An Act To Establish an Environmental Justice Designation Program

The purpose of this bill is to establish a program that will identify and designate as Areas of Environmental Justice Concern, those communities where a concentration of uses or sitings degrade the environment and impact public health. The bill is patterned after similar legislation passed in 1975 that enabled areas with a concentration of outstanding natural resources to receive designation as Areas of Critical Environmental Concern. This legislation views the human population as the "critical resource" that needs to be protected.

Low income communities and communities of color are historically the hardest hit by environmental and related public health problems. Many of these problems are the result of the siting of a disproportionate number of unwanted activities such as bus depots, landfills, and sewage treatment plants in low-income neighborhoods. Yet, these neighborhoods have had the fewest resources to confront or prevent these threats. For example, the Dudley Street neighborhood in Roxbury is home to eight solid waste and related facilities.

The state’s Areas of Critical Environmental Concern (ACEC) program helps protect fragile natural resource areas. It is overdue, however, for this same concept to be applied to urban areas where the critical concern arises out of a legacy of environmental insult and neglect. Environmentalists are advocating for the state to create a new designation –Areas of Critical Environmental Justice Concern (ACEJC) to protect overburdened areas from further degradation. The Act simply amends the duties and responsibilities of the Executive Office of Environmental Affairs (Chapter 21A, Section 2) and calls for development of statewide policies regarding the protection and use of areas of critical environmental justice concern to the commonwealth.

Looking at the ACEC program as a framework, a parallel ACEJC program could use or adapt some of the same guiding principles and criteria such as:

concentration of significant natural resources; concentration of undesirable uses or sitings

area contains certain specified features ;area contains certain specified uses/impacts

future development of the area may threaten public health, safety or welfare

some uses prohibited within designated area

more stringent review of proposed projects

designation directs state environmental agencies to take actions to preserve, restore and enhance the resources

EXAMPLES OF SEVERELY IMPACTED COMMUNITIES

Roxbury: Roxbury residents are exposed to a number of different environmental hazards that have resulted in an asthma hospitalization rate five times the state average. These include the Dudley Square bus terminal and the Bartlett bus depot where 100-200 MBTA buses return every evening and leave from every morning. To make matters worse, the Boston Water and Sewer Commission will be siting a new vehicle depot in the neighborhood. In addition, Roxbury is home to the badly contaminated Modern Electroplating brownfield site, half a dozen solid waste facilities including trash transfer and recycling stations and numerous small businesses whose operations threaten public health, such as nail salons and auto body repair shops.

Lawrence: Lawrence’s asthma hospitalization rate also is higher than the state average and the city has a very significant lead poisoning problem. The community hosts the BFI medical waste incinerator, the largest such incinerator in New England; Crown Cork and Seal, one of the largest toxics releasers in the state according to EPA; and until recently, the Ogden Martin trash incinerator. While the Lawrence incinerator closed last year, two other incinerators are close by: the Ogden Martin facility in Haverhill and the Wheelabrator incinerator in North Andover.

New Bedford: Decades of impact have resulted in New Bedford Harbor being designated a Superfund site due to PCB contamination. Years of harbor dumping by textile, copper and metal manufacturing firms have left an indelible mark on the region. New Bedford also falls in the top ten communities statewide in terms of the number of brownfield sites found there, with 96 known sites. More than 300,000 pounds of recognized carcinogens are released into the air annually by the top five polluting firms.

Pittsfield: Pittsfield, surrounding communities, and the Housatonic River that flows through the area have been seriously threatened by the PCBs released by the GE Plant located there. An EPA Human Health Risk Evaluation found that: