For many vulnerable communities, no preventative laws are in place to protect individuals against environmental harm. An initiative in Los Angeles may offer a solution.
In neighborhoods around the country, poor, black, latinx, and immigrant communities suffer disproportionate levels of pollution. The Los Angeles chapter of environmental justice group Communities for a Better Environment has been on the frontlines for years, fighting to expose environmental injustice and racism in urban neighborhoods that are overburdened by environmental issues. Since the 1970’s, the group has been pivotal in bringing together vulnerable Los Angeles neighborhoods to fight the environmental threats in their backyards. They have mobilized residents of these communities and the greater population of Los Angeles to demand higher standards of air quality, and created “toxics tours” that highlight the close proximity of freeways, oil refineries, and recycling plants to the daycares, schools, and recreational spaces in poorer neighborhoods.
They also championed a historic piece of legislation— now law— that sets a precedent for protecting vulnerable communities from environmental harms before they take place, rather than after. In 2016, the Los Angeles City Council passed an ordinance called “Clean Up Green Up” (CUGU). The ordinance created a structure in which neighborhoods deemed to be “toxic hot-spots” would be identified as “green zones,” and the businesses in those neighborhoods would be held responsible for “cleaning up” the messes they made.
A key piece of the ordinance is its focus on cumulative impacts. The term “cumulative environmental impacts”, or cumulative impacts, is often used to describe the persistent and interconnected nature of environmental injustices. Because a neighborhood could be dealing with noise pollution from freeway traffic, air pollution from construction, proximity to a power plant, and increased housing prices due to gentrification among many other challenges all at the same time, the issue is not one-dimensional and needs to be solved by government regulation and protection. Defined by the EPA as the “total effects on a resource, ecosystem, or human community of that action and all other activities affecting that resource”, cumulative impacts seeks to look at environmental injustices as interconnected, therefore showing the need to address such issues on a systemic level.
Cumulative impacts are exacerbated in communities of color, and in Los Angeles’s case, communities with predominantly Latinx immigrants. By codifying cumulative impacts, CUGU recognizes the need to document, study, and adequately address the intertwined issues occurring in affected neighborhoods. CUGU established a process through which companies wanting to build in “green zones” would have to evaluate the direct and indirect effects of a project on the neighboring residents.
The CUGU ordinance defined new development standards to govern both new and expanded industries to protect the communities in green zones. Diesel trucks at warehouses and other industrial facilities in these neighborhoods now see signage saying “no idling”, lessening gas exhaust emissions, and there are 500 ft “buffer zones” between points of emission and homes. Additionally, small measures like compliance with noise standards, adequate trash enclosures, fencing, and outdoor lighting are educating polluting industries about their impacts on neighboring communities.
Currently on the federal level, the National Environmental Protection Act (NEPA) requires the consideration of cumulative impacts in their reviews. In EPA reviews of the environmental impacts of projects on the environment, they are also currently expected to consider how the development of the project would directly and indirectly affect the people who live in proximity to this project.
There has been a recent push from the Trump administration to remove considerations of cumulative impacts from federal environmental impact statements. Seeing any slowdown in the already-long process of permitting as a hindrance to the creation of jobs from development projects, the Trump administration believes it is in the country’s best interest to exclude cumulative impacts out of federal legislation.
As a critic of this move, I see the removal of cumulative impacts from NEPA’s reviews as yet another example of Trump valuing the economy over human lives. Without considering the impact of development on the communities in the immediate proximity of the projects, the federal government is opening the floodgates for more health issues caused by environmental harm, and ultimately choosing to turn a blind eye to the real and visible effects of pollution on vulnerable communities. They are choosing to create a problem rather than proactively take steps to mitigate environmental injustice.
Meanwhile in Congress, there is a bill on the House floor that is also addressing cumulative impacts. This bill, H.R. 5986 “Environmental Justice For All Act”, acknowledges the lack of and need for information and data on environmental injustices, especially in the case of communities that are exposed to multiple pollution sources. Section 7 of the bill requires considering cumulative impacts and the violation of community health standards when granting permits for development. Basically, if a developer wants to build in a neighborhood that already suffers the effects of environmental pollution, they would have to adhere to very strict building and operating guidelines in order to obtain a permit. This legislation seeks to implement on a national scale what CUGU accomplishes in Los Angeles.
The effort to hold developers, businesses, and cities accountable for pollution and air quality creates much-needed obstacles to development in neighborhoods suffering from cumulative impacts. While these safeguards are being put in place for the betterment of public health, it is understandably a shift from the norm: a norm which holds the importance of the economy above human lives. The Trump administration sees this as reason enough to eliminate cumulative impacts from permitting processes, whereas in the House and on the local scale with laws like CUGU these obstacles are a necessary part of addressing environmental racism. While the Trump administration is working to uphold a history of systemic injustice, it is important that the public pays attention to cumulative impacts and works to implement local, state, and federal-level policies to address cumulative impacts and improve the health of communities disproportionately affected by toxic pollution.