Gov. Cooper sets ‘whole government’ approach to environmental justice. What to know.

Gov. Roy Cooper is using a new executive order to broaden the reach of North Carolina’s environmental justice advisory board and to broaden its mission to encompass all 10 cabinet agencies.

The N.C. Environmental Justice and Equity Advisory Board previously had 12 members and served to provide the N.C. Department of Environmental Quality with counsel. With Tuesday’s order, the Environmental Justice Advisory Council will have 20 members, 10 of whom will come from the public and then representatives of each of the state’s cabinet agencies.

“This Executive Order directs a whole-of-government approach that listens to communities that are suffering from pollution and the effects of climate change, and takes action to help them become safer, healthier and more sustainable environments,” Cooper said in a prepared statement.

The order directs state agencies to take a number of actions, including directing each cabinet agency to develop three goals within 120 days that will advance environmental justice and describe how they plan to measure their success in meeting those goals.

It also sets up a new online home for the state’s environmental justice work and orders the creation of a new mapping tool that the public will be able to use to try to understand the impact pollution is having on their communities.

Additionally, the order directs DEQ and the N.C. Department of Commerce to deliver a report by October 15, 2024, showing which businesses received Job Development Investment Grants from the state since 2017 and have received notices of violation for pollution.

Sherri White-Williamson, a current member of the environmental justice board and the N.C. Conservation Network’s director of environmental justice strategy, told The News & Observer that moving the board from DEQ to directly under Cooper shows that state agencies should take environmental justice seriously.

“I think this sends a message that they not only be more aware but also take appropriate actions based on what you are becoming aware of that will make North Carolina better for everyone, particularly folks in low-income communities and in communities of color in the state,” White-Williamson said.

Understanding environmental justice

Environmental justice is the idea that everyone has a right to clean air and water, as well as a right to have a say in what sources of environmental exposure are located in the communities.

Cooper promised an order focused on environmental justice when he signed Executive Order 246 in January 2022. The previous order set greenhouse gas reduction targets for the transportation sector and directed the 10 agencies under the governor’s control to appoint an environmental justice lead and develop public participation plans that guide how communities engage with proposed projects.

“It’s long overdue, obviously, but this is something we can work with and at least it lays the groundwork for future movement forward,” White-Williamson said.

The national environmental justice movement has North Carolina roots — its origin is considered to be the 1982 Warren County protests against a landfill that contained soil contaminated with PCB.

Years of concern about the state government’s decision to site the landfill in a community with mostly Black residents who drank well water culminated in six weeks of protests, with many laying in front of dump trucks loaded with the contaminated soil to prevent them from reaching the Afton site.

All of the environmental justice resources will be published on a new “environmental justice hub” web page set up by the state’s Department of Information Technology.

A new mapping tool will be published to that hub within a year, featuring data that shows where permits that allow pollution have been granted; where low-income communities and communities of color are located; what health effects communities are feeling; air quality data and climate risk data. It will pull from mapping tools created by DEQ, the N.C. Department of Health and Human Services and N.C. Department of Transportation.

That information will be available to members of the public, businesses, local governments and state agencies. One potential use for it is to assess cumulative impacts, or the layering of multiple environmental risks on top of each other, heightening threats to human health and the environment.

In a prepared statement, N.C. DHHS Secretary Kody Kinsley said, “The environment where we live, work, and play has a tremendous effect on our health throughout our lifetime. Unfortunately, some communities in North Carolina experience greater health impacts from environmental threats. That’s especially true for communities of color.”

Cumulative impacts

Advocates and community members frequently raise concerns about cumulative impacts during contentious environmental permitting cases, with industrial facilities seeking new or revamped permits and nearby residents arguing they are already living with too much pollution from facilities already operating, nearby highways or other sources.

A News & Observer and Charlotte Observer analysis earlier this year found that 75 census tracts — home to about 200,000 people — have at least two permitted sources of pollution per square mile. That analysis did not account for the thousands of hog and poultry farms that can be found clustered throughout the state’s rural communities.

“One of the most important things is an understanding that the definition of environmental justice does not just include communities of color, but it also includes low-income communities and we find low-income communities all across the state, from the mountains to the coast,” White-Williamson said.

DEQ officials have maintained they don’t have the statutory authority to consider existing sources of pollution when making permitting decisions. But the new executive order directs cabinet agencies to consider public health when making “permitting, policy actions, and agency programs to the furthest extent permissible by law” while also directing agencies to use the new mapping tool to “inform” the siting of infrastructure and environmental permitting decisions.

In another effort to better understand cumulative impacts, the order directs the Environmental Justice Advisory Council to work with academics, particularly those working at Historically Black Colleges and Universities, to research how cumulative impacts are affecting residents across the state. The order also tasks the council with developing a framework for assessing the effects of those cumulative impacts.

Those steps have their grounding in a 13-page set of recommendations for addressing cumulative impacts that White-Williamson and other members of the environmental justice board delivered to DEQ Secretary Elizabeth Biser this summer.

White-Williamson views those recommendations as a starting point but said, “Obviously that’s not enough, and obviously in many communities there is a need for research and a better understanding of what cumulative impacts really means “

This story was produced with financial support from the Hartfield Foundation and 1Earth Fund, in partnership with Journalism Funding Partners, as part of an independent journalism fellowship program. The N&O maintains full editorial control of the work.