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, is that these types of stories occur just a few miles away from where I live. Like in south Baltimore, where Destiny Watford, who began working in high school with her community to fight against plans to build the nation’s largest waste incinerator in their backyard.

I often think people would prefer to ignore the reality of these environmental injustices, but many do not have that privilege. Across the globe, communities are struggling to make their voices heard as decisions are being made that will directly impact their access to a clean and healthy environment.

Yet, frequently I wonder: but what can I do?

What I have learned from Pablo Fajardo Mendoza and these amazing activists is that believing that you do not have the capacity to inspire change is the quickest way to give away your power. The Goldman Prize recipients have demonstrated that each of us has the power to enact positive change for our communities and for our shared environment. Their work and their stories point to the heart of why environmental justice – its inclusion of community voices, its focus on impacts to those most vulnerable, its consideration of local priorities and needs – has been and remains such a priority for us here at EPA.  And why it is incumbent upon all of us to hear these voices and remember their stories as we work to further environmental justice in all that we do.

Author: Jerome Shabazz

About the Author: Jerome Shabazz is the founder and Executive Director of JASTECH Development Services, Inc., and the Overbrook Environmental Education Center. Under his leadership, the Overbrook Center has trained thousands of students on the Clean Water Act, Toxic Substances Control Act, Urban Stormwater Management and other subjects that reduce exposures to toxic substances at home and school. Jerome has over twenty years of training and development experience and has a Master’s of Science Degree in Environmental Protection & Safety Management from St. Joseph’s University.

All across the nation, small environmental justice organizations are challenged with “scaling-up” –taking ingenuity and initiative to address larger concerns in spite of our small size – in order to address widespread environmental issues in our communities. And that’s what our organization in Philadelphia, Juveniles Active in Science & Technology, or JASTECH Development Services, Inc., has been all about: developing innovative and collaborative solutions for improving the built and natural environments of our city.

In 2002, JASTECH applied for and received an EPA Clean Water Act grant to transform a former brownfields site into the Overbrook Environmental Education Center (OEEC). We built the OEEC to empower students to learn both in the academic context and as participants in community reform. Since its inception, the OEEC used sustainable strategies that “do more with less,” by developing dynamic solutions to overcome obstacles typically associated with organizations who have limited resources and small staffs.

In 2014, during a visit to the OEEC, EPA’s Inspector General Arthur Elkins, Jr., remarked how impressed he was with the Center. During a conversation about how our small, nimble non-profit needed support to help our ideas grow bigger through partnerships, Mr. Elkins suggested that we call our concept “scalable ideas.” Since then, this has described our approach to developing collaborative partnerships that deconstruct large community-wide problems into manageable tasks.

The OEEC puts this in action with what we describe as the “3A” approach: Awareness + Assessment + Application. Awareness being the education of, and relationship to the issues; Assessment is taking inventory of community partners, inputs and resources; and Applications are sustainable solution-based remedies. An example where the OEEC put these “scalable ideas” into action is through educating the public on Philadelphia’s combined sewer overflow problems. The OEEC worked collaboratively to build a 15-week green stormwater infrastructure (GSI) training program for local youth. Chevelle Harrison, Philadelphia Water’s Director of Student Engagement said, “GSI teaches students that their actions have a direct impact on the environment.”

The GSI program is a robust partnership based on Philadelphia Water’s Green City and Clean Waters plan and included the US Forest Service, Penn State Center Engaging Philadelphia, PA Department of Environmental Education, AKRF Engineering and others.

Through the program, students from Philadelphia high schools conceptualize solutions that reduce strain on the city’s combined sewer system. The students are charged with learning “the power of small” – deconstructing the complicated concepts of pollution from sewer overflows into a series of achievable best management practices that can be realized on a neighborhood level.

Before taking part in the GSI program, high school student Ayanna T. never thought much about stormwater and how it affected the city around her.  “I just thought about the sewer, to be honest,” Ayanna said. “I didn’t know there were other ways you could save [stormwater] and use it.” Now, Ayanna can easily list innovative approaches to green stormwater management, and she ticks off three: “bioswales, tree trenches and pervious pavement.” Devan Curtis, a participant in the GSI program, was challenged with finding ways to redirect and reuse rainwater before it runs off into the stormwater collector system. Curtis, who is currently studying civil engineering at Indiana University of Pennsylvania, has spearheaded the development of an aquaponics system that is now in the works.

All too often, we hear about how bigger is better. However, we are inspired by the people in our community who demonstrate that when you think creatively, small ideas can conquer big problems. Whether it’s our students, a citizen scientist, activists, concerned parents, or any of the other “army-of-ones” who inspire big changes with “scalable ideas,” one remedy at a time…we all benefit from their contributions.