The Senate today approved legislation sponsored by Senate Environment and Agriculture Committee Chairwoman Dawn Euer to require the Division of Statewide Planning to designate population-based environmental justice focus areas throughout the state that would have extra protection from new proposals that would create additional adverse environmental impacts.
The purpose of the bill is to protect neighborhoods — particularly those with lower incomes, more minorities and more people for whom English is not the primary language — from bearing outsized shares of the burden of pollution and environmental hazards from infrastructure and development.
“Far too often, neighborhoods that are already suffering more than their share of pollution-producing infrastructure are targeted with proposals for more of them. Often it’s the poorest neighborhoods, partly because people with more means don’t want to live in such areas, and partly because such neighborhoods are often viewed as having less ability to fight back against environmental hazards proposed in them,” said Chairwoman Euer (D-Dist. 13, Newport, Jamestown) in a statement. “That’s environmental injustice, and our state needs to take deliberate action to prevent it. No one deserves to have their neighborhood serve as a dumping ground for multiple pollution-producing facilities, potentially explosive storage facilities and hazardous chemicals.”
