White House unveils tool to determine eligibility for environmental justice aid

The White House Council on Environmental Quality on Thursday night announced a tool aimed at identifying communities that qualify as disadvantaged under the Biden administration’s environmental justice initiative.

The criteria, unveiled by the White House on a press call Thursday, include a number of axes on which a community can be declared disadvantaged. The tool includes 21 indicators and the threshold to be considered disadvantaged in that category.

For example, a community is considered disadvantaged in the climate change category if it is low-income and in the 90^th percentile for expected building, agriculture or population loss according to the Federal Emergency Management Agency. A community is disadvantaged in the clean transportation category if it is low-income and in the 90^th percentile for diesel particulate matter or traffic proximity/volume.

The CEQ defines a “low-income” community as one that is in its census tract’s 65th percentile or above for rate of residents with incomes twice the federal poverty level or less.

The tool also includes socioeconomic metrics such as unemployment rate, rate of high school degrees and median house value in communities.

White House officials confirmed to reporters on the call that the designations would be entirely based on environmental and socioeconomic indicators, with race not considered as a factor. While environmental justice issues frequently break down along racial lines due to the legacy of historic inequalities and neglect of minority communities, the White House would open itself to legal challenges if it allocated federal funds using race as a metric.

“We are trying to set up a framework and a tool that will survive, and one that still connects to what the on-the-ground impacts are that people are experiencing,” CEQ chairwoman Brenda Mallory told The New York Times earlier this week. “I feel that we can do that based on race-neutral criteria.”