Environmental Justice: Starving the Village to Save It
Jim Willis on NGL Pipelines
Editor & Publisher, Marcellus Drilling News (MDN)
[Editor’s Note: Environmental justice may be the biggest of big frauds that pervade government today. It is about picking winners and losers and starving the village to save it.]
On August 17, the Pennsylvania Dept. of Environmental Protection (DEP) posted an Interim Final Environmental Justice Policy to guide DEP’s permit application reviews and outreach efforts in environmental justice areas throughout the Commonwealth. New Environmental Justice (or EJ) policies are a euphemism for regulations that prohibit drilling and pipelines built in neighborhoods of color or economic hardship zones because, says the left, those people can’t fight them.
It is a uniquely dystopian and prejudiced view of the world. We call it “all shale drilling is racist” regulations. Completely repugnant. The DEP will publish their new anti-shale regs in the Pennsylvania Bulletin on September 16 and immediately implement them on the same day. Meaning the DEP will begin to slow or deny new permits for wells and pipelines as of that date–based on violating made-up EJ standards. We hope the Marcellus industry sues the DEP to stop it.
The DEP signaled this was coming back in June when Rich Negrin, then Acting (now Actual) Secretary of the DEP, said his department had invented a new toy, an online mapping tool that relies on 32 different parameters to define EJ communities (see So-Called “Environmental Justice” in PA Redefined as Everything). By Negrin’s estimates, some 75% of the state is located in an EJ region. Yes, three-quarters of all communities in PA qualify as an EJ community–where racism is the norm. It’s insane.
The DEP has now released its new toy to the public.
On August 17, the Department of Environmental Protection posted an Interim Final Environmental Justice Policy to guide DEP’s permit application reviews and outreach efforts in environmental justice areas throughout the Commonwealth.
At the same time, DEP posted a new state-of-the-art mapping tool–PennEnviroScreen–that will redefine environmental justice areas using 32 environmental, health and socioeconomic indicators that are spelled out in a 113-page PennEnviroScreen Methodology Document.
DEP said on its Environmental Justice Policy Revision webpage–“a DEP permit applicant who files a permit application on or after September 16 must use the new PennEnviroScreen tool to determine if the permit’s facility is in an environmental justice area.”
DEP staff has also said it will begin implementing the Interim Final EJ Policy as soon as it is published in the PA Bulletin on September 16. Publication will also begin a formal public comment period that is scheduled to end on October 29.
Justin Dula, Director of DEP’s Office of Environmental Justice, told the Environmental Justice Advisory Board at its August 15 meeting, “Doing an interim final means that the policy will be enforced. We will be using the policy as an agency when it gets published in the Bulletin next month.
“So we will be using it, but there will still be another public comment series. We didn’t want to wait to start implementing to go through another formal public comment period.”
Fernando Treviño, DEP Special Deputy Secretary for Environmental Justice, said the same thing to the Board–“But the most important piece that Justin described, and I’m sure he’s going to go back to that topic, is that as an interim final, we’re going to be able to start implementing this policy now.
“So our internal staff knows we go through the experience, we go through the practice, the industry that we regulate, actually, it gets familiar with the policy and obviously the public in general gets familiar with the policy as well.”
“Once the policy hits the Pennsylvania bulletin and starts implementation on September 16, then we can have a full month of public comment period where in addition to hosting a statewide virtual public meeting … each of [our regional Environmental Justice staff] will be hosting at least one in-person public meeting in each of the six different regions. We’re going to be able to receive public comment on the interim final.”
Treviño also said DEP will have available a series of videos explaining the mapping tool and the policy they plan to distribute widely and through social media.
Covered Projects
The Interim Final EJ Policy designates both Public Participation Trigger Projects [permit applications] that are required to go through the enhanced process and Public Participation Opt-In Projects DEP may apply this policy to at its discretion. [Appendix C]
In addition to the project footprint itself, the Interim Policy defines an Area of Concern around the location of a Trigger or Opt-In Project as measuring one-half mile in all directions.
Public Participation Trigger Projects
These permit applications include–
— NPDES industrial wastewater facilities of 50,000 gallons per day or more
— Air Permits:
— New major sources of hazardous air pollutants or criteria pollutants
— Major modification of a major source
— Waste Permits: Landfills or other disposal facilities; Transfer Stations; commercial incinerators and other waste processing facilities; Commercial hazardous waste treatment, storage, disposal facilities; Major modifications of these listed facilities
— Mining Permits: Underground and Surface coal mines; Large industrial mineral surface and underground mines; Coal refuse disposal and reprocessing; Large coal preparation facilities; Revisions to these listed facilities; Using biosolids for reclamation
— Individual Permits For Land Application of Biosolids
— Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations: New or expanded more than 1,000 animal units; CAFOs of greater than 300 animal units in Special Protection Watersheds; CAFOs with direct discharge to surface waters
Public Participation Opt-In Projects
“DEP may exercise its discretion and expertise to apply this policy to additional projects and associated permits, authorizations, or approvals.”
“Community members or DEP staff may request projects not specified as Public Participation Trigger Projects, be designated as Opt-In Projects for which Enhanced Public Participation will be incorporated in the DEP application reviews.”
