Environmental Justice

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As we have explained, environmental justice will be a central focus of the Biden-Harris administration. A recent Executive Order declares federal agencies “shall make achieving environmental justice part of their missions by developing programs, policies, and activities to address the disproportionately high and adverse human health, environmental, climate-related and other cumulative impacts on disadvantaged communities, as well as the accompanying economic challenges of such impacts.” Both big and small, changes are coming at the federal level on permitting, rulemaking, enforcement, and other actions that will have a practical impact on corporations and communities.…
Continue Reading California Launches Updated Environmental Justice Screening Tool

As the Biden Administration settles in and begins to appoint its designees to key executive and administrative agencies, a series of policy objectives are coming into focus.  Chief among them is expanded attention and regulation in the ESG space regarding environmental, social and governance issues at American businesses. In this post, we survey the expected direction of these initiatives at, for example, the SEC, Department of Labor, and EPA.
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Continue Reading A Preview of ESG Regulation under the Biden Administration

One of the most frequent terms heard in conjunction with President-Elect Biden’s energy and environmental agenda is “environmental justice,” which is often described as an overarching objective as well as a key component of the incoming administration’s climate agenda.  This post looks at how the Biden Administration may translate environmental justice principles into concrete executive actions, and how project proponents can prepare for increased focus on environmental justice in their permitting.
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Continue Reading Preparing for Increased Focus on Environmental Justice Issues in a Biden Administration

In this article, the authors discuss the National Environmental Policy Act (“NEPA”) and environmental justice review requirements for federal agency actions, recent challenges and court decisions showcasing the increased scrutiny and focus on environmental justice reviews for project permitting, recent NEPA regulation and other environmental justice developments, and what the recent cases and other recent regulatory and political developments may mean for project permitting and environmental justice.

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Continue Reading Preparing for Increased Focus on Environmental Justice in Project Permitting

AB 617 requires the California Air Resources Board to develop new regulations for criteria pollutant and toxics emissions reporting. The new regulation, titled “Regulation for the Reporting of Criteria Air Pollutants and Toxic Air Contaminants” is not yet finalized. The current draft will require many new stationary sources, throughout California, to report emissions.…
Continue Reading California’s New Criteria Pollutant and Toxics Emissions Reporting Regulation

The implementation of California’s ambitious Assembly Bill 617 (AB 617) is well under way, but it is still very uncertain whether it can or will achieve its intended outcome. Despite the long process to select the initial list of communities to be included in the in the first year of CARB’s Community Air Protection Program (CAPP) (CARB’s AB 617 implementation program), the hard work to ensure AB 617 is a success remains—namely the development and implementation of the emissions monitoring/reduction plans in the selected disadvantaged communities. In the end, the biggest impediment to AB 617’s successful implementation might be the law’s own requirements, specifically its accelerated implementation schedule, which may not provide California’s air quality management districts (air districts) with enough time to achieve the law’s goals.…
Continue Reading California’s AB 617: Inadequate Time?

When California Assembly Bill 617 (AB 617) was signed into law, California ambitiously announced a new “community focused” strategy to improve air quality in California. AB 617’s goal is to improve air quality in environmental justice communities through local, community specific strategies focused on the individual needs and issues particular to each community. The development and implementation of this “community focused” strategy is largely the responsibility of California’s local air quality management districts (AQMDs) because AB 617 places new, explicit responsibilities on AQMDs so that they take the lead in improving the air quality in their environmental justice communities. …
Continue Reading California’s AB 617 — “Community Focused”