Biden promised to clean up heavily polluted communities. Here is how advocates say he did

After World War II, Black people in Houston found the rare chance to buy a nice home in the new community of Pleasantville, Texas. But in the years that followed, officials routed the Interstate 610 loop with its tailpipe exhaust along one side of Pleasantville and cement plants and other heavy industry grew nearby.

Just days after taking office in 2021, the Biden administration made huge promises to heavily polluted Black, Latino, Indigenous and lower income areas like this, known as environmental justice communities.

To evaluate how well Biden and his departments delivered on these promises, The Associated Press spoke to some 30 environmental justice groups around the country, people who have been trying for years and sometimes decades to get places near their homes cleaned up — Superfund sites, petrochemical plants and diesel-burning ports, for example.

Many said this administration has done more than any previous one. With ambition not seen before they said, federal officials have solicited their advice, written stricter environmental protections and committed tens of billions of dollars in funding.

“Once he was in office, he put money where his mouth was,” said Beverly Wright, who directs the Deep South Center for Environmental Justice and sits on the White House Environmental Justice Advisory Council. “I almost gasped when I saw the amount of money.”

But the local advocates interviewed have concerns, too. Some said Biden administration policies have been too weak to drastically reduce pollution and change their lives. Officials have even favored climate technologies that make conditions worse, they said.

Those advances could be reversed if the presidential election Nov. 5 brings in a Republican administration. Presidential nominee former President Donald Trump considers much of the regulation these groups favor to be overreach.

Environmental Wins

Pleasantville, near Houston's petrochemical heartland, got a piece of Biden's funds. Bridgette Murray, founder of the group Achieving Community Tasks Successfully, said residents wanted what many environmental justice groups want: data about what is in the air. Now a federal grant will help them do air testing, she said, and they can show those results to regulators.

It won't actually clean the air, Murray said, “but if we don’t do anything, there will never be change.” Sustained funding will be necessary to accomplish that, she said.

The Texas grant is one of many. For each region of the country, the Environmental Protection Agency handed large amounts of money to an established group to dole out to local ones who know their communities' needs. In Massachusetts, for example, Boston-based nonprofit Health Resources in Action got $50 million to do this.

Dwaign Tyndal, executive director of Alternatives for Community and Environment in Roxbury, Massachusetts, which focuses on inexpensive, energy efficient buildings and harmful diesel exhaust, called this “a real, substantial investment by the federal government into community based organizations.”

Near Lake Charles in Sulphur, Louisiana, an area hard-hit by hurricanes, Roishetta Ozane feels surrounded by oil and gas facilities that she worries are responsible for some of her six children's health issues, including asthma and eczema. Ozane started the Vessel Project of Louisiana, a mutual aid and disaster relief environmental justice group.

“I’m fighting for my children and for other people’s children and grandchildren to be able to safely play outside,” Ozane said, “and not be victims of climate pollution and also these climate disasters that we constantly face here.”

She wanted the administration to restrain the growth of gas facilities expanding across the Gulf Coast, and was pleased when it paused new export terminals. Recently a court blocked that administration move.

The Inflation Reduction Act injected billions into Biden's effort — for the first time making significant funds available for environmental justice. Money went to school districts for clean school buses. The White House said federal “green bank” money will go to thousands of projects ranging from residential heat pumps to community cooling centers.

Officials have also written regulations they said will drastically improve public health. Tighter air standards will reduce cancer rates, and proposed mandates to remove harmful lead pipes will prevent damage to brain development in children and lower IQ scores. The White House and EPA opened offices of environmental justice, too, and developed a way to define disadvantaged communities to help them receive benefits.

Jade Begay, an Indigenous rights and climate organizer, said when it comes to administration hiring, agencies with influence on native communities have been staffed with more people who are from native communities, who are tribal members. “They are helping now not only transform those agencies, but help implement these policies.”

The Biden administration came at the right time to push for these changes: Advocates had built up enough power to pressure the administration to adopt its priorities and there was broad recognition that climate change harmed the poorest communities most. Something needed to be done.

Dissatisfaction Remains

But nearly all the interviews with environmental justice groups surfaced concerns, too.

Anne Rolfes, director of the Louisiana Bucket Brigade, which helps communities in a main petrochemical corridor, said the Biden administration listens to activists, invites them in for photo ops, but doesn’t enforce the law aggressively enough to keep the state’s Black population safe.

“When you have an EPA that basically won’t assert its authority, then a state like Louisiana that is wholly captured by industry can ignore the federal government. And that’s what they do,” Rolfes said.

EPA enforcement has increased under Biden, but Rolfes said federal officials still give the state too much power to ignore clean air rules.

Some local organizations have found it difficult to navigate the federal bureaucracy and apply for money despite technical assistance that's available.

And there is anger over the Biden administration’s embrace of carbon capture and storage technology, which collects planet-warming carbon dioxide from industrial smokestacks so it can be stored, often in underground wells. Several activists said this can extend the life of dirty facilities because it opens the door for plant operators to argue they are climate-friendly. Meanwhile, their emissions continue to harm those nearby.

These plans "are really just perpetuating the problem of the climate crisis and keeping it a problem for future generations to have to contend with," said Ashley LaMont, national campaigns director for the Indigenous environmental justice organization Honor the Earth.

It's a vital issue for states like Louisiana that are home to many heavy industries and want to attract new carbon capture projects. Late last year, the EPA allowed Louisiana to take over from the federal government and run its own program for granting permits for carbon capture wells. Officials incorporated some protections for residents that activists had recommended but it's a move that's angered many in the environmental justice community.

Federal Chief Environmental Justice Officer Jalonne White-Newsome said when Congress passed the 2021 infrastructure law and Inflation Reduction Act, they included incentives for carbon capture. The Biden administration had to carry out the law and has invited feedback.

She said they have tried to embed environmental justice principles into the “fabric and foundation” of the federal government.

“We are not at the Promised Land yet,” she said, “but we are going there.”

A big obstacle is time. Nearly four years in, some Biden administration programs are just beginning to distribute money.

Republicans have called the EPA’s environmental justice funding a giveaway to radical left groups.

“We found that a lot of this money that’s going out really has little to do with the environment and a lot to do with funding groups that are basically engaged in what I characterize as anti-American activities,” said Sen. Shelley Moore Capito of West Virginia, ranking member on the Senate Environment and Public Works committee in a public statement.

Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic nominee for president, has backed President Biden's environmental justice work, saying in December that she has “put equity at the center of all of our climate investments.” A spokesperson for the Harris campaign did not respond to a request for comment.

When it comes to Pleasantville, Murray said its problems grew from segregation and the expansion of polluting industry over many years. It will take a sustained, years-long effort to make the air healthier.

“Unfortunately when it comes to solutions, we may not have the amount of time we really need to make the big improvements," she said.

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Associated Press writers Matthew Daly and Matt Brown contributed from Washington D.C.

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