Environmental justice has received heightened political attention in recent years. This renewed focus owes in part to a pandemic that laid bare the racial fissures still plaguing American society, and in part to decades of community organizing. On a federal level, President Biden has highlighted EJ as a key part of his agenda, and institutions nationwide have pushed forward to consider justice and equity in their cultures and practices.

Governments at all levels are reexamining how to level the distribution of environmental benefits and burdens. Meanwhile, companies are increasingly focused on ways to improve their relationships with the communities in which they operate, including environmental justice neighborhoods. Changing corporate strategies may help shift the power dynamics that have contributed to the legacy of environmental injustices.

Despite a growing number of commitments from organizations to prioritize environmental and racial justice, many questions remain on how their words will be put in action. How can corporations, governments, activists, and communities work together to achieve EJ goals? And in doing so, how can outsiders center — and not drown out — community voices?

Every October, ELI holds its principal policy event of the year. In 2021, the Corporate and Policy Forum brought together a handful of experts from a variety of sectors, including ELI Environmental Justice Staff Attorney Arielle King, who moderated the discussion.

The Corporate and Policy Forum

Arielle King, Environmental Justice Staff Attorney, ELI: This October, we honor the 30th anniversary of the first National People of Color Environmental Leadership Summit. Environmental justice leaders from across the nation came to Washington, D.C., to discuss ways to advance environmental justice, eliminate the harmful impacts of environmental racism, and reimagine how we define the environment to include where we live, work, and play.

Since then, the EJ movement has gained tremendous momentum over the last few years. This has been solidified by President Biden and his administration’s commitments to prioritize equity, justice, and community engagement through executive orders and the creation of the White House Environmental Justice Advisory Council.

Companies have a continually growing role in environmental management and sustainability. As we strive to maintain a livable planet, environmental justice must be included in this equation. Join me as we welcome a set of experts representing various institutions who will share the ways that their particular work is advancing environmental justice.

Marco Merrick, Acting Chief of Equity and Environmental Justice, Department of Public Works, Baltimore City: The Office of Equity and Environmental Justice at the Department of Public Works was established to promote equal opportunity within the agency, and reduce disparities and burdens that create barriers to the work that we do internally and for the citizens of Baltimore.

We provide guidance, education, and technical assistance to enable sustainable and equitable outcomes in the services that we provide and within the community that we serve. We work with community partners and stakeholders to promote equity and inclusion within the city government, producing measurable improvement and disparity reduction.

Supporting human rights and opportunities for all — that’s a whole lot of language. For me, it is important that we tangibilitate what we do. That’s a word that I borrowed from one of my mentors. It means taking action on these buzz phrases that are often just boxes to check. They make us look good on paper, but what does it mean to truly lean into the work?

The Department of Public Works uses a four-prong approach: equity, educate, eradicate, and enforce.

To understand environmental justice, we need to first establish the distinction between equality and equity. Equality, from our agency’s standpoint, provides the same level of opportunity and assistance in all segments of the society regardless of demographics.

Equity, however, provides different levels of support and assistance based on the specific needs and circumstances of a community. Equality enables all of our customers to receive a water bill that’s based on fees and consumption. Everybody gets a bill — that’s equality. Achieving equity would mean we ensure that everyone can afford their water bill — receiving water that is affordable to all.

In terms of education, we are educating ourselves and our customers, not just about our services but also about the environment and the factors that affect it. These include systemic discrimination and racism, which not only affect the quality of air and water but also our customers’ emotional and psychological well-being.

Eradication is more than just getting rid of the burdens and barriers that plague certain marginalized communities, particularly in urban centers like Baltimore. Eradication also means eliminating the mindset and ways of thinking and practices that have enabled these barriers, and have informed where certain services are placed or not placed based on the socioeconomic makeup of that particular community.

The last “E,” enforcement, is not necessarily something that is regulatory. Enforcement can also mean rewarding or reinforcing a practice, an idea, a system, or a process. Our director, Dr. Jason Mitchell, who is fairly new to us in Baltimore, having come from Oakland, California, brings to our attention that we have wonderful technologies and incredible systems. Sometimes it’s not the system that holds us back from moving toward equity and environmental justice — it’s our processes. So we are also taking a close and intentional look at our processes and how we can enable them to advance our agenda around equity and environmental justice.

