Environmental Justice Webinar

Center for Social Innovation OEE EJ 08/28/2012

Hello, everyone. Welcome to today’s installment in the Understanding HUD Environmental Reviews webinar series sponsored by HUD’s Office of Community Planning and Development or CPD. My name is Mark Allison, and I work for the Center for Social Innovation and I’ll be the moderator for today’s webinar. On behalf of CPD and the Office of Environment and Energy, I would like to thank all of you for joining us.

Today’s webinar is Environmental Justice at HUD: Why, What and How. Before we begin, I would like to make some logistical announcements. Today’s webinar will last approximately 90 minutes, and the webinar is being recorded. You can access a PDF of the slides in handout format through the first link on the File Sharing box in case you want to follow along by taking notes next to the slides. The recording and the PowerPoint presentation in full slide format with notes will be posted on HUD’s CPD Environment Page, the link for which you’ll find in the Q&A box in a moment. You can check the training website for updates to this webinar series, including the full recording of today’s webinar and other webinars in this series and for in-person training opportunities. The full series should be available online by October.

As an attendee of this webinar, your microphone will be automatically muted. Please listen to the presentation through your phone for best results. The call in information has been sent to you, and it is also listed in your Meeting Room screen under Audio Instructions. Another option is to use your computer speakers. This means that you’ll need to turn on and turn up the speakers on your computer. Due to the large number of attendees, there may be a slight delay in the advancement of the slides. If you experience any other technical difficulties, please let us know by using the Question and Answer Box on your screen. You may also submit content-related questions using that same box. Feel free to submit questions at any point during the webinar. However, we will wait until the end of the webinar to answer as many content-related questions as time allows.

Immediately following the webinar, you’ll be directed to a follow-up survey. Participants are strongly encouraged to respond to the evaluation to improve future webinars. During the webinar, we will be asking poll questions, two of which you will see on the bottom of your screen now. Please take a moment to answer these questions as well as the others we will ask throughout the webinar.

Today’s webinar will feature Jim Potter as the presenter. Jim Potter is a Community Planner in CPD’s Office of Environment and Energy. Mr. Potter is the lead for implementation of Executive Order 12898, Federal Actions to Address Environmental Justice in Minority Populations and Low-Income Populations. He serves as staff liaison to the Interagency Working Group on Environmental Justice as well as several subcommittees coordinating compliance across the Federal Government. Mr. Potter is a Certified Planner who has a bachelor’s of science in geography and environmental planning, a master’s in city and regional planning, and a graduate certificate in environmental management. He has been serving in this capacity since 2006.

And now I’d like to pass this over to Jim to begin the presentation. Jim?

Thank you, Mark, and thank you all for joining us today.

Now the first basic question that I wanted to answer for you today is why do we worry about environmental justice? What’s the problem and why is EJ so important to HUD? Well, the reason for the most recent resurgence in interest is that there was a reconvening of the Environmental Justice Interagency Working Group in 2010. And I wanted to draw your attention to the quote from Secretary Donovan that I put on the bottom right of the slide. You’re going to see it again because this forms the basic definition that HUD uses for environmental justice. But two things I wanted to point out within that quote toward the bottom.

“So that a family’s success is not determined by the zip code they live in.” Two things here – we’re worried about people, and there’s a spatial component to environmental justice. Keep those two things in mind, and we’ll be talking about a lot of different issues – mainly how to deal with environmental justice, the analysis, how you determine whether you’re in an EJ community, whether you have an EJ problem, and what to do about it.

Center for Social Innovation OEE EJ 08/28/2012

The learning objectives are pretty basic. We want to find out a little bit about the terminology of environmental justice because some of these definitions are important. They’re also unique to HUD. We want to talk about how this fits into the larger environmental review that you do for projects anyway. We’re going to talk about an analysis approach, and I’m going to show you some case studies that illustrate some of the applications of these ideas. But first I wanted to start with an abbreviated background of environmental justice.

Some of you may have a familiarity with this, and we’ve added a couple of milestones recently that I wanted to bring to your attention. We’ve got a couple of new poll questions on the left, and I wanted you to take a moment and just think about those questions. It looks like all of you agree that environmental justice is not a new requirement. I’m very glad to see that. Environmental justice has little measurable effect on projects. Most of you found that to be false, and that’s a good thing also. As you’ll see in a moment, it can have a profound impact on projects, both positive and negative. So let’s get into a little bit about the issues involved and how that can be addressed.

Academic studies documenting the injustice have been around for quite a long time now, and also the reasons that we got here, starting in 1994 officially with the Executive Order 12898. The new milestones I wanted to bring to your attention are the Interagency Working Group reconvening in August of 2010 and the new strategy that HUD posted in April of this year. That new strategy has a lot of the material that we’re going to talk about today. It’s a pretty rich document with a lot of the things that we’re going to be using to discuss the application, the analysis, and the mitigation that may be necessary.

For those of you by the way that downloaded the webinar handout, there are notes at the bottom within the notes section below the last slide that talk about the specific details of those academic studies. If you’re interested in them or you want to refresh your memory about what they are, take a look at those. There’s some really good information in there. I’ve also got one at the end in the resource slide that’s going to be very interesting to you. It’s a fairly new document in the compendium of environmental justice research, so that’ll be a little teaser for later.

