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President Biden on Friday announced the creation of a White House Office of Environmental Justice, one of several actions to address the unequal burden that people of color carry from environmental hazards.“Every federal agency must take into account environmental and health impacts on communities and work to prevent those negative impacts,” Mr. Biden told a crowd of applauding activists gathered at a Rose Garden ceremony. “Environmental justice will be the mission of the entire government.” Richard Moore, a co-coordinator of the Los Jardines Institute in Albuquerque, N.M., and a co-chairman of the White House Environmental Justice Advisory Council, said the executive order was “answering a decades-long call to put environmental justice at the heart of federal policy.”

Wracked by some of the highest poverty rates in Albuquerque, New Mexico, the predominantly Chicano community of Mountain View, seven miles south of downtown, may seem an unlikely setting for a national wildlife refuge. The 11-square-mile area some 6,000 people call home also contains the state’s largest sewage treatment facility, several chemical manufacturing, asphalt, and concrete plants, sprawling auto salvage lots, bulk-fuel terminals, two Superfund sites and more than 40 other industrial sites regulated by the EPA. Not surprisingly, there are high levels of air pollution and groundwater contamination here.But thanks to decades of grassroots efforts, it is now also home to the first-ever national wildlife refuge being built, literally, from the ground up and in collaboration with the community it serves.

Today, President Biden signed the executive order Revitalizing Our Nation’s Commitment to Environmental Justice for All, directly incorporating many recommendations of the White House Environmental Justice Advisory Council. The executive order makes clear that the pursuit of environmental justice is a duty of all executive branch agencies and should be incorporated into their missions, directs agencies to consider the cumulative health impacts of pollution on communities, and directs agencies to strengthen their direct engagement with impacted communities. The White House also published an Environmental Justice Scorecard and announced new Justice40 covered programs.

Today, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) proposed a rule to significantly reduce emissions of toxic and other harmful air pollution from chemical plants, intended to reduce air toxics-related cancer risks in fenceline communities. Coming Clean and the Environmental Justice Health Alliance for Chemical Policy Reform (EJHA) applauded the EPA for committing to take action to dramatically reduce emissions of cancer-causing chemicals from chemical and polymer plants. Under the proposed rule, these facilities will be required to conduct fenceline air monitoring to ensure compliance with new regulations, a priority for fenceline communities who have testified and submitted comments to the EPA in recent years.

In the wake of the East Palestine, Ohio train derailment, Governor Mike DeWine called on Congress to look into why the rural village didn’t know ahead of time they had volatile chemicals coming through town. “We should know when we have trains carrying hazardous materials through the state of Ohio,” DeWine said at a press conference. This information is out there, but it’s probably not what the governor had in mind. With the derailment of the Norfolk Southern train receiving international attention, more railroad communities are now asking what is traveling through their backyard. Stephanie Herron, a national organizer with the collective Environmental Justice Health Alliance for Chemical Policy Reform said in a statement that neighboring communities refuse to accept these events as a fact of life. “These issues aren’t new to the people who live near hazardous facilities who have been speaking up about the urgent need to transition to safer chemicals to prevent disasters in their communities,“ Herron said. “What’s new is that more people are paying attention.”