Dana Johnson, Director of the Federal Policy Office, WE ACT for Environmental Justice: WE ACT for Environmental Justice was founded more than 30 years ago in response to an act of overt racism impacting residents living in West Harlem, New York City, with the siting of a sewage treatment plant in the community. Since then we’ve grown into an organization that has offices in New York and Washington, D.C., where I’m based.

We are one of the first people of color-led environmental justice organizations in New York state, and the only grassroots EJ organization with a permanent presence in Washington, D.C. WE ACT convenes the Environmental Justice Leadership Forum — an alliance of more than 50 EJ organizations representing 22 states — which is managed in our D.C. office. In many ways, WE ACT represents the interests of those organizations at the federal level when it comes to environmental, economic, and energy justice policies and practices.

I thought about several questions while preparing for this conversation: What is the relationship between environmental, social, and governance responsibilities and communities? And how can we operationalize equity at the local, state, and federal levels of government?

First, we are aware of the false solutions embedded in the climate policies and investments of the bipartisan infrastructure package and Build Back Better framework. Second, we see greenwashing happening in the corporate space, as companies position themselves as having products, services, and operations that are environmentally sound and center environmental justice.

Our goals are to ensure that this once-in-a-lifetime moment of historic investments addresses legacy harms and facilitates a just and equitable transition to a clean energy economy.

Jason Williams, Vice President, Environmental, Dominion Energy: As a utility, our responsibility is to provide safe, reliable, and affordable energy to all customers. We’ve recently instituted a formal environmental justice policy that applies to our entire company.

All projects now consider not only financial and customer needs, but also environmental justice and the screening associated with it. We start off by identifying any affected communities. But the important step is what you do from there. We’re focusing our efforts on partnering with teams across our whole company, including our external affairs team, and reaching out to communities. Our main focus is having meaningful conversations. If you don’t have conversations, you can’t address concerns. And you can’t reach out to individuals if you’re not looking in the right places.

We needed help in that area, so we’ve also established expanding councils in our three major states. These are councils made up of individuals that represent different EJ communities and minority groups that speak with us on our projects. We can go to them and talk through an upcoming project and get their input on potential concerns. Or they might suggest certain individuals or organizations with strong ties to the community to make sure you’re talking to the right people.

I’ll speak about a few different examples. We had a transmission project — those are the larger power lines, for those not used to the industry jargon — where we found out that there was a small Vietnamese community we hadn’t engaged with. Many of the folks in the community didn’t speak English, so although we sent out mailers and did other things, nobody paid attention because the outreach wasn’t in an appropriate medium.

So instead, we targeted communications and flyers in their language and actually engaged a couple of businesses and organizations in that area to get the word out and have meaningful conversation. I don’t think that would have happened just a few years ago. It would not have been on our radar to make sure that we reached out to this group.

I love Marco’s perspective on equity. It’s something we’ve focused on here at Dominion. We have a lot of programs that help people with bills and provide access to benefits, and we’re also launching programs for low-income communities to get solar. Because we’re also closing down coal stations and older power stations, we’re now trying to work through where to find employment for these folks in the new clean energy economy, how we can help the communities where we may have been the main employer, and how we can help these people transition.

Fred Tutman, Riverkeeper & CEO, Patuxent Riverkeeper. Tutman is the only African American riverkeeper in the country: When we talk about the struggle for environmental justice, different groups are not always talking about the same thing. For community organizers, the battle for environmental justice is a battle for self-determination for communities that have been previously denied it.

It’s not a cue for Big Greens and others to redouble their efforts to get funded to do work in BIPOC communities. The idea is to help these communities own their own battles, and to go forward with a stronger connection to the heart and the source of the power that controls their environmental future.

Many U.S. conservation organizations are largely funded by and dependent on appeasing wealth. They don’t see comparable wealth in communities of color. For many organizations, their commitment to shifting the organization toward environmental justice is entirely provisional. These organizations have been, I think, nationally embarrassed by their tone deafness in the aftermath of the George Floyd murder.

Yet these organizations that are historically dependent on getting affluent white people to give them money don’t necessarily want to focus on social justice, human rights, and other issues that don’t relate to the primary concerns of their members and their donors. It’s an alternate reality. These social justice issues are concerns that are less real and less appealing to their backers, and to the people already in their clubs.

