(The Center Square) — A bill promoting environmental justice will likely be heading to the governor’s desk, despite the Trump administration forcing the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to put its environmental justice workers on leave.
Sen. Lamont Babgy, D-Richmond, is carrying a bill this session that would require larger cities and counties in the commonwealth to consider incorporating an environmental justice strategy in their comprehensive plans each time they’re under review.
A comprehensive plan is a policy document a locality creates that provides a roadmap for how it plans to grow and develop into the future. Virginia law has required since 1980 that all local governments develop and adopt a comprehensive plan, and it also stipulates that the plans must be reviewed at least once every five years.
The term environmental justice “essentially means that everyone … has the right to the same environmental protections and benefits,” according to the Natural Resources Defense Council – but with an emphasis on addressing historic environmental inequities affecting low-income communities and communities of color.
Environmental justice became codified in Virginia law in 2020 through the Virginia Environmental Justice Act, which makes it state policy to ensure that environmental justice is “carried out throughout the Commonwealth,” with a focus on low-income communities, communities of color, and especially those near major sources of pollution. It also defines environment as “the natural, cultural, social, economic, and political assets or components of a community.”
If a locality decides to adopt an environmental justice strategy, Bagby’s bill enumerates what that strategy must include. The strategy must identify its low-income communities and communities of color and ways of addressing their “unique or compounded health risks” from their physical environment; but it must also promote civic engagement in those communities, as well as work to address any other needs they might have – like access to broadband and job training.
Bagby proposed a similar bill last year that passed the General Assembly, but received a veto from Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin.
“Localities have more than sufficient powers to regulate their communities through the comprehensive planning process under existing law,” Youngkin wrote in his veto message.
While there is a high likelihood of another veto from Youngkin if this year’s bill passes (it advanced from a House of Delegates committee Friday after passing the Senate), the General Assembly’s Democratic majority has still passed a lot of partisan legislation. Legislators will be able to point back to their track record from this session when the House of Delegates is up for reelection in the fall.
