Cooper calls for broad study, new mapping tool, for environmental justice
Gov. Roy Cooper on Tuesday ordered a study of the cumulative impact that pollution and other environmental issues have in poorer communities, and he ordered state agencies to begin the process of taking these issues into account as they make decisions.
Cooper also elevated an appointed board focused on environmental justice and equity, taking it from the state’s Department of Environmental Quality and turning it into a council that reports to the governor. He’ll appoint 10 members, and the other 10 will come from the cabinet agencies that report to the governor.
Cooper said he wants to create a framework to make progress on environmental justice, which acknowledges that garbage, toxins and facilities that produce pollution are more likely to end up in low-income areas. Through Executive Order 292, Cooper called for a new study of the cumulative effects these things — as well as flooding and climate change — have in poor and minority communities.
Within 120 days, each state cabinet agency must develop at least three draft environmental justice goals and measurable outcomes, the order states. Those will be published for public comment before they’re finalized.
For agencies to take these issues into account when they decide whether to issue permits might require the General Assembly to change state law, though. Cooper's order says agencies "shall incorporate" environmental justice considerations "to the extent permitted by law" and that they "should consider public health impacts in their permitting, policy actions, and agency programs to the furthest extent permissible by law."
Within 12 months, the order says, the state must create a new online “environmental justice hub” with a mapping tool to show the locations of facilities permitted by the state’s Department of Environmental Quality. The map is expected to also show schools, nursing homes and affordable housing communities. It would also include demographic data, health data, air quality data and flooding risks, the executive order states.
The hub will also have information about government grants available to address environmental justice issues. Many say the environmental justice movement started in North Carolina in 1982, when Warren County residents protested a hazardous waste landfill that was ultimately permitted and built.
The order also requires the the state Department of Commerce to compile a report of businesses awarded state Job Development Investment Grants that the Department of Environmental Quality has also cited for violations.
Cooper called the new executive order “an important first step,” but he acknowledged that executive orders only have weight if the governor backs them, and that North Carolina will elect a new governor next year. Cooper is term limited but said a lot can be accomplished in a year. He said data being collected will put hard numbers on “a lot of what we have been hearing” and that he wants to “create a synergy that lasts beyond this administration.”
The ordered study will prioritize researchers at Historically Black Colleges and Universities, the executive order states. The new Governor’s Environmental Justice Advisory Council will build on work done by the Secretary of Environmental Quality’s Environmental Justice and Equity Advisory Board, which then-Department of Environmental Quality Secretary Michael Regan established in 2018. Regan is now administrator of the federal Environmental Protection Agency.
“We all have a stake in advancing environmental justice for underserved communities overburdened by pollution,” Regan said in a news release announcing Cooper's executive order. “I am thrilled to see that Gov. Cooper’s leadership has led to reconstituting the board as the Governor’s Environmental Justice Advisory Council."
Cooper's office said the council will be "a forum for whole-of-government environmental justice concerns ... tasked with providing guidance and recommendations to the governor and state agencies to advance environmental justice."