Not too long ago, I asked the chairman of the board of a large national environmental group what his vision was for diversity. He said, “I don’t know, Fred, but I know the funders like it.” I understand that historically, these organizations have invested themselves in feel-good campaigns. Yes, they do solid policy work in some instances. But they are not so interested in pursuing controversial social justice issues.

In the Chesapeake Bay area, these organizations focus mostly on saving crabs and oysters. There is really no discussion whatsoever around protecting communities and saving the heritage or the history in a particular place. Those ideas, to the extent they deviate and move their attention away from appeasing white donors, tend to scare off the money. In reality, the bay communities are in a struggle everyday under the jackboot of accumulated burdens.

There are folks who have a sense of career entitlement to speak for these issues and get funded to work on them. There is a huge and growing complex of white-obsessed groups that seek to impose their environmental vision on communities that are actually connected to the things they feel entitled to work on.

These organizations are desperate for people of color to participate, not necessarily because it’s the right thing to do but because it makes their voices appear more legitimate and representative. In this renaissance of consciousness about environmental justice, the movement is actually unleashing new voices to speak about the environment. It throws into relief the reality that these “leading” organizations don’t necessarily speak for everybody.

In fact, their top-down structure actually makes it impossible to connect to BIPOC communities such that they could articulate the actual concerns of those people and places. So the natural result of people of color expressing our ideas about the environment actually competes with the tacit idea that these groups have domain over the environment everywhere they go, and have the ability to essentially build their own environmental brand wherever they can.

Not long ago I went to a meeting of environmentalists with the Maryland attorney general to discuss environmental issues. At the outset of the meeting, a person stood up and said, “Sir, we’re ready to start the meeting because all the leading environmentalists in the state are present.” I looked around the room and saw no other people of color. Consider the arrogance of the presumption that, in order to be a leading environmentalist, you need to be connected and invited. It’s normal for the leading environmentalists to usually be the insiders.

People of color are rarely insiders even if we wanted to be. I was actually offended. I didn’t want to be an insider. I didn’t think that was a credential to make decisions on behalf of people who weren’t present, weren’t invited, and weren’t participating in the meeting.

The merging of people’s career aspirations with the justice aspirations of local communities is a problem and a conflict of interest sometimes. It repositions the local burdens away from these troublesome problems that have to be resolved locally by the community, and instead refocuses them on issues that are trite and easily funded — like storm water and climate change. Those aren’t really expressed problems; they’re big picture issues.

Most of these groups argue that they choose to follow the best science. However, that science often creates a very narrow frame that leaves little room for local knowledge, wisdom, tradition, culture, or anything else. In effect, they use the science not to raise understanding, but rather as a basis to strip and plunder community-based problems into issues that environmental professionals can get funded to work on. They generally don’t share those resources with the local community. These groups consequently have a catastrophic impact on the community’s voice.

Battles for environmental justice are battles to reframe and decolonize. To attack and expunge voices drawn from capitalism, imperialism, colonialism, and supremacist points of view. If we can’t do that, people of color will continue to boycott these movements. We will not participate in movements where we are an afterthought, an asterisk, or a footnote. That’s an important framework to use if you want to look at environmental justice in its totality.

Stacey Sublett Halliday, Principal, Beveridge & Diamond. Halliday is the co-leader of the environmental justice practice group at Beveridge and Diamond: Our environmental justice practice group has been growing pretty rapidly, in part because of our clients’ growing interest in environmental justice. This is sparked by a rise in EJ laws, and what we’re seeing on the federal level with significant attention from the Biden administration in prioritizing environmental justice.

What I’ve generally been doing with companies — from utilities to the tech sectors to retail — is helping them first understand key principles of environmental justice. This is a new concept for a lot of companies. We work with the well-intentioned staff in those organizations to define their terms, to develop policies and practices, and think about how to incorporate a lens of environmental justice into what they do.

There’s a new focus on environmental justice now. We’re going to see redrafting of Executive Order 12898, which is the White House directive for federal agencies to prioritize environmental justice in their operations. This will likely provide some direction for companies trying to operationalize terms like cumulative effects, disproportionate impacts, and EJ communities.

The reissuance of NEPA regulations that are going to incorporate EJ elements in large federal projects may also be accompanied by new mapping tools, which could be used for enforcement, grant distribution, and so on.

We’re also seeing evolving state laws like New Jersey’s S232, a law that’s going to require certain facilities in certain overburdened communities to conduct an EJ analysis for permitting. That’s going to be a big laboratory for environmental justice regulation.

