The Virginia General Assembly has wrapped a special legislative session to reform the Commonwealth’s budget. The story Virginians often hear is that lawmakers were busy pursuing social justice, spurred on by COVID-driven economic hardships and a historic demand for reforms. However, this story belies the fact that the Assembly failed to pass the meaningful social justice reforms called for by working-class Virginians, while giving away half a billion dollars in customer overcharges to Dominion Energy’s shareholders.
With the climate and COVID crises at the fore, state and local environmental regulation and decision-making has taken on greater weight. As CPR Policy Analyst Katlyn Schmitt points out in a new paper, there is still some low-hanging fruit to be picked before Virginians can be equitably served by and participate in the Commonwealth’s environmental decision-making process.
For one, public notice and comment procedures for proposed environmental rules and pollution permits are siloed and arcane, exclusively relegated to the back pages of local newspapers in some cases. Meanwhile, the online infrastructure for a more equitable and accessible notice and comment process already exists in Virginia’s Regulatory Town Hall website, which is well-suited for making draft decisions, records, and electronic comment submissions available to anyone who has access to a computer and the Internet. Of course, Internet access is not a panacea for all that ails Virginia’s public participation policy. Many citizens – with and without access to high-speed broadband – have encountered difficulties simply accessing virtual spaces for public hearings during the COVID-19 pandemic.
In addition, Virginia’s low-income families and communities of color face a number of inequitable and arbitrary procedural burdens when it comes to advocating for their health and safety. Here's just one example: My colleague Darya Minovi and I were recently asked to contribute to an effort on behalf of fenceline communities in Portsmouth. As part of that effort, we submitted a comment letter on the Department of Environmental Quality’s draft air pollution permit for a proposed fossil fuel-burning power plant at the U.S. Norfolk Naval Shipyard. Our letter examines the potential risk of harm from climate-driven pollution releases and the burden of toxic air emissions on neighboring communities that are already disproportionately burdened by industrial pollution and climate impacts, among other harms.
Those risks are clearly important, but there's a strange and seemingly arbitrary barrier to addressing them: Virginia requires submission of at least 25 – not 24 or 26 – discrete, technical comments before a draft permit undergoes a public hearing and consideration by the Air Pollution Control Board. Surely the threat to the health and safety of a fenceline community is no more or less significant if residents and others submit 24 or 25 comment letters, or whether the letters are suitably discrete and technical in nature to reach this threshold.
The particular circumstances of this permitting decision cast the inequity and injustice of Virginia’s regulatory policy into sharp relief. According to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data, the largely Black and low-income communities adjoining the shipyard are among the most socially vulnerable to disaster, disease, and hazardous pollution in Virginia and nationwide, while state data show that community members already endure greater rates of death and disease than the rest of the Commonwealth.
Meanwhile, the Department of Defense is supremely well-resourced – with a budget exceeding the sum of the budgets for the next ten largest militaries – and already emits greenhouse gases like no other, all while spending billions to upgrade its installations and operations and adapt to the rise in sea levels for which it is significantly responsible. All of the risk from pollution and flooding, and none of the benefits, are shunted onto fenceline communities.
Will 25 or more comment letters lead to a just outcome? Probably not, but procedural reforms must be enacted along the way to justice and equity in Virginia. Substantively just outcomes depend on it.
By all accounts, the COVID pandemic and the cascading social and economic harms for Virginians will worsen over the winter months and into the next legislative session. While providing for the immediate needs of vulnerable populations, lawmakers should also address the long-term ramifications of local and statewide environmental decisions made on non-emergency matters amidst a declared emergency – when the public is distracted at best, and unable to participate at worst. Unjust and inequitable outcomes often result from a business-as-usual approach, one that Virginians are increasingly unwilling to stomach.
Showing 2,822 results
David Flores | November 4, 2020
With the climate and COVID crises at the fore, state and local environmental regulation and decision-making in has taken on greater weight in Virginia. As CPR Policy Analyst Katlyn Schmitt points out in a new paper, there is still some low-hanging fruit to be picked before Virginians can be equitably served by and participate in the Commonwealth’s environmental decision-making process.
Matthew Freeman | October 30, 2020
After 17 years with CPR, media consultant Matt Freeman signs off.
James Goodwin | October 29, 2020
This week, I’m posting a new web article documenting the arbitrariness and subjectivity that cost-benefit analysis injects into regulatory decision-making, the latest installment in CPR’s Beyond 12866 initiative. Specifically, the piece explains how cost-benefit analysis deploys a wide variety of methodological techniques that can be clumsy, unscientific, ethically dubious, and, too often, downright absurd.
Darya Minovi | October 28, 2020
If you want to know what the world will look like as the climate crisis ramps up, you don't need a crystal ball. In fact, you need look no further than the past few months of 2020. Western states are fighting record-breaking wildfires, major flooding has plagued the Midwest, and we are in the midst of a historic hurricane season. On October 20, CPR convened a group of researchers, advocates, and community organizers to discuss how the increasing frequency of extreme weather may impact coastal communities, especially those near hazardous industrial facilities vulnerable to damage.
Katlyn Schmitt | October 22, 2020
Earlier this month, Congress overwhelmingly passed America's Conservation Enhancement Act (ACE). The legislation's dozen-plus conservation initiatives include reauthorizations for important programs that help protect the Chesapeake Bay and wetlands across the country.
Darya Minovi, Katlyn Schmitt | October 21, 2020
Dangerous nitrate pollution has contaminated the groundwater that supplies private drinking water wells and public water utilities in several agricultural regions across the United States, posing a significant threat to people's health. A new report from the Center for Progressive Reform (CPR) indicates that this problem has reached Maryland's Lower Eastern Shore, an area that's home to hundreds of concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs) and millions of chickens.
James Goodwin | October 19, 2020
For many of us, the prospect of a Supreme Court with Judge Amy Coney Barrett giving conservatives a solid 6-3 supermajority is nightmare fuel. The consequences extend beyond hot-button social issues, such as women's reproductive rights or individual access to affordable health care. If confirmed, Barrett would likely spur the aggressive pro-business agenda that the Court has pursued under the auspices of Chief Justice John Roberts. A key item on that agenda is overturning something called Chevron deference, which some business groups have made a top priority in their broader campaign to bring about, as former White House Chief Strategist Steve Bannon put it, the "deconstruction of the administrative state."
James Goodwin | October 15, 2020
Recently, the Center for Progressive Reform (CPR) launched its Beyond 12866 initiative, which seeks to promote progressive regulatory reform as a key component of the progressive movement’s efforts to build a more socially just and equitable America. To accomplish this goal, though, we must come to grips with how the regulatory system is perpetuating racial injustice and reinforcing race-based inequities. In a new web article, I take this first step by sketching out some of the ways in which cost-benefit analysis has contributed to structural racism in the broader regulatory system.
Darya Minovi | October 5, 2020
Amidst the president and First Lady testing positive for COVID-19, an embarrassing spectacle of a presidential "debate," and a pandemic that has now claimed more than 200,000 lives in the United States and 1 million worldwide, the West Coast wildfires have lost the attention of the national news cycle. But California and nearby states are still very much ablaze.