Environmental justice at HUD, and this comes from the departmental strategy, are the things that Secretary Donovan talked about in that quote on the first slide – equal access to safe and healthy housing for all Americans; mitigating risks; providing access to affordable, accessible, quality housing; and working to achieve inclusive, sustainable communities free from discrimination. These are ideas that HUD’s been working for many, many years; and they’re just reinforced in this new context. But the three at the bottom of that slide I wanted to talk about in a little bit more detail here, and you’re going to see this reinforced throughout the presentation.

Meaningful public participation – decision makers seek out and facilitate involvement from those potentially affected at a time when least expensive or disruptive change can be made. “Least expensive” or “disruptive” – you’re going to see those terms many times throughout here – or at least some reference to those terms many times. Within the environmental review, we often – I’ll say always – talk about doing the environmental review early in a project before decisions are made so that you have the opportunity to make changes. As you do your review, you’re going to find challenges. You’re going to find legacy uses that have left soil contamination. You’re going to find noise. You’re going to find air quality issues. You’re going to find a variety of different things you may not have known about when you started project planning. Environmental review informs your decision about how this project will be developed. And the earlier you do that, the easier it is to make changes that can eliminate or minimize those impacts, making the entire project not only more acceptable to the host community but also cheaper, easier, and better.

Disproportionate impact – at HUD that’s an unequal share of the negative consequences in relation to the larger community. In relation to the larger community is important because we’re going to be talking about minority and low-income populations within a larger jurisdiction. Neighborhoods are concentrations of those demographics, and we want to make sure that we’re not disproportionately affecting those groups to benefit others. And we’ll get into more of that later. And in fact, I’ve got some very good examples that show how that’s applied on the ground.

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Low income at HUD means 60% of the area mean income. Again, I’ll have some more descriptive slides on that a little bit later. But this is a particular definition for HUD. It takes into account not only income levels and poverty levels that you may have found from other agencies or other sources. But it also looks at the buying power – the cost of housing, for example, is one of the things. The HUD user website is the best source for finding those qualified census tracks that define 60% AMI.

Meaningful involvement – this is another one I’m going to be talking about quite a bit today. And I’ll summarize all this by telling you if you see the bottom picture before you see the top picture, you’ve got a problem. We want you to go out and talk to people. We want you to get the information that is the basis for these projects. We want you to have a clear understanding of what these projects are going to do to the residents, going to do for the residents.

And we think in many cases that requires you to sit down and talk to them. I’ll go on a little bit more about that later. But if you’ve got the artist renderings up on the site before you’ve done your analysis, before you’ve talked to the people, before you’ve done your due diligence, you’re going to have a problem. You may have to rethink some things, and you may be doing it at a stage in the process where it’s a little more expensive than it could have been. And it brings into the account the disproportionality in the negative environmental effects of some projects.

HUD projects are wonderful in the fact that they often are bringing benefits to communities. The problem that we normally see is in the sites where they’re located. And they have legacy problems to be addressed, and the timing of addressing those issues may be difficult for the development team. So some things may not be able to be addressed. And that’s where the idea of mitigation comes in, fair treatment, disproportionality – all those things get rolled into this. Keep in mind the fair treatment of the community, and I think you’ll be fine.

And this is the project approach. It’s a very simplified version. There’s going to be a little more detailed version later for you to take a look at and use in your project planning; but for now, I just wanted to point out the basics. You’re going to start with a project analysis. You’re going to find out whether there are in fact impacts or not from the proposal on the table. If there aren’t, you go right to project development.

Again, you need to link this to the environmental review process. And in this context, that means documenting your findings, documenting your conclusions. Put a memo in the file that says, ‘I looked at environmental justice. I compared the impacts to the community, and I didn’t find any.” Put that in the file and then when our field staff comes to monitor, you’ll have an answer to their question, “Did you address environmental justice?”

If you do have impacts though, then you need to look at the community. And the community analysis is kind of a two-stage analysis that is not really shown in this chart very well, but you’ll see it later on in the more detailed slides. You need to find out if you’re in an environmental justice community. If you’re not in an EJ community, and that means meeting the criteria of the Executive Order, low-income or minority, then you don’t have to worry about environmental justice. You don’t have an EJ problem. Document your findings, document your conclusions for an environmental review record, and move on to project development.

If you’ve got impacts, if you’re in an EJ community, then you need to determine whether those impacts disproportionately affect that EJ community. And that’s where the looking at the larger jurisdiction, comparing that to the demographics of the neighborhood where the impacts will be found – will be felt -- is important. Again, no disproportionality? There’s no EJ problem; move on to project development.

But let’s say you found a disproportionate impact. At this stage, you need to start working with the community to find solutions. That’s the stage that I’ve labeled here as community partnership. Talk to the neighbors. They’ll give you information about the area that you’re going to need for any mitigation plans. And you can also talk to them about what would be acceptable. You know, there are a lot of trade-offs here. And your value system may not be the same as the residents’ value system because

Center for Social Innovation OEE EJ 08/28/2012 maybe your demographic, your experiences, your education, your background, is different than theirs. You’re not the one that’s going to live with it; they are. So give them the information, ask them what they think about this, how they feel about this, and what would help make this a better thing, a better project, a more successful undertaking in their community. When you’ve done all that, you’re going to move on to project development.

