"The Biden administration’s environmental justice efforts scored a big funding boost in the $1.5 trillion government spending bill, but advocates worry whether the increased attention can be sustained given years of promises that have failed to yield results in their communities."
"Georgina Island First Nation and other residents aren't convinced a new treatment plant will protect Lake Simcoe from more wastewater. With $100 million already spent, the Ford government is now proposing a pipe built under the Oak Ridges Moraine to an alternate facility".
"Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Michael Regan on Thursday put the U.S. power sector on notice, outlining how the Biden administration plans to cut air and water pollution spewing from the nation’s electricity plants."
"California is back in the driver’s seat as it steers the nation toward a future of cleaner cars and light trucks. The Biden administration on Wednesday reinstated the state’s authority to set motor vehicle pollution standards stricter than the federal government’s."
"Decades of federal housing discrimination did not only depress home values, lower job opportunities and spur poverty in communities deemed undesirable because of race. It’s why 45 million Americans are breathing dirtier air today, according to a landmark study released Wednesday."
"A new study finds communities of color face the greatest increase in emergency room visits for flood-borne illnesses, showing the growing health risks and disproportionate burdens of climate change."
"On the eve of the Selma Jubilee, commemorating the “Bloody Sunday” march that helped catalyze support for the Voting Rights Act 57 years ago, the head of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency toured Alabama’s Black Belt to witness a different kind of struggle: the battle for clean water and basic sanitation."
The Biden administration, which has been making environmental justice a top goal, has released a new screening tool that complements existing environmental equity databases, but with especially strong attention to a range of categories like clean transit, clean water, housing issues, life expectancy and more (although, interestingly, not race). The latest Reporter’s Toolbox has a guide to the new screening tool.
"The filters distributed in Benton Harbor, Michigan during the city’s recent lead water crisis worked properly, according to a study state officials said was conducted to give residents assurance."
