At the federal level, billions of dollars have been budgeted to fight climate change in the Infrastructure Act, the Inflation Reduction Act, and others with funding from the Departments of the Environment, Energy, and Labor among others. With billions of dollars available, why isn’t the money making it to environmental justice communities such as Grove Hall in Boston?
One reason is a large portion of the state (53%) has been designated an environmental justice community or designated as EJ Group Blocks. It is easy for the funds to flow to municipalities with more resources and capacity. Towns with more resources can get even more resources and those without, go without. The second is that the current Massachusetts definition of an Environmental Justice (EJ) Community has nothing to do with the level of environmental damage or harm that has been inflicted upon certain communities. That’s right, the definition of an environmental justice community has nothing to do environmental harm in a community. Under the current system, Nantucket is equal to Grove Hall when it comes to receiving Environmental Justice money.
Greg King, Managing Director of TSK Energy Solutions LLC, ND and three graduate students, Hiovanni Gonzalez, Claren Copp-LaRocque, and Nicholas Pietrinferno, from the Northeastern University’s School of Public Policy and Urban Affairs, developed the Environmental Justice Impact Scoring system to help prioritize environmental projects in the Commonwealth. This scoring system is derived from Howard Buffett’s Impact Rate of Return methodology.
The team ranked Massachusetts EJ Communities using public data sets as input variables to the IRR calculator. The variables are grouped by public health, demographics, and greenhouse gas emissions. The ten data sources are:
1. Gas Leaks of Significant Environmental Impact
2. Gas Leak Age
3. Average Annual On-Road CO2 Emissions
4. Pollution Proximity Index:
5. Asthma Rates
6. Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease Rates
7. Life Expectancy
8. Environmental Justice Criteria
9. Energy Burden
10. Population
The purpose is not to relitigate the State’s definition of environmental justice communities. The idea is to provide policymakers and program designers with a tool that helps prioritize which communities should receive funding and communities with a methodology to better understand the level of environmental damage that exists in their community. The model could be applied to individual climate mitigation or adaptation projects to enable communities to decide which project investments will have the biggest impact.
What we are seeing is too much money going toward organizations doing planning work, “understanding the needs of the community” and too few dollars getting to the people or neighborhoods that need help decarbonizing their homes or otherwise making their communities cleaner and greener, to cross the carbon divide.
The hope is to help pass the Commonwealth Green Zone Act, Bill HD.4161, and Bill SD.2493 a bill introduced by Rep. Chris Worrell and Senator Liz Miranda and edit the definition of a Green Zone to include environmental harm.
The Green Zone legislation is an attempt to have a new designation in Massachusetts that would prioritize EJ communities that have significant environmental conditions. The hope is that EJ communities that are designated as Green Zone will receive priority when it comes to government grants, philanthropy, or social impact investors.
Ed Gaskin is Executive Director of Greater Grove Hall Main Streets and founder of Sunday Celebrations.