And here’s a little bit more detail about some of those things we were just talking about. Now, I noticed from the original poll questions there are a lot of State and local government folks. There are a few HUD staff. And there are some public housing entities among the participants today. Let’s be clear. Executive Order 12898 applies to both parts 50 and 58. But under this project analysis phase, there may be some projects, there may be some undertakings, that aren’t triggered in environmental justice. And those would be projects that are exempt or categorically excluded, not subject to the Federal laws and authorities. On the notes that go along with this slide, I’ve got the regulatory citations for those of you interested in finding the exact language.

Those kinds of projects do not trigger environmental justice. If you find one of those, if that’s what you’re trying to do, document your findings; document your conclusions for the environmental review record; and move on to project development. If your project is categorically excluded subject to the Federal laws or otherwise requires an environmental assessment, then you need to consider environmental justice. And the next phase is important to you because that’s where you determine whether you have adverse impacts or not.

Now of course, no environmental impacts – no problem. If you find something though, try and eliminate it. That’s found in the regulations from the Council on Environmental Quality for how the National Environmental Policy Act is to be implemented. It’s also a really good idea because we don’t want to hurt anyone. So any adverse impacts should be eliminated or minimized as good project planning.

But let’s say that you find something that can’t be eliminated. What do you do? Well, the next phase in this analysis is to find out more about the community. And first, you’ll need to define the boundaries of that community. There are a lot of resources to do that. Most of the best ones start locally. So talk to the local Planning Department. The graphic that you see on this slide is an excerpt from the Neighborhood Map from the Baltimore City Planning Department. It happens to be where I grew up and live. And I can tell you everything about this particular little rectangle, right down to the people that lived in the neighborhoods historically.

I can tell you about the supermarket down the street that used to be a bus maintenance facility. I can tell you about the gas station across the street from that that’s put two developers into bankruptcy because of the leaking underground storage tanks. I know a lot about my neighborhood, and I’m not unique. So the neighbors in the project area where you’re proposing this can help you do your research, can help you find the issues that need to be mitigated or addressed, and they can help you with a mitigation plan that you may need later on. Talk to them.

Now, that community analysis phase continues with trying to find out whether you have an environmental justice community or not. Remember the process that we’re going through here. And we’ve got a poll question to ask about the demographics. So take a minute there and look at that. Tell us a little bit about your experiences with that anyway.

But what I wanted to point out about this community analysis phase is that you need to use authoritative data sources. When I do a review of an environmental justice analysis, I want to see census data. I want to see American Community Survey. I want to see the State or local government’s analyses of demographics – maybe it’s the local health department that has done a detailed study of the residents in a particular area or they’ve done the effects of a previous project on that particular neighborhood. Maybe it was a special study, maybe it was something they do every year and they just update. Show me something authoritative. Show me something that reflects the community. Show me something that’s relatively recent. Please don’t show me a windshield survey.

Center for Social Innovation OEE EJ 08/28/2012

I’ll tell you what I – and unfortunately I see this more often then I’d like to. But every time I get handed one of these on a statutory checklist, the first response I have is, “If you can tell me what poor people look like, and you can tell me that all of the residents of the community were outside when you drove by, I’ll be happy to accept the data.” But if you can’t do those things, look for an authoritative source – a source that has really assessed the community and who’s living there, and then make your decisions based on good data.

Now again, the two criteria – the major criteria – from the Executive Order are minority or low-income. 60% AMI is what HUD uses. That AMI is again the Area Median Gross Income, and that’s the maximum income eligibility threshold for low-income housing tax credits. Many other program offices use that criterion as their eligibility standard. It’s the way HUD measures things. Like I said before, it takes into account things like buying power, housing costs, a variety of different very localized data. And it’s a very good measure of just how much people can economically deal with the locality in which they live. Now, if you can answer, “No,” to that question – Is the affected community minority or low-income? – document your findings for the environmental review record and move on.

Now, as I said, the community analysis portion is a two-phased analysis. First you need to find out if you’re in an EJ community. And then second, you need to find out if the effects of those negative impacts are disproportional. And this isn’t quite as objective as we’d like it, but look at things like, does the concern affect others equally? Is it fair? And then do other populations or neighbors cope with different issues of similar severity? I know that’s kind of fuzzy, and I’m going to try and illustrate some of those ideas in the case studies later on. So just bear with me for a couple of minutes. Remember this point though. It’s not very well defined at the moment. If you don’t’ get a clear understanding of them by the time we’re done with the case studies, send me a question and we’ll talk about it some more.

Now, in the community partnership phase – so at this stage in the process, you’ve got an adverse impact and you’ve got an EJ community, and you’ve found that it’s disproportionate. This is where that idea of meaningful participation comes in. Just like everything else in the environmental review process, we need this done early in the process before decisions are made. And the beauty of that is that if any mitigations are required, they can be done with little or no cost by just adjusting the parameters of the project often. These are things that you’re going to do anyway – you need to do these anyway. So just roll this environmental review into the steps that you’re already taking.

