On February 16, 29 organizations submitted a letter to Vermont Senators in support of S.148, the Environmental Justice Bill. The Sierra Club is strongly committed to ensuring that environmental justice principles are implemented across Vermont and the nation.
To the members of the Vermont Senate:
First, thank you for your continued work on behalf of Vermonters during this challenging time. We deeply appreciate your steadfast commitment to making our communities healthier and more prosperous.
The below 29 organizations write to urge your support for and passage of what would be Vermont’s first environmental justice law, S.148, which is currently being considered in the Senate Natural Resources and Energy Committee.
We urge you to support S.148 because it seeks to create a strong framework for Vermont to work towards environmental justice. As proposed, S.148 would, critically:
- Codify the definition and purpose of environmental justice in Vermont, making it the State’s policy that no segment of the population should, because of its racial, cultural, or economic makeup, bear a disproportionate share of environmental benefits or burdens.
- Establish an initial definition of “Environmental Justice Population” based on demographic criteria known to be predictive of environmental disparities in Vermont. - Create an Advisory Council on Environmental Justice, made up of key community stakeholders, that would have real power to influence how State decision-making best achieves environmental justice, in part through meaningful public engagement processes and analysis of cumulative environmental burdens.
- Create an Interagency Committee on Environmental Justice to coordinate the efforts of key state agencies and departments towards achieving environmental justice. - Establish a mapping tool to depict environmental justice issues across the state. - Require all state agencies to adopt formal community engagement plans by 2024. These engagement plans help ensure that every Vermonter has the opportunity to meaningfully participate in state decisions that impact their environmental health and wellbeing.
- Set a target, similar to the percentage threshold in the Biden Administration's Justice40 Initiative, to invest equitably in environmental justice populations. Such a target would encourage the State to proactively deliver environmental benefits to environmental justice populations.
We know that low income individuals, Black, Indigenous, and Persons of Color (BIPOC), and other disadvantaged groups suffer disproportionately from environmental hazards. And the cumulative impacts of these harms – air and water pollution, low-quality housing, and greater exposure to (increasingly frequent) extreme weather events – are exacerbated by lack of access to environmental benefits, such as affordable energy, adequate transportation, healthy food, and green spaces. It is also clear that, like with so many other challenges, the burden of COVID-19 has fallen hardest on these communities.
Research, and the lived experience of many, shows that Vermont is not exempt from these challenges. The REJOICE (Rural Environmental Justice Opportunities Informed by Community Expertise) Project has brought this reality to light since 2017, when the coalition began its work to inform the State on environmental justice issues through academic research, grassroots community conversations, and analysis that would lead to a future environmental justice policy.
An excerpt from the 2021 REJOICE Project Summary Reports (which you can read in full at https://environmentaljusticevt.org/) illustrates the cross-cutting environmental challenges facing Vermonters:
- “Spanish-speaking farmworkers and New Americans were concerned about kids losing access to outdoor recreation and parks, and about adequate sanitation and bathroom facilities in housing.
- Mobile home residents worried about standing water, failing park sewer systems, and drainage.
- Elders–both from the Rutland area and New Americans in Chittenden County, reported concerns about air quality, from neighbors’ smoking and woodstove use.
- Those with chronic illness and traumatic brain injuries shared elders’ concerns, and reported being additionally impacted by odors and dust from construction. Closing windows against those airborne contaminants worsened the impacts of heat, growing under climate change. Climate change, they noted, also increased vector-borne illnesses, like Lyme disease.
- Northeast Kingdom residents that REJOICE spoke with during the pandemic, and previously, in 2019, were concerned by the impacts of leachate from the state’s only landfill, in Coventry, on water quality, among other concerns.”
These are just some of the challenges communities face across the state. Beyond the important work done by REJOICE and many others to understand environmental justice in Vermont, the State itself is implicated in another fundamental environmental injustice: the violent theft of Abenaki land. Vermont must grapple with this and other legacies of injustice to do right by the communities that have been wronged by State action and inaction – intentionally or not.
So, we have work to do to address both present and historical injustices. Despite this fact, Vermont, unlike many states, has not yet codified an environmental justice policy in statute. This is an omission you have the opportunity to remedy this legislative session. Adopting an environmental justice law is an important step towards taking a more comprehensive approach to alleviating environmental burdens and delivering environmental benefits in a just and transparent way.
Passing Vermont’s first environmental justice law is one necessary step of many that we can take to pursue the goals of the environmental justice movement: the right of all people to participate as equal partners in decision-making and the enjoyment of a clean and healthy environment for all. It is now time to pass S.148.
We urge you to meet this moment of immense opportunity to pass Vermont’s first environmental justice law this legislative session. We recognize the challenges of legislating in this uncertain time, and understand that this is one of many legislative priorities – we are therefore grateful for your consideration of this call to action.
Thank you again for your hard work.
Sincerely,
350Vermont
Association of Africans Living in Vermont
Audubon Vermont
Capstone Community Action
Center for Whole Communities
Champlain Valley Office of Economic Opportunity
Climate Economy Action Center of Addison County
Community Action Works
Conservation Law Foundation
Environmental Justice Clinic, Vermont Law School
Renewable Energy Vermont
Rights & Democracy Vermont
Rural Environmental Justice Opportunities Informed by Community Expertise Rutland Area NAACP
Seventh Generation
Sierra Club Vermont Chapter
SunCommon
The Nature Conservancy
Vermont Affordable Housing Coalition Vermont Businesses for Social Responsibility Vermont Climate and Health Alliance Vermont Conservation Voters
Vermont Energy Education Program Vermont Interfaith Power and Light Vermont Natural Resources Council
Vermont Public Interest Research Group Vermont Releaf Collective
Vermont Renews
Vermont Youth Lobby