In February of this year, just before the COVID-19 pandemic shut things down for a spell, Chairman Grijalva and Representative McEachin introduced their Environmental Justice for All Act at a press conference on Capitol Hill. They’d spent the previous year gathering feedback on a draft of the bill. Using an online platform called POPVOX, they had welcomed comments, criticisms, and even line-by-line edits from EJ advocates on front lines all around the country. They got some 350 substantive comments, according to a staffer with the House Natural Resources Committee. And nearly every single one of those was incorporated into the bill to make it stronger.
Some of the bill’s chief features include:
• Amending the Civil Rights Act to allow private citizens and organizations that experience discrimination (based on race or national origin) to seek legal remedies when a program, policy, or practice causes a disparate impact;
• Providing $75 million annually for research and program development grants to reduce health disparities and improve public health in disadvantaged communities;
• Levying new fees on oil, gas, and coal companies to create a Federal Energy Transition Economic Development Assistance Fund, which would support workers and communities transitioning away from greenhouse gas-dependent jobs; and
• Requiring federal agencies to consider health effects that might accumulate over time when making permitting decisions under the federal Clean Air and Clean Water acts.
The Congressmen’s plan was to tour the country with this legislation, hosting seminars over the late summer and early fall in some of the areas hardest hit by environmental injustice, and featuring some of the advocates doing important work in each of those locales. Their itinerary included Michigan, Louisiana, Houston, New Mexico and Los Angeles.
But when COVID-19 made traveling inadvisable, they switched to a schedule of virtual conferences instead. The first online event focused on the concerns of Michigan environmental activists. It included powerful testimony from Landrum, former Detroit Health Department head Abdul El-Sayed, Flint Rising director Nayyirah Shariff, and Sierra Club organizer Justin Onwen.
The next two sessions were scheduled for Louisiana and Houston, but Ma Nature and Hurricane Laura had other plans. Those meetings had to be canceled and will be rescheduled for later this fall. Sessions in New Mexico and Los Angeles are happening early in September, just as this article goes to press.
Given the current political make-up of the Senate, and the President who now occupies the Oval Office, Grijalva and McEachin harbor no illusions that their bill can be passed this year. However, just before she was picked by Joe Biden to become his running mate, Senator Kamala Harris signed on to become one of the bill’s sponsors in the Senate. And Grijalva and McEachin hope that with that important election coming up in November, the political landscape next year may be more conducive.
“It’s all about the vote at this point,” McEachin said. “We have got to make sure that we vote in a green legislature. If the person that you’re talking to doesn’t understand that environment is THE most important issue of the 21st century and doesn’t understand that EJ has to be a centerpiece of that effort, then they’re really not fit to represent you. “
He continued in an optimistic vein. “I do know this… if we use this time between now and January to educate our countrymen about the importance of environmental justice, about how we got here, and where we need to go, we will be in fine shape in January to get this bill signed by President Biden in the first 100 days.
“As the Scriptures say, do not grow weary in well-doing.”
Barbara Lloyd McMichael is a freelance writer living in the Pacific Northwest.