After World War II, blacks in Houston had a occasional opportunity to buy a nice home in the up-to-date community of Pleasantville, Texas. But in the years that followed, authorities moved the Interstate 610 loop, with its tailpipes, along one side of Pleasantville, and cement plants and other ponderous industries sprang up nearby.
Just days after taking office in 2021, the Biden administration made massive promises to heavily polluted Black, Latino, Indigenous and lower-income areas like these, the so-called environmental justice communities.
To gauge the extent to which Biden and his departments have kept those promises, the Associated Press spoke to about 30 environmental groups across the country. These people have been working for years, sometimes decades, to clean up pollution around their homes, such as Superfund sites, petrochemical plants and ports where diesel is burned.
Many said this administration had done more than any before it. With unprecedented ambition, they said, federal officials had sought their advice, enacted stronger environmental regulations and pledged tens of billions of dollars in funding.
“When he was in office, he walked the talk,” said Beverly Wright, who directs the Deep South Center for Environmental Justice and sits on the White House Environmental Justice Advisory Council. “I almost gasped when I saw the total.”
But local activists interviewed also have concerns. Some said the Biden administration’s policies are too feeble to drastically reduce pollution and change their lives. Officials have even endorsed climate technologies that make conditions worse, they said.
This progress could be undone if a Republican administration comes to power in the presidential election on November 5. Former presidential candidate Donald Trump considers many of the regulations advocated by these groups to be excessive.
Environmental benefits
Pleasantville, near Houston’s petrochemical hub, received some of Biden’s funding. Bridgette Murray, founder of the group Achieving Community Tasks Successfully, said residents want what many environmental groups want: data on what’s in the air. Now a federal grant will facilitate them conduct air tests, she said, and they can present the results to regulators.
This will not really make the air cleaner, Murray said, “but if we do nothing, nothing will ever change.” To achieve this, sustainable means are needed, she said.
The Texas grant is one of many. In every region of the country, the Environmental Protection Agency has awarded vast sums of money to an established group that passes it on to local organizations that understand the needs of their communities. In Massachusetts, for example, the Boston-based nonprofit Health Resources in Action received $50 million to do this work.
Dwaign Tyndal, executive director of Alternatives for Community and Environment in Roxbury, Massachusetts, which focuses on low-cost, energy-efficient buildings and combating harmful diesel emissions, called it “a really significant investment by the federal government in nonprofits.”
Near Lake Charles in Sulphur, Louisiana, an area particularly prone to hurricanes, Roishetta Ozane feels surrounded by oil and gas facilities that she believes are responsible for some of her six children’s health problems, including asthma and eczema. Ozane founded the Vessel Project of Louisiana, an environmental justice mutual aid and disaster relief organization.
“I’m fighting for my children and other people’s children and grandchildren to be able to play outside safely,” Ozane said, “and not become victims of climate pollution and these climate disasters that we are constantly facing here.”
She wanted the government to curb the expansion of gas facilities on the Gulf Coast and was pleased when the government stopped the construction of up-to-date export terminals. However, a court recently blocked the government’s move.
The Inflation Control Act added billions to Biden’s efforts — providing significant funding for environmental justice for the first time. Money went to school districts for clean school buses. The White House said money from the federal “green bank” would go to thousands of projects, from heat pumps for homes to community cooling centers.
Officials have also enacted regulations they say will dramatically improve public health. Stricter air quality standards will reduce cancer rates, and proposed regulations to remove harmful lead pipes will prevent damage to children’s brain development and lower IQ scores. The White House and EPA have also opened environmental justice offices and developed a process to define disadvantaged communities and facilitate them receive benefits.
Jade Begay, an indigenous rights and climate activist, said that when the administration hired people, agencies with influence over indigenous communities were staffed with more people from indigenous communities, meaning tribal members. “They are now helping not only to transform these agencies, but to implement these policies.”
The Biden administration came at the right time to push for these changes: activists had built enough influence to push the government to adopt their priorities, and there was widespread recognition that climate change was hurting the poorest communities the most. Something had to be done.
Dissatisfaction remains
But concerns also emerged in almost all interviews with environmental groups.
Anne Rolfes, head of the Louisiana Bucket Brigade, which helps communities along a key petrochemical corridor, said the Biden administration is listening to activists and inviting them to photo ops but is not enforcing the law aggressively enough to ensure the safety of the state’s black population.
“If you have an EPA that fundamentally doesn’t assert its authority, then a state like Louisiana, which is completely captured by industry, can ignore the federal government. And that’s exactly what they’re doing,” Rolfes said.
Under Biden, EPA enforcement has been tightened, but Rolfes says federal agencies still give states too much power to ignore clean air regulations.
Some local organizations had difficulty navigating the federal bureaucracy and applying for funding, despite available technical assistance.
And there is anger over the Biden administration’s support for carbon capture and storage technology, which collects and stores climate-warming carbon dioxide from industrial smokestacks, often in underground wells. Several activists said this could extend the life of muddy plants because it gives plant operators a chance to argue they are climate-friendly while their emissions continue to harm people nearby.
These plans “exacerbated the problem of the climate crisis and made it a problem for future generations to deal with,” said Ashley LaMont, national campaign director for the indigenous environmental organization Honor the Earth.
It’s a major issue for states like Louisiana, which are home to a lot of ponderous industry and want to attract up-to-date carbon capture projects. Late last year, the EPA allowed Louisiana to take over carbon capture drilling permits from the federal government and run its own program. The agency built in some protections for local residents that activists had recommended, but the move has angered many in the environmental justice movement.
Jalonne White-Newsome, chief federal environmental justice officer, said when Congress passed the Inflation Reduction Act, it included incentives for carbon capture. The Biden administration had to implement the law and has asked for feedback.
She said they had tried to embed environmental justice principles into the “structure and foundation” of the federal government.
“We are not in the Promised Land yet,” she said, “but we are on our way there.”
A major obstacle is time. After nearly four years, some of the Biden administration’s programs are only just beginning to distribute money.
Republicans have called EPA’s environmental justice funding a gift to radical left groups.
“We have found that much of the money being spent actually has little to do with the environment and everything to do with funding groups that are essentially engaged in what I call anti-American activities,” said Senator Shelley Moore Capito of West Virginia, ranking chair of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, in a public statement.
Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic presidential nominee, supports President Biden’s work on environmental justice, saying in December that she has “put justice at the center of all our climate investments.” A spokesperson for the Harris campaign did not respond to a request for comment.
Regarding Pleasantville, Murray said the problems there have been caused by racial segregation and the spread of polluting industries over many years. Making the air healthier will require a sustained effort lasting many years.
“Unfortunately, when it comes to solutions, we may not have the time we really need to make big improvements,” she 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 for its coverage of water and environmental policy. All content is solely the responsibility of the AP. For all AP environmental coverage, visit https://apnews.com/hub/climate-and-environment
