Role of Environmental Justice in Land Use Planning Shankar B. Prasad, M.B.B.S. Community Health Advisor California Air Resources Board May 11, 2001 Statewide Air Quality Conference for Local Elected Officials, 2001

2 Vision To Success

3 How to Handle E J - A Hot Issue ?

4 What is Environmental Justice ?

5 Federal Definition of E J “… identifying and addressing, as appropriate, disproportionately high and adverse human health or environmental effects of its programs, policies, and activities on minority populations and low- income populations in the United States and its territories and possessions…” From: U.S. Executive Order (1994)

6 Our State’s Definition of EJ “… the fair treatment of people of all races, cultures, and incomes with respect to the development, adoption, implementation, and enforcement of environmental laws, regulations, and policies.” From: Senate Bill 115 (Solis, 1999)

7 What Are the Goals of E J ? Equity in environmental risk distribution Improving quality of life by reducing risk burdens from all sources

8 Why Are We Concerned ? Not all communities benefit equally from regional air quality improvements Environmental regulations and policies not applied uniformly for all affected communities Past practices leading to inequity needs to be addressed Future inequity needs to be prevented

9 Cumulative Risk The total risk to a community is due to all emissions released by all nearby sources The risk burden to a community is high when surrounded by multi- facility clusters The health consequence of multi- toxics exposure is not clear

10 How to Break the Barriers ? Technical Fiscal

11 Technical Barriers Cumulative risk / Exposure –local permitting & land-use decisions Air monitoring / modeling challenges –regional vs. neighborhood-scale Policy framework Limitations –EJ in the context of CEQA –demographic consideration

12 Potential Fiscal Barrier Solutions Incentives to go beyond minimum controls Spend fines to benefit affected community Target efforts where burden is highest Expand outreach on pollution prevention & funding programs Establish a trust fund for corrective action

13 Take Home Message E J concerns are real Traditional approaches not likely to solve the problem Need to be creative in overcoming technical / fiscal barriers E J needs to be a primary consideration in land-use decision process to avoid clusters

14 Thank You !