Taking Notice of the Environment
The Riverdale Press
By: Jennifer Scarlott
In a stunning breakthrough for environmental justice in New York City and New York state, a robust coalition of grassroots environmental justice groups have achieved the nearly unthinkable. On Jan. 5, Gov. Kathy Hochul signed into law a bill designed to begin to protect low-income communities and communities of color such as the South Bronx from the cumulative effects of decades of racist siting of polluting facilities.
A similar, slightly weaker bill was passed in New Jersey in 2020, the first of its kind in the country to require the evaluation of the environmental and public health impacts of polluting facilities on overburdened communities.
Now, New York has followed suit. The Cumulative Impacts Law requires agencies to prepare an existing burden report as part of the application process to site-polluting facilities in neighborhoods defined as environmental justice communities by the Environmental Protection Agency. This report must evaluate the already existing cumulative impact load of polluting facilities on a community, and consider the additional harm that would ensue should a permit be granted for a new facility.
