January 23, 20255 min readTrump Environment Order Will Leave Vulnerable Communities in the ShadowsPresident Trump has revoked a 1994 directive that required agencies to protect minority or low-income areas from pollution and health hazardsA man walks along an overpass above the Cross Bronx Expressway, a notorious stretch of highway in New York City that is often choked with traffic and contributes to pollution and poor air quality on November 16, 2021 in New York City. Spencer Platt/Getty ImagesCLIMATEWIRE | President Donald Trumps cancellation of a 31-year-old environmental justice directive threatens the health of tens of millions of people in minority or low-income communities, which have often been dumping grounds for pollution, waste sites and heavy industry, said civil rights advocates and experts.Revoking a 1994 executive order by President Bill Clinton removes a mandate that survived four subsequent presidencies, including Trump's first term, and required federal agencies to address the high and adverse environmental and health effects of their decisions on areas with high rates of poverty or large minority populations.It's turning the clock back on decades of work, said Peggy Shepard, co-founder and executive director of WE ACT for Environmental Justice, based in New York. They're working to eliminate policies and programs that support equity, support environmental and climate justice, and that's just going to have a harmful effect on the health and well-being of so many people in these disadvantaged communities.On supporting science journalismIf you're enjoying this article, consider supporting our award-winning journalism by subscribing. By purchasing a subscription you are helping to ensure the future of impactful stories about the discoveries and ideas shaping our world today.Clintons Executive Order 12898, signed in February 1994, required federal agencies to analyze environmental and public health hazards in minority or low-income communities and to avoid adding to them.Trump, in his own executive order that repealed the Clinton-era mandate, said the policies violate federal civil rights laws, sow racial division and deny, discredit, and undermine the traditional American values of hard work, excellence, and individual achievement in favor of an unlawful, corrosive, and pernicious identity-based spoils system.Following Trump's revocation, agencies will review each program for areas where race and other marginalization identities are considered by the agency and how they are considered, George Washington University law professor Emily Hammond said. Political appointees will lead the reviews and give reports to the White House Office of Management and Budget.It will be OMB thats actually giving the final say to policies that are eliminated, said Hammond, who was Energy Department deputy counsel in the Biden administration. "This process takes a while."Trump framed his revocation and several others Tuesday as an effort to end illegal preferences and discrimination in government.Trumps directive also will bar most federal grant programs from prioritizing projects that help minority or low-income communities. It also axes a 60-year-old equal employment executive order and several diversity and inclusion policies. Critics said the president's moves ignore research about the health and financial effects of pollution on poor people.The fact of the matter is that low-income communities, communities of color, and indigenous communities are disproportionately harmed by pollution and climate change, Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.), a co-chair of the Senate Environmental Justice caucus, told POLITICO's E&E News in a statement. "Ignoring this reality will perpetuate that harm."Robert Bullard, a professor at Texas Southern University who's often described as the father of the environmental justice movement, said Clintons 1994 order promised equal justice to all citizens, not special treatment.We were not talking about giving us something that other Americans didn't have, or was not guaranteed to them. There was no preferential treatment, said Bullard, who helped lay the groundwork for the Clinton directive with years of outreach to George H.W. Bushs administration and members of Congress, including then-Sen. Al Gore (D-Tenn.).Every American has a basic right to enjoy the fruits of their labor and to enjoy living in the community that was not bombarded with all kinds of environmental threats, whether it's chemical or whether it's highways built through or whether it's tax dollars spent in other communities to provide flood protection, etc, he said. We were saying we pay taxes, and we're entitled to that. So it was not something that was somehow given to us.The loss of Clintons directive could ultimately hurt working-class white communities that overwhelmingly favored Trump in the last election, Bullard said.The White House did not respond to a request for comment Wednesday evening.A big gain for environmental justiceClintons executive order was a landmark in the environmental justice movement, which sprang out of the civil rights movement of the 1960s and highlighted the dangerous levels of pollution and health problems in Black communities.An influential 1987 study by the United Church of Christs Commission for Racial Justice showed that toxic waste facilities were largely located in areas with large minority populations.In January 1990, University of Michigan professors Paul Mohai and Bunyan Bryant convened academics, including Bullard, who were studying pollution in Black and brown neighborhoods. The group wrote a letter to President George H.W. Bush's EPA administrator, Bill Reilly, and later met with him and other administration officials.In 1992, with Bush still in office, the EPA found that minority and low-income populations faced higher than average exposure to toxic waste facilities, air pollutants, contaminated fish and agricultural pesticides.Building on the growing research and concern, Clinton signed his executive order directing federal agencies to address disproportionately high health and environmental effects of their decisions on minority populations and low-income populations.It was the first presidential declaration of policy about environmental justice that recognized the disproportionate harms that had been caused to communities of color as well as poor communities, said Hammond, the law professor.The policy never became law and it cant be used as a basis for legal challenges, unlike federal laws such as the Civil Rights Act.But departments and agencies established their own environmental justice policies to comply with Clintons order and incorporated them into National Environmental Policy Act reviews.For example, the Department of Interior's policy calls for helping underserved communities by reducing disparate environmental burdens and increasing access to environmental benefits.EPA in 2012 created a landmark database that shows environmental and health conditions along with demographics in each of the nations 240,000 census "block groups." Agencies across the federal government and in states and localities use EPAs EJScreen to identify neighborhoods that need environmental protection and assistance.Former President Joe Biden expanded Clinton's executive order, requiring agencies to write environmental justice plans and establishing the Justice40 initiative to ensure that disadvantaged communities got at least 40 percent of federal benefits relating to the environment, housing, economic development and other areas.The Federal Emergency Management Agency prioritizes disadvantaged communities in awarding some grants, which helps them compete with the communities that have money to hire a grant-writer.What my concern would be is that under-resourced communities, regardless of whether you are in areas that are primarily rural often these types of communities dont have the resources to be competitive, said Deanne Criswell, who ran FEMA in the Biden administration.It will leave some of our most vulnerable communities in the shadows because they cant be competitive with communities that have the resources, Criswell said of Trumps revocation.Reprinted from E&E News with permission from POLITICO, LLC. 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