“Community members may utilize the Opt-In Project Request Form to request DEP designate a proposed project for Enhanced Public Participation in accordance with this policy.”
“When making a determination whether to designate a project as an Opt-In Project, DEP will utilize the PennEnviroScreen and consider identified community concerns, present or anticipated environmental impacts, and how those anticipated impacts relate to the existing community environmental burden.”
“Examples of projects that could warrant heightened consideration of Opt-In status include:
— Plan approvals at a major source of air pollution
— Resource recovery facility or incinerator
— Sludge processing facility, combustor, or incinerator
— Sewage treatment plant with a capacity of more than 50 million gallons per day
— Transfer station or other solid waste facility, or recycling facility intending to receive at least 100 tons of recyclable material per day
— Scrap metal facility
— Landfill, including, but not limited to, a landfill that accepts ash, construction or demolition debris, or solid waste
— Medical waste incinerator
— Underground Injection Wells Associated with Oil and Gas development
— Unconventional Oil and Gas Development (Drill & Operate permits, changes in use; ESCGPs)
— Other projects as identified by the community
“In addition, any permits not specified in this Policy as trigger permits or determined to be an Opt-In permit including but not limited to General Permits, renewals or revisions, may serve as Opt-In Permits if DEP determines they warrant special consideration.”
Inspections, Compliance & Enforcement
The Interim Final Policy also includes provisions establishing priorities, at DEP discretion, for inspections and compliance actions within environmental justice areas.
“The Department plans to form a Enforcement and Compliance Team to prioritize inspection and monitoring at sites which have multiple authorizations, multiple on record complaints, habitual violations, sites with high volume generation or unique permit conditions, EJ communities, and sites of significant geographic location and to ensure timely and appropriate responses to violations, implement an efficient criminal referral protocol, and ensure effective collaboration.”
With respect to calculating civil penalties, “DEP interprets impacts to the environment or the public health and safety at an EJ Area to be a relevant factor in the calculation of a penalty amount for a violation and may include a dollar figure in the penalty amount for such a violation provided there is adequate evidence to support a factual finding that the violation caused the harm and the penalty amount fits within the statutory limits.”
PennEnviroScreen
DEP’s Interim Final Environmental Justice Policy uses the online PennEnviroScreen tool to define environmental justice areas using 32 indicators. Those indicators include–
— Environmental Exposures: ozone, fine particulate, diesel particulate, toxic air emissions, toxic water emissions, pesticides, traffic density, compressor stations, children’s lead risk;
— Environmental Effects: Conventional oil/natural gas wells, Unconventional oil/natural gas wells, proximity to railroads, land remediation, hazardous waste and storage sites, municipal waste sites, coal mining, impaired lakes and streams, abandoned mining concerns, flood risk;
— Sensitive Populations: asthma, no health insurance, cancer, disability, heart disease;
— Socioeconomic Population: low educational attainment, linguistic isolation, housing-burdened low-income households, poverty, unemployment, race, age over 64, age under 5.
Click Here for the PennEnviroScreen Tool. Click Here for the Methodology Document.
Denial Of Permits
DEP staff have said in several forums the goal of the Interim Final Environmental Justice Policy is to can enhance opportunities for participation, share more information, provide information in appropriate languages, teach people how to effectively submit comments, hold a hearings or information sessions, but they recognize DEP can not deny a permit solely on environmental justice grounds without additional statutory authority. Read more here.
A copy of the 27-page all shale drilling is racist regulations from the DEP, to be published on September 16 may be found here.
Editor’s Note: The bottom line is that “environmental justice” is a fraud, a completely phony label for picking winners and losers and strengthening the long arm of government that stretches out to strangle all of us by pretending we need its protection.
I’ve bolded in red the most dangerous provisions of the program to illustrate. These include making “unconventional” natural gas development, which is the most conventional type of such development a target and if you think that doesn’t matter take a look at this portion of the map Shapiro’s DEP proposes to use:
Yes, large chunks of Bradford, Susquehanna and Wyoming Counties are targeted for special harassment under the new proposed regulations. Those areas are defined by human beings with discretionary special interests, although the “methodology” is meant to obscure that fact.
Moreover, notice the regulations provide that DEP can literally pick and choose winners and losers “if DEP determines they warrant special consideration.” That’s lawless totalitarianism and it greases the skids for rich NGO funded environmental special interests racing around the state filing requests for such special consideration.
And, don’t imagine it’s only natural gas that will be strangled by environmental justice warriors. Concentrated animal feeding operations will also be in the bullseye.The only way to survive in livestock farming today is to go bigger but go to 1,000 animals and you’re a target even though there are much bigger farms in Western New York, for example, that you’ll have go against in competition.
The worst part of these environmental justice regulations, though, apart from the Marxist totalitarianism, is their inherent contradiction. That is to say that if you live in a poor area you are to be protected from anything that might lift you out of the poverty. Starve the village to save it, in other words. It’s really that simple. And, the supposed protectors are in debt to those same NGO special interests. The latter utilize their tax-exempt foundations to lobby for just this sort of thing. Why? Because it gives them tickets to ride on the backs of the poor and middle classes who will subsidize the renewables off which those same NGO special interests hope to make a killing.
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