And good – from the poll question, I can see that most of you agree that this is not a separate review. This is the way you should be working. You’re just going to add this level of concern to the analysis that you’re already doing as part of the environmental review. It’s just another piece of data that you’re going to be dealing with while you’re developing your project, while you’re understanding the site and the environment in which your project is going to live and succeed.

Now as I said before, this isn’t a separate process. You’re already going out to other communities. You’re already doing this. You’re doing scoping as part of NEPA. You’re doing Section 106 consultation if you’ve got an impact of historic structure. The consolidated planning process requires that you go out twice a year to the community – go out to the community. Local zoning maps and comprehensive plan updates, conditional use hearings -- there are a variety of different opportunities for you to talk to the residents about a particular project and its impacts on their neighborhood and their families. Invite them to the meetings. Get them involved in what’s going on in their community. You’ll get a stronger community, you’ll get better projects, and you’ll get a much better relationship with those people that you’re trying to help.

During the internal vetting of this process, and this presentation in particular, some of the representatives of program offices offered some concerns about public participation and what they’ve seen as some challenges with previous efforts. And I wanted to make a couple of things very clear within the parameters of this environmental justice analysis and this particular discussion about community partnership.

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HUD, or its responsible entities acting as HUD, is the deciding entity for these projects. So we’re going to make the decision, but we’re going to do that with the community’s input on what the challenges are, what their perception of the issues to be addressed are, and some feedback from them about ideas we might have for dealing with it. We really feel that in-person public discussions are the best. In-person public discussions are preferred. I want to read you a quote from the Community Development Block Grant regulations. It’s in the notes section for this particular slide, but I want to read it to you anyway.

It says, “The requirements for citizen participation do not restrict the responsibility or authority of the applicant for the development and execution of its community development program.” The regulatory citation is in the notes, but that underscores that we’re doing something beneficial for the community; and there’s a need or we wouldn't be doing it in the first place. So this is a cost/benefit analysis to try and figure out how we can minimize the downside and still move forward on the good side. We’re doing this with the community’s help, but we’re helping the community along the way as well.

Now, at this point I wanted to talk about some specific examples – some are hypothetical, some are real. And they’re all designed to illustrate some of the points that I’ve brought out in this discussion so far. So this first one is mixed-use, five-story, residential. But the problem with this one, and frankly you’re going to see this a lot because one of my other responsibilities around here is to manage the noise regulations. So I see a lot of these projects in the context of a waiver for the environmental impact statement that’s required if noise is excessive on a site.

So with this particular project, which is located between a road and a freight rail line with a switching yard, I had unacceptable noise. What you don’t see in this picture very well – the top one is the existing conditions, and then the bottom one is the artist’s rendering of what the new development would look like. And what you don’t see here unfortunately is the – oh good, that does work. These vertical lines here are electrical transmission lines. And in the back here is a substation that connects them. And what did I tell you about meetings? If you see the rendering before you see the meeting, you’ve got a problem? These folks had a problem because the artist’s rendering doesn't show those electric transmission lines.

And then as you can see from the environmental issues, one of the problems with that was that the site was within the fall distance of those transmission lines. We had a life safety concern. We had noise concern. And then you can see in these site pictures, their surrounding land uses were industrial to say the least. And this is the substation I pointed out. Here are the electric transmission lines with the neighboring land use – there are grain mills next door. In the bottom right here you can barely make out a tractor trailer. We didn’t even talk about goods movement. But there are a lot of issues with particulate matter with tractor trailers, not to mention noise and vibration. Railroad crossing – and this top left is the picture of the neighboring land use that had the switching yard. Again, it’s a mill that had a lot of train activity.

So there were negative impacts. The residents were low-income. And because 80% of the units were targeted for low-income residents, the impact was deemed to be disproportionate. Now, as I said, there was no outreach to the community before all this was developed. They came to us looking for the EIS waiver. And because of the challenges of the site, there was some minor site contamination as well. Because it came in at too late a stage in the project’s development, they couldn't economically and effectively deal with the environmental impacts. And therefore this project was abandoned.

The second example I wanted to show you was a group home for developmentally disabled adults. Now, this one is a little bit different in that the project itself was in part the problem. Of course the residents, as I can show you here were very low-income, at equal to or less than 30% AMI. There were only 15 units – it was a fairly small project -- between an arterial road and an active freight rail line. The noise was the immediate challenge, and we found a couple of other things that were concerning to us.

But when I went through the environmental record, I found a memo from the Program Office staff that said, “These particular land uses are deemed to be locally unwanted.” They have an effect on the property values and generally are not liked by the surrounding neighbors -- that’s a really poor way to phrase that. But because of these challenges, the Program Office had a policy of not locating these types

Center for Social Innovation OEE EJ 08/28/2012 of facilities in environmental justice communities. That was their way of addressing the concerns of host communities.

So I raised that question to the project proponents. I said, “Your Program Office says that you shouldn't put this here.” And they came back with that resolution at the bottom. Four existing similar facilities were in surrounding suburbs already. And because of that, there was no disproportionality. This perceived burden was being shared by other communities, and this was the fifth of the series of developments that were to address this particular need. Once I heard that, there was no more environmental justice concern, and the project was built. The image you can see there with the blue arrow is the actual project itself.

The third example I wanted to bring to your attention is an Affordable Housing project in San Francisco. There were not only 326 dwelling units, but 49 of them were family units so they were multiple bedrooms. The problem with this one was its site. It was located at the foot of the San Francisco Bay Bridge. I’ve got a couple of images of the site to help you understand the scale of the concern. This image on the top left shows you a little bit of a cement mixer – a cement truck. And that compared to the top right will give you an idea of just how large the bridge abutment and the approach to the bridge was. This parking lot here is the site itself.

One of the questions that routinely comes up in our office is, “Would you live here? Would you like to live here? Would your mother live here?” And that one was answered of course when we looked at the neighboring land use. This high rise on the bottom left is a market rate residential building enjoying some beautiful views of San Francisco Bay and not really too concerned about the noise, traffic, particulate matter, etc., etc., from the bridge and the traffic of the bridge. And that’s fine except that we still had some problems. Again, the noise was excessive. So they came to us looking for a waiver of the Environmental Impact Statement.

And in going through the environmental review record, we found testing and analysis that showed that the air quality was poor. There had been site contamination primarily from its proximity to this transportation facility. So there was lead from the years when lead was in gasoline, and some other hydrocarbon spilled on the ground from the parking – the subsequent uses. In looking at the neighborhood in the larger context, again from the statutory checklist, we found it was a food desert – that there were no grocery stores and other retailers within a reasonable distance. Very low-income residents, negative impacts, we’ve got disproportionality – so we said, “Environmental justice concerns, what are you going to do about it?”

And what they did was address each of our concerns. With the food desert, they pointed out that the transit system operated every ten minutes and that it was a direct shot to a shopping area that was therefore convenient to this particular site. There was open space and a park nearby also that was also on that transit line, that the soil contamination will be removed and the site would be clean prior to occupancy.

The air quality was a little more involved. They had provided central air conditioning of course, but the intake ducts for the air conditioning system had special filters installed that would filter out the particulate matter from the traffic. And each of the units had positive air pressure so that when the door was open and someone was coming in or out, that the poor air outside the unit would be pushed out by the positive air pressure. And therefore the indoor air quality would be relatively good. They had even built noise barriers on the roof for some outdoor uses – a barbecue area that they planned for the top of the building. They addressed all the issues. They mitigated them at a time when it was relatively easy to make minor adjustments to the project, and this project was built.

This one wasn’t so lucky. Number four was proposed to be elderly rental housing for tenants that were 60% low-income tenants, so most of the building was going to be occupied by 60% AMI or less. The environmental issue was dioxin soil contamination. Many of you will equate that quickly to Times Beach, Missouri; and the town that was evacuated because of similar contamination. This is serious stuff. But it came to our attention because the noise was excessive. The environmental review record, the Phase I

Center for Social Innovation OEE EJ 08/28/2012 environmental site assessment that was provided with the documentation didn’t show soil contamination. HUD found out because during the public notification to the development of this particular parcel and documented the contamination from an adjacent wood processing plant. We frankly didn’t believe it when we saw it, and then we looked into it a little bit deeper and a little bit deeper. And the next three letters that came out were OMG. So the result of this was that the project funding was denied. The source that wood processing plant was about a half acre adjacent, and that cleanup cost – to an industrial level now – cost $2.5 million. The remainder of the site was six and a half acres that the elderly housing was proposed on.

So that public notification for anyone that questioned the need for public notification, got in the newspapers, saved the State and the Department tens of millions of dollars. The State and EPA are now coordinating the cleanup, and the six families that lived in that adjacent parcel were notified of the exposure. And the State is working with them to let them know what their options are. This is a success story and this is a project that wasn’t built. So, good things can come from the due diligence and the analysis that we’re proposing here.

The fifth example – the last example I wanted to point out to you is a little bit different again. This is a redevelopment of public housing through a Hope VI project. And the goals of Hope VI for those of you that aren’t familiar are the deconcentration of poverty and the mixture of incomes and just in general creating strong communities and strong neighborhoods. In fact, the latest iteration of Hope VI is the Choice Neighborhoods Program – similar kinds of goals. There’s a little bit more of a commercial component to try and generate more jobs. But the same kinds of ideas -- the blending of HUD projects into the larger neighborhood is the idea.

The environmental issues at this particular site were that it was severely distressed, crime-ridden, and blighted. So it had an effect on not only the insular community, but also the surrounding neighborhood property values and just livability generally. Let me show you a couple of slides that illustrate some of the issues.

This image is the proposed plan for the River Garden Community in New Orleans. And the bottom of that plan is where the controversy is. The proposal that the community was not informed about until after the demolition was to create a Wal-Mart on the site of the former public housing. There had been an environmental review done. And when this news came out about the retail anchor, that environmental review was reopened for three reasons – to look at the National Environmental Policy Act, to look at historic preservation issues of putting what is typically a very large box retail, non-descript architecturally, in this neighborhood adjacent to Garden District, and also environmental justice.

The environmental justice concerns here were that this large national retailer was going to disproportionately influence or affect the minority small business owners in the neighborhood and create an environment in which they couldn't compete and therefore would go out of business. A very large project – and as you might imagine, this actually went court. And the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals upheld this project plan in favor of HUD. And a couple of other levels of court, including the Supreme Court, denied the request to see it because they agreed with it.

So when we looked at the disproportionality, the courts had decided for us that that wasn’t an issue; and therefore the economic impact to the minority businesses was found to be unfounded. And therefore, the project went forward.

We’re reaching the end – resource links. I wanted to point out where the new environmental justice strategy is located. There’s a link there. The Office of Environmental Energy has developed a suite of tools to help you work through the environmental review process. The goal of that effort is to change the environmental review from a paperwork burden to a real planning tool so that you can see what if scenarios of changing different project parameters. It’s very robust, it’s very helpful, and it takes hours out of the environmental review process. I want to bring your attention to that. I hope you use it. I hope you’re already familiar with it, but it’s a really good tool to become familiar with. Make sure you check it out.

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The HUD User Data Set is the place where you can find the information about low-income neighborhoods and in particular the qualified census tracks. So take a look at those. There may be some changes to that coming. I’ve talked to our policy development and research group to see if they can help us out with a little more detailed information about that. Mainly it’s that the number of qualified census tracks is limited by statute, so they’re going to document that somehow – they’re still working this out – we just talked last week. But they’re going to document what the other eligible census tracks are and show them to you so that you can find the low-income neighborhoods regardless of their statutory eligibility. So stay tuned for that one.

The Council on Environmental Qualities/Environmental Justice guidance is online and available to you.

This last one is the teaser I told you about earlier at the beginning of the webinar – American Journal on Public Health Environmental Justice Compendium is the result of a conference that the Environmental Protection Agency sponsored a couple of years ago to find out the state of environmental justice research. There are a lot of good papers in that particular article. That issue is dedicated to environmental justice. And you’ll find a lot of answers to your questions in there. You’ll also find just how important some of this research is and how deeply it’s affecting public policy. It’s a really good issue, and I highly recommend it.

Within the analysis though, there are a couple of tools that the Environmental Protection Agency has made available to you that I wanted to point out. One of them is EJView, and the other is NEPAssist. Both of these are geographic information systems, mapping spatial analysis tools that will allow you to find minority populations, low-income populations. And again, it doesn't meet HUD’s definition of low- income; but it will give you a good start on whether you’ve got an issue or not. If NEPAssist says that it’s low-income, you’ve got a good reason to go to HUD User and find out if it meet’s HUD’s definition or not. So it might be a good screening tool for you.

I wanted to leave you with one thought before we go to questions. And that is that another part of the Executive Order on environmental justice talks about the need to provide research and information to communities so they can make informed decisions about our projects. That is a very important part of the Executive Order, and it’s something that HUD and all Federal agencies take very seriously. It’s one of the reasons why EPA did that conference on the state of research. They fund a lot of research, and we all take advantage of that. Through the reconvening of the Interagency Working Group, there’s been a lot of discussion and coordination among agencies. You’re going to see a lot of activity in the near future on environmental justice, and we hope that you can take advantage of that because looking through these questions that you’ve sent in, there seems to be quite a few of them. And hopefully we can work through them.

Thank you, Jim. This is Kathryn Au from the Office of Environment and Energy. And our first question for Jim is: “Is environmental justice a law or a regulation?”

Thank you, Kathryn. It’s neither. It’s an Executive Order. It is a directive from the President to the Federal agencies. It cascades down to the responsible entities who are operating as Federal agencies through the Assumption authority. And it applies only to Federal agencies because of that.

Okay, and as a reminder, you can submit questions by entering text into the Q&A box on the left-hand side. And our next question is: “Do we have to do an EJ analysis for disaster response?”

No. Now, the immediate response to protect life and to help injured people, no, there’s no environmental justice requirements for that. What you would have to be concerned about is in that transition phase when you’re going to long-term recovery, then you’d need to – when you start talking about rebuilding the community, when you start talking about something beyond an immediate response to shelter and care, then you need to start thinking about environmental justice.

Center for Social Innovation OEE EJ 08/28/2012

Okay. “Can data about the community come from the community residents themselves? Are personal interviews good enough to identify the neighborhood as an EJ community?”

No, I really want an authoritative data source. I really want preferably a local government source or a Federal government source. The reason for that is to minimize any kind of anecdotal biases that might creep into the data there. A lot of folks may remember when communities were different than they were. I know my dad grew up in an area that was primarily a neighborhood for Polish immigrants. And the days of Polish immigrants are long past. But when you ask him a question, he still remembers what he remembers from his childhood. And while it is historically valid, it’s not current. So those kind of anecdotal problems will creep in if you just rely on personal interviews. I think they can color the data that you have, they can influence it. And they’re certainly valuable, but they’re not a sole source.

Okay, and the next question: “What kinds of mitigation are appropriate?”

That is something you’re going to have to work out with the community. It could be a variety of different things. It’s really going to be based on the community’s values and needs. There are also some intangibles that may not directly equate to one another. I’m thinking about things like maybe pedestrian safety because you’re increasing the traffic in the area. And the mitigation might be a jobs program to help people find work or to develop trades.

Now, those wouldn't necessarily equate. It’s not something you could define as an exaction for the development for example. But it might be something that would be very valuable and useful to the community. It might be the only way they’re going to get something like that, and it might be very helpful to them and in fact might be a perfectly valid mitigation. So it really depends on the situation on the ground, the conditions that you’re dealing with, and the folks that are going to be affected by them. Be creative. Be innovative and listen.

Okay, “How does HUD consider benefits counterbalancing the negative effects?”

Again, it’s going to depend on the impacts and the needs in the community. I don't think there’s a really clear-cut answer for that one, but most of it we’ve done to date has been case by case. And we look very closely at each individual project to determine the best response given the circumstances.

Next question: “Does EJ community mean the whole city?”

No, it’s the immediate area where the impacts are felt. As you may recall from the demographic analysis that I talked about earlier, the neighborhood where the effects will be found needs to be compared to the demographics of the larger jurisdiction to determine whether you’re in an EJ community or not. So it’s a little more localized than that. And you’re really going to have to think about the impacts themselves to see just how far they extend. That may be one of those where you need to look case by case at what’s going on. Keep in mind physical barriers. The impacts may be constrained by those barriers, just like pedestrian movement would be constrained by a highway. So it really does involve what the impact is and the geography the impact occurs in.

Okay, and the next question: “Aren’t windshield surveys useful in supporting the data? (e.g., the presence of non-English signs or marquees can be a strong indicator that minority populations are present).

Indicator, yes – determinant, no – you’re going to need an authoritative source to tell us who’s there. Seeing signs in Vietnamese or in Spanish really isn’t going to be sufficient to say that it’s a minority community. It’s an indicator, though. I agree with that.

Okay, from your illustrative application number three, there’s a question: “Did they lease up all the units?”

Center for Social Innovation OEE EJ 08/28/2012

Number three? Let’s take a look at it. As far as I know, they did lease up all the units. From my recollection, it was a very well-conceived project. I have no reason to believe they didn’t lease up all the units.

Okay, next question: “What is disproportionate impact? Is 51% low-income or minority disproportionate impact under EJ?”

No, I wouldn't say it’s 51%. The example I’ve got in the notes is Atlanta, for example, is 54% Black; 38.4% White. Now, I would expect that to be appreciably different – let’s put it that way. I don’t have a good percentage for what makes it minority versus not, but appreciably different. And if you’ve got 70% minority in a 50% minority city, that’s appreciably different. 55% out of 50 in the jurisdiction, maybe not. Best I can do for you, sorry.

Okay, next question: “The vast majority of our CDBG projects go to sidewalks. How much community involvement is reasonable or necessary?”

In sidewalks – you’re going to talk to them anyway, right? So I don't think there’s going to be a whole lot of environmental impact from sidewalks. But you’re doing an environmental review for that program, and you’re talking to them anyway. This is not a separate analysis.

Okay, here’s a long one: “How do you consider an existing site under the Emergency Home Repair Program? Example: Low-income residents live in an existing house and will not move out until the house falls down. They do not care about the train that rumbles by or the industrial site down the street. How do you address the EJ portion of the environmental review so that the roof can be replaced and the family can continue to reside in the Affordable Housing unit?”

That is a long one. Could you give it to me again, please?

All right. “How do you consider an existing site under the Emergency Home Repair Program? For example: Low-income residents live in the existing house and will not move out until the house falls down. They do not care about the train that rumbles by or the industrial site down the street. How do you address the EJ portion of the environmental review so that the roof can be replaced and the family can continue to reside in the Affordable Housing unit?”

Well, maintenance projects are going to be exempt so you’re not going to have to worry about that for those kinds of projects. If the maintenance should get so bad that they need to be relocated, then the relocation would be subject to environmental justice review – want to make sure that they’re not going into an environment that’s going to concentrate poverty or put them in a situation that’s less desirable than they’re in. It’s hard to imagine that from your example, though. But the relocation or new construction, all those things that would require an environmental analysis or be subject to the related laws and authorities, would require EJ -- maintenance would not.

Okay, on the Example 5 which we’re seeing right now on the screen: “Do you have data on how those minority owned businesses ended up being affected or not?”

For the most part, I think they did all right. From what I was told, the neighboring businesses were somewhat specialized and they had a clientele that they could rely on. And while they may have lost some portions of their business, they were able to adapt and worked out fine.

One other little thing that we need to consider – I think is important to consider anyway – is that during Katrina, this particular Wal-Mart was one of the businesses that kept the residents that were still in town going. They were the ones providing services when other businesses weren’t available. So they really provided a service, and they really brought value to the community at a time when they really needed it. So it’s not the kind of thing that you can take into account beforehand. But they proved themselves to be a good neighbor in the long run.

Center for Social Innovation OEE EJ 08/28/2012

Next question: “Wouldn't the new HUD CPD ConPlan Mapping Tool also be an excellent resource for these reviews?”

Absolutely, yes. It’s a fairly new tool, so I’m not familiar with the level of analysis and data that’s available in ConPlan. But I think it is becoming the tool that we’ve been waiting for for a long time. I think it is really a project planning tool that we can rely on and use effectively. So yes, I would encourage you to do that.

Okay, next question: “Can Jim expand on the definition of EJ community? What about a project for low- income housing located in a high-income neighborhood but along a highway? In essence, some of the low-income housing will buffer the high-income housing. Would this not be an EJ issue even though the community as shown on a map is not low-income?

One more time?

“Can Jim expand on the definition of EJ community? What about a project for low-income housing located in a high-income neighborhood but along a highway? In essence, some of the low-income housing will buffer the high-income housing. Would this not be an EJ issue even though the community as shown on a map is not low-income?

I think it would be an EJ issue because that low-income project is going to be disproportionately impacted by the highway – air quality and noise, in particular, and probably soil contamination as well. I would certainly expect to see an EJ analysis for that project.

Okay, “The Executive Order 12898 talks about tribal government. How does HUD address tribal government? Does HUD use only Federally recognized tribes or others too?”

Yeah, Federally recognized tribes.

Okay, “How do adverse effects on historic resources affect EJ compliance – not directly impacting persons but physical resources from low-income areas?”

There’s a lot of value in historic properties. In addition to character and history, they can provide economic benefits through tourism and a variety of other things. So the effects of projects on historic properties are important if it’s an EJ community with historic impacts. Frankly, I would look to the Section 106 process. The Historic Preservation Act is a law; it has more teeth and more requirements than the Executive Order. I would look to the Section 106 process first. And if that’s satisfied, chances are the EJ concerns would be satisfied as well.

Okay, and just a reminder, you can submit questions using the Q&A box on your left. We have a few more.

“Does HUD address other statutes when addressing EJ? For example, are other protected groups like the disabled under the American Disabilities Act and the young and elderly under the Age Discrimination Act covered with the minority and low-income population?”

I’m sorry, Kathryn, I’m going to need that one again.

“Does HUD address other statutes when addressing Environmental Justice? For example, are other protected groups like the disabled under ADA and the young and elderly under the Age Discrimination Act covered with the minority and low-income population?”

No, we have other statutes that take care of that – Title VI for example and ADA, as mentioned. The Executive Order on Environmental Justice strictly covers minority and low-income populations and Native

Center for Social Innovation OEE EJ 08/28/2012

American groups with subsistence concerns. So Native American, minority, and low-income are the three groups within the Executive Order’s concern.

Okay, “How do we approach existing buildings boarded up more than five years, for example, being redeveloped to help the surrounding housing increase in value?”

Just on the face of that, I can’t see an environmental justice concern. I think the usual HUD programs would apply there. We’re trying to combat blight and strengthen communities generally. So whether it’s rehab or renovation or demolition and reconstruction, I think the community is served by occupied good quality housing. And that’s the best way to strengthen that community.

Okay, and I think you might have covered this earlier, but there’s another request to define EJ community.

Yes, I did -- minority, low-income, and Native American populations.

Okay, “How should one address a new construction housing development that is on a site that has existing ground water contamination from an offsite source? The contamination is not going to be removed, but rather the site will be sealed from vapor intrusion into the new improvement. In this instance, there is no impact from the construction of the new building. Is this an EJ issue?

I would look to the residents of the project, and in particular, disproportionality. Groundwater contamination typically affects an entire community rather than just one parcel. So I would start there. If there is still an environmental justice issue, the contamination can be dealt with a number of ways. Then there’s guidance from Program Office on how to deal with that. Active remediation on a HUD parcel is not allowed. So pumps and groundwater filtering might be a Program Office determination.

Okay, and I think there’s another question that you may have covered a bit, but: “Can you clarify the low- income area definition? Is it 60% of area mean income as described in the slides or area median income?”

I believe the official term is “area median gross income.” Go to HUD User. They have all the definitions and all the maps and tables there. And the link is on the resource page.

Okay, that’s all we have left for questions. I’ll wait another ten seconds to see if anything else comes in. If not, I think we’ll turn it back over to Mark.

Wonderful, thank you, Kathryn.

Thank you, Kathryn.

And thanks very much, Jim. That was a good presentation, appreciate it.

Thanks, everybody, for taking the time to attend today’s webinar and also for those great questions. We understand a number of attendees were initially directed to a broken link and unable to participate in the first part of this presentation. And we really apologize for those technical difficulties and the inconvenience. For those of you who did miss the first part of the presentation or for anybody who wants to use this as a resource, the slides, a recording of this presentation including the notes will be available on the HUD CPD environment website. And those links are on the left side of your screen in the Q&A box.

We will send you an email notification once all the materials are available on the web site. Please do complete the follow-up survey so we can get your ideas and thoughts for future webinar topics. Please also join us next Wednesday, September 5th, for the next webinar in this series – Protecting our Natural Resources, Complying with the Wild and Scenic Rivers Act, Farmland Protection Policy Act, and Endangered Species Act.

Center for Social Innovation OEE EJ 08/28/2012

Once again, on behalf of the Office of Community Planning and Development, thank you very much and enjoy the rest of your day.