I also want to highlight that EJ in the corporate space is not limited to energy companies. Regulations requiring warehouses to reduce emissions from heavy-duty freight and high-emitting vehicles will affect industries with significant overseas supply chains. That’s going to impact their distribution networks, and these effects may ultimately impact environmental justice communities.

If you are in retail and your company has large manufacturing productions, learning about the communities affected by your operations and distribution is one way to consider your environmental justice impacts. Companies seeking to recycle and embrace more circular economy strategies will have to think about the EJ implications of recycling facilities, which themselves have historically been significant focal points for environmental justice reform.

I’ll close out with a couple of best practices that we share with our clients. The first is, “Know thyself.” This means doing a self-assessment, understanding the communities who are your neighbors and speaking with those neighbors, and getting an understanding of EJ impacts by using available tools. We usually advise using EPA’s EJSCREEN as a starting point, but then go out and get to know those communities on the ground. It’s important to listen and learn from the communities and prioritize their voices.

EJ is a lens across all of your operations. It should not be siloed in one office. It involves thinking about your disclosures, your ESG program, your operations, your project teams, and your training, and using EJ as a lens across the board.

Arielle King: At this point, I want to give an opportunity for the panelists to share reflections about what they’ve heard from other panelists.

Fred Tutman: For the most part, I don’t really care if organizations and institutions diversify or not. They need to just come clean. We don’t want to waste our time trying to help them diversify and become inclusive, and then settle for something that pretty much preserves the existing status quo, but sprinkles in a few people of color as vice president or on the board or something like that to create the illusion that they speak for a much broader constituency.

They have to rightsize these voices or they’re not legitimate voices. That’s the struggle that these groups are trying to address — how they can stay the same yet still become diverse. It’s a terrible box they put themselves in.

At the same time, I really do support and believe in some of these organizations that are actually having that inward-looking process. Historically, it’s been an outward-looking process, trying to get Black people to act more like white people or something along those lines. That’s a dead end. I’m on board with helping anybody accomplish looking inward who’s sincere.

With the others, that’s fine. I still like you, but we understand that you only speak for whom you speak for. You’re not an everyman kind of organization. That has to be made clear.

Arielle King: For those panelists that identify as Black and/or people of color, do you have any advice on how to navigate white-dominated spaces in the environmental field?

Dana Johnson: This week, Reverend Michael Malcolm of Alabama Interfaith Power and Light pointed out the very thing that Mr. Tutman spoke about earlier, which is that we get to decide what environmental justice looks like in our communities. We get to decide what a just transition looks like. We get to decide what investments in our communities look like. And we get to decide the indicators that are used to pursue investment decisions. Dominance doesn’t work in any kind of relationship. Whether we’re talking about being allies together in a movement or personal relationships, it just doesn’t work.

This is not a problem for us — as people of color, as African Americans, as Black folks working in this space — to solve. This is for other folks to acknowledge our humanity and adhere to the principle of environmental justice that states we speak for ourselves. This moment is about addressing environmental justice, and those who are not from a frontline community must take a step back. They should not lead this work, but they can provide support. This, quite frankly, is not a new concept. We have been talking about these same issues for decades.

People of color should continue to move forward, but we need our national and white advocates in this space to defer.

Fred Tutman: We’re very intentional about not partnering with organizations and institutions that don’t share our values in this respect. You know, we check Black Twitter and other places. Some organizations have a reputation for being really bad with Black communities. There are a bunch of them out there. I’m not naming names today.

I will say that this has been an odyssey for us. We weren’t always this way at Patuxent Riverkeeper. We began to listen to what our Indigenous and people of color members were saying about what was going on within the organization, and we drew a line in the sand. I published an article titled “Why Black Is Not the New Green.” It ended up getting syndicated around the country, and I had two board members quit literally overnight.

At the other end of the spectrum, we’re also trying very hard to not be a Black insider’s club. We’re trying to create a club that is truly equitable. That takes a lot of intentionality. It’s not a Coca-Cola commercial where everyone’s holding hands. You really have to work at this because there are divisions. There are differences in what people see and what they’ve experienced. We’re trying to reconcile those.

