ThinkProgress

New report details just how toxic Trump’s environmental agenda has been thus far

The Trump administration is increasing the environmental burden on low-income communities of color, a new report finds.

Natasha Geiling     September 19, 2017

Petrobras oil refinery plant in Pasadena, Texas. (CREDIT: AP Photo/Frank Bajak)

From fast-tracking the Dakota Access pipeline to failing to ban a potentially brain-damaging pesticide, the Trump administration’s environmental policies have already negatively impacted the country’s most vulnerable communities, according to a newly-released report from the Environmental Data and Governance Initiative.

During EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt’s confirmation process, he told senators that he was “familiar with the concept of environmental justice” and that “all Americans be treated equally under the law, including the environmental laws.” Despite those assurances, however, the report, titled “Pursuing A Toxic Agenda,” tracks a slew of policy and budget choices made by the Trump administration in its first seven months and concludes that “the Trump administration poses the most serious threat the EPA has faced in the agency’s 47-year existence.”

Mustafa Santiago Ali, former head of the environmental justice program at the Environmental Protection Agency and current senior vice president of climate, environmental justice and community revitalization for the Hip Hop Caucus, agrees with the report’s conclusions.

“This is one of the most challenging times for the agency,” Ali told ThinkProgress. “There seems to be a direct assault on communities of color, low income communities, and indigenous communities based on the policies that [the Trump administration] have proposed and tried to move forward on.”

Ali, who left the EPA in March after seeing the agency begin to pursue “values and priorities” different than his own, said that he has yet to see the administration propose a policy that would directly benefit vulnerable communities. Instead, Ali noted Pruitt’s stated goal of wanting to “dismantle” the EPA in its traditional form and turn it into an agency that works more for industry stakeholders than the American public.

“There’s this huge disconnect between what is needed, and what is being asked for from anyone except the fossil fuel industry,” Ali said.

Still, as the report notes, there are opportunities for the environmental justice movement to make progress under the Trump administration — just so long as they don’t involve the federal government. At least for the duration of the Trump administration, the report suggests that the EPA and the federal government will not be the appropriate avenues for pursuing progress in environmental justice. Instead, the report suggests that civil society as well as local governments need to take a more active role in ensuring that the tenets of environmental justice are incorporated into policy planning.

“The federal government does not get a pass. They have a distinct responsibility for addressing these issues inside of our most vulnerable communities,” Ali said. But, he added, groups like faith-based organizations, academic institutions, and philanthropic foundations also have an important role to play in furthering environmental justice during the Trump administration.

“All of these folks have got to come together and work in authentic, collaborative partnerships,” Ali said. “That is the way we will move our most vulnerable communities to surviving to thriving.

Even with help from civil society and local government, however, several Trump-era environmental policies are already placing vulnerable communities in danger. Specifically, the report cites rollbacks in environmental justice policies within the EPA which are already placing farm workers and communities living near industrial facilities at risk. The report notes EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt’s decision not to ban chlorpyrifos — a widely-used pesticide that EPA scientists had linked to brain damage in children — as a policy that will have an outsized impact on the health of farm workers and farming communities. Just over a month after declining to ban chlorpyrifos, the chemical was implicated in the poisoning of at least twelve farm workers in California, all of whom reported symptoms of vomiting and nausea after exposure.

The report also highlights Trump’s executive order to fast-track completion of the Dakota Access pipeline as an example of the administration’s preference for industry over vulnerable communities. In December, after months of protest by indigenous communities as well as social justice and environmental groups, the Obama administration temporarily halted construction on the controversial pipeline and ordered the Army Corps of Engineers to conduct a full study of the pipeline’s potential environmental impacts. A month later, President Trump issued an executive order directing the Army Corps to approve the pipeline in an “expedited” manner, effectively canceling the previous administration’s request for further environmental review,

Indigenous groups won a victory in mid-June, however, when a court found that the administration had failed to fully consider the environmental impacts of the project, especially on the drinking water of the Standing Rock Sioux tribe. The court ordered the Army Corps of Engineers to more fully consider the project’s potential impacts, though it’s unclear whether the pipeline will remain operational during the review. It became operational in June and has already suffered three minor leaks.

The report also cites the Trump administration’s decision to delay an Obama-era update to the rules that govern how industrial facilities — particularly those that store hazardous chemicals — plan for and respond to potential disasters. Known as the Risk Management Plan rule, the Obama administration’s updates would have required facilities to contract with third-party auditors following accidents and would have forced companies to create enhanced emergency response plans in the event of a toxic discharge. In March, Pruitt announced that the EPA was delaying implementation of these RMP updates until 2019, citing requests from industry.

Just months later, in the wake of devastating flooding from Hurricane Harvey that left parts of Houston under feet of water, the Arkema chemical plant in Crosby, Texas suffered a series of explosions and fires. More than 300 residents were evacuated from a 1.5-mile radius around the plant to avoid any toxic health impacts. The facility would have been covered by the updated RMP plan, but the company was part of the industry coalition that lobbied for its delay.

Facilities that handle hazardous chemicals and waste tend to be disproportionately concentrated in low-income communities of color, meaning that facilities impacted by the delay of the RMP rule are more likely to be near vulnerable communities.

The report also looks at suggested cuts to the EPA’s environmental justice programs, as presented in the Trump administration’s proposed budget. The administration has proposed eliminating eliminate the Lead Risk Reduction Program, for instance, which is charged with reducing childhood exposure to lead-based paint. The Trump administration has also proposed eliminating the Department of Justice’s budget to help EPA prosecute Superfund cases to ensure that industry actors actually work to remediate the areas they have polluted.

StateImpact

A reporting project of NPR Member Stations- Pennsylvania

Conflicting decisions on pipelines frustrate industry, landowners

By Marie Cusick       September 18, 2017

Marie Cusick / StateImpact Pennsylvania

Hundreds of Cathy Holleran’s maple trees were cut down, through the use of eminent domain, for an interstate natural gas pipeline that’s now stalled.

In March 2016, workers for one of the nation’s largest natural gas pipeline companies cut down a large swath of maple trees in Susquehanna County–a rural patch of northeastern Pennsylvania. A video shot by an activist shows the trees crashing down as chainsaws buzz.

Cathy Holleran was powerless to stop it. At the time, she was tapping the trees for her family’s maple syrup business, but the pipeline company condemned her land using the power of eminent domain.

Armed U.S. Marshals

Driving around a year-and-a half later, she’s still in disbelief. A court order had prevented her from interfering, and law enforcement officers came to protect the pipeline workers.

“We had to stay completely away. They brought armed U.S. Marshals with assault rifles and Pennsylvania State Police, and had guys walking all over property in bullet proof vests,” Holleran recalls. “I mean, really! We’re making syrup. What are we going to do? Are we going to go attack these guys?”

Walking through her property on a recent soggy September afternoon, Holleran finds tree stumps hidden beneath shoulder-high weeds.

“This used to all be woods– as thick as that,” she says, gesturing to a cluster of remaining trees.

By her count, she lost more than 550 maples, “I went through with my camera and took pictures from every angle and counted them by hand to make sure I was accurate.”

She says her family’s maple syrup business has been cut in half. But the real shame of it all, Holleran adds, is this may all have been for nothing.

The Constitution Pipeline was supposed to emanate from northeastern Pennsylvania, and run 121 miles through New York State. Federal regulators gave their blessing to the project. So did Pennsylvania regulators. But New York State (whose border is about 20 miles from Holleran’s land) refused to grant a necessary water permit.

The pipeline company, Williams, sued, but a federal court recently sided with New York. Holleran says she’d warned the company of this possibility.

“All along we kept saying, ‘You might not get through New York. You might not get your permits. You’re gonna come through here and cut our land?’”

Williams spokesman, Chris Stockton, says at the time the company was working with New York’s Department of Environmental Conservation, and the permit was advancing.

“We were addressing their concerns as they came up,” he says. “We had no reason to think we would not receive that permit. We were playing by the rules and doing everything we needed to do.”

‘The rules of the game have changed’

“What happened with the Constitution was a surprise,” says Fred Lowther, a partner with the law firm Blank Rome, who’s represented major oil and gas pipeline companies.

It reminds him of another ruling, about a decade ago, when the industry ran into a similar problem: a state killed a federally-approved pipeline. The Islander East project was supposed to run from Connecticut, under Long Island Sound. But Connecticut wouldn’t give it a water quality certificate, claiming it would damage nearly 600 acres of clam beds. And when the pipeline companies sued, a federal court sided with the state.

“It caused quite a stir in the industry,” Lowther says of the ruling. “Because the intention was not to give states the veto power over a federally-approved project, but to give them a say in how the project was shaped.”

History appears to be repeating itself with the Constitution Pipeline. Lowther says pipeline companies will likely be more cautious.

“I think going forward, people will be very careful before they authorize either the taking of land or the clearing of right of way,” he says.

It has long been assumed by the pipeline industry that once their projects get approval from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) the state permits fall into place.

“Historically, that has not been a problem,” says Mark Robinson, a gas industry consultant who used to work at FERC. ”We’re kinda in a new arena now. The rules of the game have changed a little bit.”

In a surprise move earlier this month, West Virginia environmental regulators rescinded a water certificate for another federally-authorized natural gas pipeline. Robinson warns states shouldn’t be able to unilaterally reject important, interstate projects.

“I imagine you’ll see significant pushback from the pipeline industry,” he says.

Last week FERC overruled New York environmental regulators in their denial of a water permit to another pipeline, saying the state had taken too long with its review and thus “waived” its authority.

Landowners often find themselves with few options. Angela McGowan is an attorney for the Harrisburg for the firm, Pillar Aught. She’s represented property owners dealing with other new pipelines in Pennsylvania, and says the industry generally has the upper hand—they just have to pay the people whose land their taking.

Eminent domain occurs in a sort of vacuum, she explains. The law doesn’t consider whether a pipeline company has all its permits in hand–  the i’s dotted and the t’s crossed.

“The eminent domain code basically just says you’ve got to prove you have the power,” says McGowan. “Once you do that, it’s just about what the ‘just compensation’ is.”

But Cathy Holleran is waiting for answers. She and the company are still in court and haven’t agreed on how much she should be paid.

“I can’t even tell you the amount of stress, personally, this has put us through,” she says.

The conflicting decisions from the state of New York and the federal government have left her with heaps of rotting maple trees strewn across her property.

Esquire

An Undocumented Journey Through Harvey

When her trailer flooded, Maria and her children escaped on a makeshift raft. But with the risk of deportation, she didn’t know where to turn. 

By Lorena O’Neil     August 31, 2017

The water seeped in under the door of Maria’s mobile home in Houston Sunday night as she tapped out the numbers 9-1-1. No answer. “Just take the children and leave me,” her friend José urged in Spanish. Jose is paralyzed from the waist-down. Maria and her late husband took him in to live with them and their five children following his car accident six years ago. The water kept coming into the trailer. Now it crept towards Jose’s electric wheelchair.

“No—if we leave, we all leave together,” Maria told Jose. She was scared. She had called 911 three hours earlier and had been instructed to calm down and wait. So Maria waited, and waited, and now the water was coming in faster, and now there was more of it. Her children were crying.

As Maria began to panic, her friend’s husband, whom she had called earlier, showed up at her front door with his son and his two teenage friends. He pointed to the inflatable kiddie pool her family used during the hot Houston summer, and suggested they use it as a raft to push José through the floodwater. With José, her 9-year-old twin boys, and her 10-year-old daughter situated in the green and blue floating pool, the 5-foot-tall Maria pushed her family through frigid water that reached her chest. Maria’s other two daughters, just 11- and 12-years-old, walked alongside their mother in the dark. She wondered what would happen next. Both Maria and Jose are undocumented immigrants, and she feared being asked for papers once they reached a shelter.

Maria’s concern about potentially being detained by “la migra”—immigration officials—was one shared by many undocumented immigrants as Hurricane Harvey ravaged Houston and other parts of southern Texas. Pew estimates that the Houston metropolitan area is home to roughly 575,000 undocumented immigrants, the third largest population in the United States behind Los Angeles and New York. Even before the storm, the undocumented community was on high alert, due to Senate Bill 4, an anti-immigrant measure that allows local police officers to ask about a person’s citizenship status and had been scheduled to go into effect Friday. (It has since been temporarily halted.)

Houston is home to about 575,000 undocumented immigrants, the third largest population in the United States. Getty

The ICE and U.S. Customs and Border Protection put out a joint statement over the weekend in light of the storm saying they wouldn’t target undocumented immigrants at evacuation sites, shelters, or food banks. Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner went as far as saying he would personally defend any undocumented immigrants who faced deportation as a result of seeking help in the storm. These reassurances never reached Maria, and she almost didn’t go to a shelter due to her fear. (Esquire is withholding the last names of undocumented immigrants profiled in this article.)

Maria had walked for 75 minutes through the water towards an elementary school on higher ground. She brought a change of clothes and blankets with her from home that were now soaked. The kiddie pool was becoming so deflated it was tough to push. As her legs began to fatigue from wading through the water, a black truck splashed by and three men jumped out to assist Maria, Jose, and the rest of the group. The Good Samaritans drove the family to a nearby school and Maria contemplated where to go next. She tried to call acquaintances, but claims it was tough to find someone who would agree to house them once she mentioned José was paraplegic. The men who had been in the black truck offered to take them to Gallery Furniture, a Houston furniture store that had opened its doors as a shelter for hurricane evacuees.

“I was so scared,” she says in Spanish, the language in which our interview was conducted. “I was scared I would go there and they would ask me for my papers.”

Maria left Mexico when she was 20-years-old and has been living in Texas for the past 17 years. Her husband passed away from a stroke a year ago, and now she is terrified of being deported and leaving her five American-born children without parents. But the men in the truck reassured Maria and José nobody would ask for their documentation at Gallery Furniture. Desperate for food, water, and a place to sleep, Maria went to the furniture store, where the family was greeted with hot dogs, coffee, and a temporary wheelchair for José. Still, she was anxious.

There have been dozens of Hurricane Harvey-related deaths since it made landfall in Texas over the weekend. Getty

“I didn’t want to stay there,” she says. At 4 a.m., two police officers walked in, and her anxiety grew. The pair spoke with some of the volunteers at the shelter and walked into the kitchen. Nobody asked for papers.

Maria, Jose, and the children slept at the furniture store for one night before moving to a family member’s house, where they are currently living. Maria has since returned to her mobile home to assess the situation. The water has damaged two of her four bedrooms, plus a bathroom. Her two trucks are flooded, as well, one of which she uses to pull the taco food cart that she depends on for her livelihood. Maria, like approximately 80 percent of Harvey’s worst flood victims, does not have flood insurance.

“I know [undocumented] people have been afraid before the hurricane, of just dropping their kids at school or going to work,” says Pancho Arguelles, executive director at Living Hope Wheelchair Association, a non-profit organization that assists people like José with spinal cord injuries who don’t have access to healthcare.

Houston’s Gallery Furniture store took in families like Maria’s Sunday night. Getty

He worries about the new anti-immigrant bill, and says he thinks undocumented people will mistakenly think it means every police officer is essentially becoming an immigration officer. The deterioration of trust between police officers and the community they serve is of serious concern to police chiefs in Texas, many of whom have spoken out against Senate Bill 4 both before and after it was signed into law by Texas Gov. Greg Abbott. The legislation—nicknamed the “anti-sanctuary cities” law—would ban police chiefs, sheriffs, and other law-enforcement officials from preventing an officer from questioning a person about his or her immigration status. Jail officials would also be forced to honor all ICE requests to hold inmates for possible deportation. On Wednesday, a federal district judge temporarily blocked the bill from taking effect while a lawsuit against it continues. Houston is one of the cities involved in the lawsuit looking to strike down the law.

“I know [undocumented] people have been afraid before the hurricane, of just dropping their kids at school or going to work.”

Still, Maria feels uncertain about her future in the U.S. “I’m worried,” she says. Speaking on behalf of the undocumented community in Houston she says, “We have a lot of needs right now.” Maria hopes to move back into her damaged home and get her business back up and running as soon as she can.

“I will work hard and fight like always for my children,” she says. “I’m their only support.”