Climate Change Hits Rural Communities

It’s no surprise that responding to climate change will require a hard shift away from fossil-fuel dependency. But that shift may have an acute impact on rural communities. Many of these locales face high levels of financial distress and low education rates. That makes it more challenging to grow new economic sectors like IT, healthcare, or finance. Further, many rural communities depend on fossil-fuel revenue to support essential public services, including education. An abrupt shakeup could have an adverse impact.

With the deeper penetration of oil-and-gas operations into rural areas, we are seeing a significant increase in public health concerns. Though air quality in urban areas has steadily improved since 1970, numerous studies report higher concentrations of fine particulates, nitrous oxide, and volatile organic compounds within half a mile of active oil-and-gas wells, and higher ozone concentrations more than a mile away. Many rural areas now have higher rates of asthma and heart disease and higher risks of cancer and pre-term birth.

To compound these impacts, air monitoring in rural communities is significantly lacking. Generally, monitors target urban environments and are placed according to population density and ambient pollution levels. Even monitoring networks that are focused on oil-and-gas emissions fail to target individual well pads (where health impacts are closely linked).

For example, Weld County, Colorado—the most productive oil-and-gas county in the state and part of the newly expanded Denver/Front Range ozone nonattainment area—operates one ozone monitor despite having over 10,000 active wells (and over 44,000 drilled ones). In short, the rural communities that could benefit meaningfully from oil-and-gas pollutant monitoring—those that live near and among the wells—are underserved by the monitoring networks designed around impacts to urban areas.

Addressing oil-and-gas pollution in rural communities, consequently, raises distinctive issues. Deciding whether and where to place monitors (not to mention what kind of monitoring) and what to do about flaring of excess gas implicates challenging technical, scientific, and economic considerations that even the highly educated may not adequately comprehend. Further, documents supporting these kinds of decisions are only available online. Thus, access to reliable internet provides the only real way to engage with decisionmakers. Public hearings are often not required or are held in distant cities.

Most federal and state agencies recognize that environmental justice policies ought to ensure the fair treatment and meaningful involvement of all people in the development, implementation, and enforcement of environmental laws. Fair treatment means that no community should bear a disproportionate share of adverse environmental consequences. Meaningful involvement requires not only access to environmental decisionmakers, but an ability to effectively influence agency choices.

In the case of rural communities, it is essential for agencies to facilitate local participation, because the experience may shed light on the unique challenges those communities face. In some cases, the views of environmental advocates or industry officials do not adequately represent the views of the impacted community. Or members of the community may have divergent perspectives.

Earlier and more frequent engagement is one step toward more robust local participation. But so is providing those communities with the technical expertise needed to meaningfully engage in environmental decisions. Some states offer funding for this kind of support—technical assistance grants may be distributed to frontline communities in California and Colorado. Of course, the grant programs must be simple enough to ensure broad accessibility and cannot operate as just another hurdle.

Although meaningful involvement is just one part of environmental justice, it is a critical piece and one that rural communities may benefit from in unique ways.