I run an organization exactly like the kind I’d want to join. It’s a day-to-day struggle to try and maintain that perspective, because there are certainly people involved with Patuxent Riverkeeper who would be perfectly happy if we were a Black or brown insider’s club. And that’s not what we’re trying to do at all. We’re going to save this planet together or not at all — it’s that simple.

White people are not going to save this planet single-handedly while Black folks look on, applaud, and send money. We have to build organizations that are equitable and have full participation, otherwise they’re not likely to achieve the aims they promise.

Arielle King: EPA has increased its activities related to environmental justice and its assessments on all of its programs. Does the panel have any feelings on how EPA has handled or has plans to handle assessing the impacts of fenceline communities and related reparations? Do you think they have provided companies or regulated entities with enough guidance on how to get involved or educate them at this point?

Fred Tutman: I’m impressed by some of the appointments. Some of the people appointed to new EPA roles are folks I know. It’s early in the game, but I’m encouraged.

Stacey Sublett Halliday: As a veteran of EPA’s Office of the General Counsel, I’m also feeling encouraged. They’re putting some real powerful folks in great positions. We have Professor Carlton Waterhouse, a longstanding EJ advocate, practitioner, and professor, now serving as deputy assistant administrator of the Office of Land and Emergency Management. Administrator Regan is experienced in environmental justice. On the White House level, we have Brenda Mallory. The White House Environmental Justice Advisory Council will hopefully play a significant role in the shaping of programs like the Justice 40 initiative.

With EPA’s limited resources, it will be tough to accomplish all the goals that the administration has put forward. But I think a lot will be achieved by using existing tools like the affirmative authorities and reading environmental justice into various statutes. Using enforcement measures in a serious way will be a key tool for the agency in furthering its EJ goals.

Dana Johnson: We are part of a coalition of environmental justice groups focused on freight-sector regulations and how to make them stronger. From a community engagement perspective, I think the EPA has been good. They hold regular meetings with environmental justice advocates and we have a regular drumbeat of engagement around transportation sector regulations.

Stacey Sublett Halliday: I think the 2022-2026 EPA Strategic Plan is also encouraging. It includes a specific goal for EJ now, and outlines measures for issues like PFAS.

Arielle King: What would you recommend to government agencies trying to reach EJ communities beyond their current efforts? This question comes from someone who works within the EPA who is trying to reach overburdened communities in a criminal enforcement context.

Dana Johnson: The first thing that comes to mind for me is: How many of us are interested in showing up in a government office or building? You have to think about if you’re providing a welcoming, open, accessible space. If not, then I think Jason’s point about going to where the people are is important.

One of the most beautiful examples I can think of is a program that the nonprofit Color of Change did around bail reform. The program kicked off on Valentine’s Day and centered on love — love of the community, love between families, and the impact of bail on separating families.

The program included components that empowered community members to host conversations and listening sessions in their spheres of influence. There were opportunities to engage with county and state officials around the topic.

There is a need to come out from behind the desk and go to the people in their environment. You also need to leverage people who are already embedded in the community, who know where people are and when they will be available, and you also need to leverage groups. For example, we have climate justice working group sessions. We have healthy home sessions. A group like WE ACT would be a great vehicle for reaching folks that one might want to speak with.

Arielle King: Science is often used as a justification in environmental decisionmaking. How can environmental scientists who rely heavily on top-down, data-heavy methods better center community knowledge and existing community networks in data collection? Have you seen any examples of that happening in your work so far?

Dana Johnson: Something we talk about at WE ACT is the role of community participatory research in better defining not only environmental justice issues but also solutions. It’s also important that this research or scientific data be co-owned — by the research entity and the community. I think that that can go a long way in benefiting both parties and furthering the conversation and the development of solutions.

Marco Merrick: The Department of Public Works has a number of initiatives that center community-driven data collection and education. One is an eco-ambassadors program in collaboration with local universities and schools. We partner with students who are interested in environmental studies and careers. They collaborate with city agencies and work with the community as an ambassador to help us gather data on the difference we are making around equity.

Metrics allow us to see if a difference is being made and assess if we are going backwards — which is not an option.

Another initiative is a citizen scientist program that we’re trying to establish through our Office of Communications and peace alliances. This program will enable communities and residents — ideally young people — to become informed and educated about environmental matters, and they’ll bring any environmental issues of concern to our attention.

Arielle King: From your experiences, how is industry responding to the overall EJ focus when it comes to facilities located in states that do not have strong EJ policies? Are corporate EJ policies going to be uniform, or will their scope and seriousness vary state by state depending on needs?

