How computer mapping could help Biden find and fix polluted
neighborhoods
Send a link to a friend
[April 13, 2021]
By Valerie Volcovici
(Reuters) - Diagnosed with asthma at 8
years old, Karlaine Francisco grew up thinking everyone had it.
Her friends in south Stockton, California, also carried inhalers and
suffered coughing and wheezing fits. “I would tell people, ‘Oh yeah, I
have asthma,’” said Francisco, now a 17-year-old high school senior.
“And then, my friend would be like, ‘Yeah, I have asthma too.’”
After California began making environmental data available through an
online mapping tool, Francisco and others in her Filipino immigrant
community realized their chronically under-invested neighborhood Little
Manila suffered high air pollution and groundwater contamination. It
also suffered some of the state’s highest poverty, unemployment and
asthma rates.
California’s mapping tool is now a model for President Joe Biden’s
government, as it executes a $2 trillion infrastructure plan that could
channel billions into communities around the country like Little Manila.
In January, one week into his presidency, Biden ordered that 40% of
clean energy investment go toward such communities. With experts
realizing these areas first needed to be identified, Biden’s directives
also called for the Environmental Protection Agency to upgrade its
mapping tool, called EJScreen.
A $20 million bill to pay for the software and data collection was
introduced a day later by Senators Ed Markey and Tammy Duckworth and
Representative Cori Bush.
“We have a responsibility to taxpayers not to waste their tax dollars,”
Duckworth told Reuters. “The mapping tool is critical to establish the
areas where we need to do the most remediation.”
INFORMATION IS POWER
As private companies including insurers and real estate firms launch
their own satellites and deploy legions of researchers and factfinders,
access to data on climate risks or environmental pollution is
increasingly seen as a benefit for the wealthy or privileged.
The remedy, community leaders say, is to make such information public.
Only then can people advocate for themselves.
For Little Manila, access to local demographic and environmental data
through the state's CalEnviroScreen tool helped to secure $100,000 from
the state to teach asthma sufferers how to examine air filters, search
for mold spores and better manage the condition.
For Francisco, access to public data gave her awareness of the
industries triggering her asthma attacks. She started avoiding outdoor
sports and instead practiced indoor volleyball and figure skating.
“We all grew up by the port, and we all grew up by all these factories
that have all these toxic pollutants in the air,” she said. She realized
why she had asthma “when I became more educated on these factors."
Community activists say California's mapping tool helped tell a story
about why northern Stockton has trees and green spaces while Little
Manila does not, and why hospital ER visits for asthma were 2.4 times
more frequent in neighborhoods like theirs than in areas with the lowest
asthma visits, according to a 2020 study by the National Institutes of
Health. (https://bit.ly/2PTm57r)
“We’re trying to get our community knowledgeable about these issues so
they can take action,” said Dillon Delvo, a co-founder of the community
group Little Manila Rising. He stood on a sunbaked sidewalk in front of
the community’s recreation hall and museum harkening back to the 1920s,
when the neighborhood boomed with new Filipino businesses and attracted
migrant farm laborers from the surrounding San Joaquin Valley.
[to top of second column]
|
Karlaine Francisco, 17, who was diagnosed with asthma at the age of
eight, stands for a portrait at McKinley Park in Stockton,
California, U.S., March 12, 2021. REUTERS/Brittany Hosea-Small
In the 1930s, a discriminatory lending practice referred to as
“redlining” began nationwide, making minority and immigrant
communities ineligible for home loans. That deprived neighborhoods
like Little Manila of investment and property tax revenue, Delvo
said. And when Stockton launched urban redevelopment in the 1950s
and 1960s, parts of Little Manila were knocked down in 1968 to make
way for the Crosstown Freeway.
“That freeway destroyed our community, and it's still killing people
today,” Delvo said, pointing to the elevated roadway perched atop
concrete pillars, with trucks and trailers trundling overhead.
The data tool draws clear links between high-pollution areas and
historic redlining, he said. On the map, the neighborhood jumps out
in red for its pollution levels and socioeconomic indicators.
Wealthier coastal spots, such as the San Francisco Bay Area, appear
in green.
“A lot of history and public policy decisions have created those
conditions,” said Elaine Labson, health equity director at Little
Manila Rising.
One of the proposals in Biden’s infrastructure plan calls for $20
billion to be spent in neighborhoods that, like Little Manila, have
been isolated or damaged by highway projects.
MAPPING CHALLENGES
Adapting the federal tool to resemble California’s will require a
major overhaul.
The 2009 federal tool does not draw on public health and
socioeconomic data, and does not attempt to gauge levels of need,
said Matt Tejada, director of the EPA’s Office of Environmental
Justice.
During the Trump administration, which proposed scrapping the EPA
environmental justice budget, agency members worked on their own
time to maintain the tool.
As staff at Biden’s EPA hold meetings with California officials to
learn from the state’s experience, advocates hope they will focus
not only on California’s successes but also on the shortcomings
flagged over the years.
Some rural California areas, for example, do not report water and
pesticide data. And nowhere does the state track race - data inputs
advocates argue would further sharpen the tool.
Supporters have also urged the inclusion of data on police
interactions and violent crime, because polluted areas typically
receive less investment and so tend to have higher crime rates.
Police interactions “make for an unsafe environment, just as unsafe
as living in a house with lead paint,” said Missouri Congresswoman
Bush. “Gun violence is a result of environmental injustice, not just
an indicator of it.”
One Little Manila Rising coordinator cautioned against relying too
much on a data mapping tool.
“We're being mapped to death,” Matt Holmes said. “But if we don't
give power to the people that are being injured by this history,
then we're just we're highlighting a problem and not doing anything
about it.”
(Reporting by Valerie Volcovici in Washington; Additional reporting
by Nathan Frandino in Stockton, California; Editing by Katy Daigle
and Lisa Shumaker)
[© 2021 Thomson Reuters. All rights
reserved.] Copyright 2021 Reuters. All rights reserved. This material may not be published,
broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
Thompson Reuters is solely responsible for this content. |