"Low-income Black and Latino communities will be pummeled by the Trump administration’s changes to the nation’s permitting rules for federal infrastructure projects, according to environmental justice leaders across the country.
These communities rely heavily on the National Environmental Policy Act to push back against pipelines, highways, power plants, and other major projects that have historically polluted minority neighborhoods to a greater degree than more affluent White neighborhoods, the leaders say.
But the White House’s changes to NEPA, issued on Wednesday, will mute their voices and speed projects through in record time without enough consideration of their impacts on the air, land, and water, according to Hilton Kelley, founder and director of the Community In-Power and Development Association Inc. in Port Arthur, Texas, an industrial town surrounded by large refineries and petrochemical plants."
Stephen Lee, Ellen M. Gilmer, and Kellie Lunney report for Bloomberg Environment July 16, 2020.