Stacey Sublett Halliday: The folks who are coming to us usually want to take this issue seriously — and not just in risk assessment. They want to proactively launch into developing, like Dominion Energy has, an outward-facing environmental justice policy that highlights EJ as a key component of corporate social responsibility throughout the company. Some of those companies are global, so they’re also taking an international approach.

There’s certainly a significant variety and diversity of approaches to EJ state by state. New Jersey is not Texas. But with a large company, you need to approach these things broadly. We see EJ as something incorporated into ESG and corporate social responsibility at large. Even utilities focused on regional areas still want to approach EJ with a comprehensive policy, rather than in a piecemeal fashion.

Arielle King: Along those same lines, with an increased prioritization of ESG reporting for corporations, what do you think must be added to ESG reporting to prioritize environmental justice?

Jason Williams: You’ve got to have some sort of reporting to measure what’s being done and see if you’re making improvements. But right now it’s hard to answer that question because the results are quite qualitative so far. In the community, you’re trying to make connections. That’s a hard thing to roll up into a report. Climate reporting, in contrast, is emissions. You can measure it. It gets a lot harder with environmental justice and equity because there are so many qualitative aspects.

In the future, there will be some expectation of reporting. The key will be finding the right metrics, as well as some consistency, because these programs vary a lot state to state and community to community. While some metrics might make sense for one area, they might not elsewhere. It may be tricky to compare performance depending on where companies operate.

Though there are challenges, it doesn’t mean it can’t be done. It’s just something we’ll need to think through collectively. In the meantime, we’re trying to be as transparent as we can and seeking feedback. At some point that will morph into more detailed reporting.

I will note that in at least one of the states we operate, our utility regulator has started asking what we did for environmental justice on certain projects. They’re asking, “What did you evaluate and what actions did you take?” So this demand for EJ reporting is already here. It’s only a matter of time before this demand arrives from the shareholder and investor sides. But some tough questions remain on how to do it and make it meaningful.

Arielle King: What is the role of litigation in advancing environmental justice? What do judges need to know in order to make better decisions in this area?

Fred Tutman: From an empowerment standpoint, I have always pursued the notion that having the capacity to litigate increases our ability to have effective conversations with people in power. If we’re coming in on our hands and knees saying pretty please with a cherry on top, it’s not nearly as persuasive.

That said, judges don’t love us much. They’re annoyed that we’re creating trouble for these wealthy people who create jobs in the community. Frankly, sometimes the only power we have in a judicial setting is the power of uncertainty in the outcome. That gives us a little bit of power.

Anybody who ever got sued by the Patuxent Riverkeeper saw it coming. We’re not ambushers. We’re pretty peaceful people. But we do strongly believe that communities need to understand that they have rights of redress, and they should pursue them.

Riverkeepers and waterkeepers are an international movement. Having been on the Board of Waterkeeper, the licensing body, I’m aware that there are places around the world where people proceed with litigation at their own risk, even if they have a legal framework to do so. It’s definitely a mixed bag.

I wish they taught more law in high school. I wish people left high school with more understanding about the Constitution and how to file a FOIA request and all kinds of legal topics that are really, really useful for citizens in a world where rights are being chipped away almost daily.

We’re on the playing field in a very different way because we have the capacity to litigate. But we try to avoid it if we can. It’s expensive. It’s grueling. It’s upsetting. I’ve been punched in the nose by housing developers. I’ve been SLAP-sued by the other side from time to time. That’s all very, very stressful, and my capacity for stress is changing after 18 years.

Stacey Sublett Halliday: I think we’re seeing a shift in the judiciary. We’ve seen different levels of willingness to consider environmental justice a bit outside the box. In Friends of Buckingham v. State Air Pollution Control Board, for example, a permit was tossed back for re-analysis of disproportionate health effects. I think that’s not the only time that’s happened, or will happen.

We’re seeing it happen more and more, not just in courts but in administrative complaints with EPA — certainly more recently with EPA taking a second look at pulling permits. We’re also seeing the Fair Housing Act and other civil rights statutes being used to pull back permits and projects to re-assess EJ impacts.

To Mr. Tutman’s point, litigation is something you hope to not have to use. But I certainly think the bench is changing a bit in how they’re considering environmental justice. TEF