Trump rollback on climate justice opens pockets of resistance

Now plans are afoot for yet another.

This one will house hundreds of school buses - and it is one lot way too many for 62-year-old Sharon Edwards, who monitors local air quality to alert her neighbors about the health risks.

"It lets them know this is what we're inhaling, and probably what's hurting your health and your children's health, and your unborn children," she told the Thomson Reuters Foundation outside her two-storey brick home.

Edwards is part of a growing "environmental justice" movement, agitating for poor areas and communities of color that tend to suffer disproportionately from pollution, be it living near dirty highways or in areas open to floods and extreme heat.

The movement was embraced under President Joe Biden, who mandated that 40% of federal clean-energy and climate-investment benefits go to marginalized communities.

That money helped boost energy efficiency in poor homes, replace harmful lead drinking water pipes or, as in Brentwood, address industrial pollution impacting community health.

But his successor Donald Trump has killed off these efforts, putting a brake on environmental justice policies as part of his broader White House drive to root out "diversity, equity and inclusion" initiatives.

The fallout will hit Brentwood.

Just 5 miles (8km) north of the White House, the community is part of an area that is home to half the city's industrial land, according to Empower DC, a nonprofit, along with some of the city's poorer neighborhoods.

Local campaigns won tangible change during the Biden years, according to Empower DC community organizer Anthony David.

An abandoned school became a community center, due to open this year, while the city began investigating a chemical facility that had drawn heavy local protests.

Now, Trump's volte face has left a question mark over such initiatives, in particular the future of the air monitoring it helped locals conduct these past two years.

“We were planning on doing another round, but we won’t be able to – at least not in that specific way,” David said.

“Of course we’re still committed to that work, but we have to figure out how it fits into our other campaigns.”

'WE’VE BEEN THROUGH THIS’

In April, Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator Lee Zeldin canceled more than $6 billion in grants related to environmental justice – including air quality monitoring in dozens of cities – saying they had limited effect.

The EPA did not respond to a query on whether the affected grants would shift into other programs. Draft budget bills under debate in Congress likewise strip out funding for environmental justice, according to watchdog group Earthjustice.

While Trump's prohibition on this federal funding and its related data gathering remain the subject of lawsuits, advocates of environmental justice say their story is far from over.

“There are conversations going on right now among community organizers and community-based organizations on how we will navigate this,” said South Carolina pastor Leo Woodberry, who has spearheaded environmental justice work for decades.

"Many African Americans, when we speak, we say we've been through this kind of situation before, and we’ve been able to do amazing work.”

His group has had two federal grants frozen - hindering community plans for renewable energy and energy efficiency upgrades - and had to eliminate two rural outreach positions.

For now, Woodberry has few ways to offset the cuts beyond a commitment to “just work a lot more on a voluntary basis.”

TO THE STATES

The fight for environmental justice stretches back decades, but the focus moved to the core of Biden's federal policymaking.

Ryan Hathaway, who was director for environmental justice at his White House Council on Environmental Quality, said federal investments over the past four years had surpassed their target, with upwards of 70% going to disadvantaged communities.

But he counters criticism about what impact the funding has thus far delivered, saying work has only just got going.

Local government, nonprofits, philanthropists and more are also in place now, he said, eager to keep up the good work.

“The momentum of this work has just changed locations,” he said.

Many states have set up environmental justice infrastructure in recent years, said Sacoby Wilson, a public health professor at the University of Maryland.

He pointed to mapping tools in North Carolina tracking impacts in poor communities, as well as official environmental justice commissions or offices in Maryland and Pennsylvania.

In addition, laws covering "cumulative impacts" in California, New Jersey and elsewhere let regulators assess and tally the historical damage of environmental pollution in poor communities rather than just investigate individual pollutants.

"The fact that we've gone from boom to bust doesn't mean the movement will be a bust,” Wilson said. “We can really still do those same things, but you have to move it to the state level.”

Donors such as Nathan Cummings Foundation will keep funding environmental justice, while nonprofits such as the National Equity Atlas are starting to backfill some of the Trump hole on data collection.

In California and New Jersey, the state governments remain committed.

“We have long recognized that advancing environmental justice — and our policies and priorities overall — requires meaningful collaboration with communities,” said Yana Garcia, California secretary for environmental protection, by email.

Historically, the federal EPA has “shared this sensibility”, she said. “We’re hopeful that they return.”