Stand Up for Disadvantaged Communities

New York State’s 2019 Climate Leadership and Communities Protection Act (CLCPA)—one of the most ambitious laws of its kind in the world—mandated that disadvantaged communities (DACs) receive 40% of the overall benefits of state spending on clean energy and energy efficiency programs. As New York works to bring the CLCPA’s mandates to life, the state Climate Justice Working Group (CJWG) is playing a crucial role in developing criteria to accurately identify DACs bearing the impacts of disproportionate environmental pollution and energy inequality in our state.

Help amplify our call for climate justice by using the action ...

New York State’s 2019 Climate Leadership and Communities Protection Act (CLCPA)—one of the most ambitious laws of its kind in the world—mandated that disadvantaged communities (DACs) receive 40% of the overall benefits of state spending on clean energy and energy efficiency programs. As New York works to bring the CLCPA’s mandates to life, the state Climate Justice Working Group (CJWG) is playing a crucial role in developing criteria to accurately identify DACs bearing the impacts of disproportionate environmental pollution and energy inequality in our state.

Help amplify our call for climate justice by using the action tool below to comment on NY State’s DAC criteria before August 5! Specifically, your comments will:

Support indicators and methods that increase the representation of rural communities in the final DAC designations;
Call upon the CJWG to commit to working with appropriate agencies to increase the quality and quantity of data available in rural regions of New York State for further iterations of this process;
Uplift the CJWG’s respect for government-to-government relationships between the state and Indigenous Nations by leaving the final decision over how they are included in the final DAC designations up to Indigenous Nations; and
Call upon the CJWG to develop and adopt scoring analyses that reflect the potential for environmental burden exposures and climate change risks across census tracts.

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Email the NYS Climate Justice Working Group

Adding your comment to the CJWG’s draft DAC criteria will help define and protect disadvantaged communities in New York State to help deliver climate justice. Please speak out by adding your comment before August 5th to ensure that no communities are overlooked in this critical phase of the CLCPA implementation process.

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To the New York State Climate Justice Working Group,

I'm writing to request that you prioritize the following in the final criteria for disadvantaged communities:

1. Support for Environmental Justice in Rural Communities:
As the DAC criteria move beyond a draft to their final form, it is essential to include indicators that represent rural communities, such as those in the Catskill region, in addition to key indicators regarding race and income. Indicators included in the draft DAC criteria that support this goal include: agricultural land use, housing vacancy rates, driving time to hospitals or urgent/critical care, percent of adults age 65+, and percent of homes without internet access. These indicators must be included in the final DAC criteria to ensure that rural communities are included for the purpose of co-pollutant reductions and to support GHG emissions reductions, regulatory impact statements, and the allocation of investments related to Article 75 of the Environmental Conservation Law.

In addition to these indicators, the Climate Justice Working Group (CJWG) is using specific strategies to include greater representation of rural communities for the purpose of directing programs, energy investments, and economic opportunities to high-risk communities. The first is comparing census tracts’ relative score compared with other tracts within NYC and the rest of the state to include more rural census tracts in the final DAC designations. The second is through the inclusion of low income homes outside of DACs for the purpose of state energy and energy efficiency investment purposes. These two strategies are essential to ensure upstate communities have equitable opportunity to receive investments through the state's overall benefits of spending on clean energy and energy efficiency programs. They must be included in the CJWG’s final DAC criteria.

While these indicators and methods for expanding access of CLCPA benefits of spending within rural communities are important for creating equity between upstate and downstate communities, there are still inconsistencies between urban and rural areas in terms of the data available for many indicators used in the DAC designations. For example, particulate matter (2.5) air concentration (PM2.5) is a critical indicator for air quality and related health disparities, yet the Catskill region (defined by Delaware, Greene, Otsego, Schoharie, Sullivan and Ulster counties) lacks air quality monitors at the state and federal levels to read PM2.5. For indicators such as PM2.5 that rely on data that is inconsistent between rural and urban areas, the CJWG must commit to working with appropriate agencies to increase the quality and quantity of data available in rural regions of New York State.

2. Support for Indigenous Nations’ Governmental Autonomy:
As the DAC criteria move beyond a draft to their final form, it is crucial that Indigenous Nations determine their involvement in this process. Recognizing that Indigenous peoples have experienced unique histories of racism and discrimination in the colonial context of the United States, the CWJG has established two methods for including Indigenous peoples in the DAC definition. These are: 1. As individual members of census tracts, and 2. As citizens of sovereign nations or residents of Nation controlled territory (with an excess of 5% of the tract area defined as Nation controlled territory).

In addition to establishing this baseline for inclusion, the CJWG also recognizes that Indigenous peoples’ inclusion in the final draft DAC designation should only come second to respecting the government-to-government relationship between New York State and the various Indigenous Nations. This position must be uplifted to support Indigenous Nations’ governmental autonomy in respect to their relationship with New York State.

3. Call to Increase Recognition of Burdens and Risks Across Geographic Borders:
As the DAC criteria move beyond a draft to their final form, it is essential that the scoring approach for environmental burdens and climate change risks captures the potential for exposure across geographic borders. The current list of indicators that represent these environmental burdens and climate change risks is thorough and should be included in the final DAC criteria. However, there are communities exposed to pollution and related health impacts from remediation sites and/or landfills that score 0% on their percentile ranks for these indicators because they are located in neighboring tracts to where the facility is hosted.

To ensure that the scoring approach in the final DAC designations reflects the potential for environmental burden exposures and climate change risks across geographic borders, the CJWG must develop and adopt analyses that more accurately score census tracts’ percentile ranks for these indicators.

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