Hill Heat

Register for The 2022 National Environmental Justice Conference and Training Program at the Washington Marriott at Metro Center

Day 2 Agenda

8:00 a.m.—4:00 p.m.

Exhibit Hall Open

Conference Facilitator Ms. Carolyn Sawyer Communications Strategist Tom Sawyer Company

8:30 a.m.—9:15 a.m.

PANEL: Community and College Partners Program (C2P2): Developing Alternative Energy Options for Indigenous People in Tyonek, Alaska

Michael Burns Founder/Executive Director C2P2

Margaret McCurdy Graduate Student, Peace Engineering Program Drexel University Philadelphia, PA

Joan Nguyen Graduate Student, Peace Engineering Program Drexel University Philadelphia, PA

Kate Ryan Graduate Student, Peace Engineering Program Drexel University Philadelphia, PA

9:15 a.m.—9:55a.m.

Introduction of Keynote Speakers

Dr. Melinda Downing Environmental Justice Program Manager U.S. Department of Energy

KEYNOTE REMARKS

The Honorable James E. Clyburn Majority Whip (Democrat, 6th District, South Carolina)

The Honorable Jennifer Granholm Secretary U.S. Department of Energy

9:55 a.m.—10:05 a.m.

BREAK

10:05 a.m.—11:15 a.m.

PANEL: Estimating Disproportionate Impacts of Climate Change on Childhood Asthma Rates Among Socially Vulnerable Populations in the U.S.

Margaret Black Abt Associates

Stefani L. Penn Industrial Economics, Inc. (IEc)

Lauren E. Gentile U.S. Environmental Protection Agency

Estimating the Benefits of Reduced Air Pollution During COVID-19 for Socially Vulnerable Populations in New York City.

David Cooley Abt Associates

11:15 a.m.—12:15 p.m.

PANEL: USDA Forest Service’s Environmental Justice and Climate Change Related Topics.

Elisabeth Grinspoon, Ph.D. Environmental Justice and Technology Transfer Specialist Office of Sustainability and Climate USDA Forest Service

Dixie Porter Deputy Director Office of Sustainability and Climate (OSC)

USDA Forest Service

12:15 p.m.—12:30 p.m.

BREAK

12:30 p.m.—1:45 p.m.

LUNCH

Introduction of Luncheon Keynote Speaker

Dr. Melinda Downing Environmental Justice Program Manager U.S. Department of Energy

KEYNOTE REMARKS

The Honorable David Turk Deputy Secretary United States Department of Energy Washington, D.C.

1:45 p.m. – 2:00 p.m.

BREAK

2:00 p.m. – 3:00 p.m.

PRESENTATIONS:

Approaches for Evaluating Environmental Justice Issues at the State Level

Lisa McDonald, PhD Senior Associate Abt Associates

Appliance Standards: The Best Climate Change Policy You’ve Never Heard Of

Madeline Parker Outreach & Coalition-Building Associate Appliance Standards Awareness Project (ASAP)

3:00 p.m.—4:00 p.m.

PRESENTATIONS:

Bridging America’s Outdoor Equity Gap

Diane Regas President and CEO The Trust for Public Land

In Defense of a Greenspace: Students Discover Agency in the Practice of Community-Engaged Technical Communication

Bob Hyland Associate Professor University of Cincinnati

DAY 2 – Thursday, March 10, 2022 TECHNICAL ASSISTANCE WORKSHOPS AND TRAINING PROGRAMS

Grand Ballroom Salon E

10:00 a.m.–-11:00 a.m.

What’s in My Neighborhood? How Communities Can Use EPA’s TRI Toxics Tracker to Identify Industrial Sources of Toxic Chemical Releases and Other Waste Management Activities.

EPA’s Toxics Release Inventory (TRI) Program provides a detailed, multimedia dataset covering annual releases and other waste management activities from over 20,000 facilities in the United States for hundreds of different toxic chemicals. EPA makes these data available to the public, which can help inform decision-making by government agencies, community groups, companies, and other stakeholders. This training workshop will provide users with a basic introduction to the TRI Program and what types of data and information are collected by the EPA, as well as a live demonstration of the online TRI Toxics Tracker tool. TRI Toxics Tracker can be used to answer a variety of questions all in one place, such as what toxic chemical releases are occurring in a particular community with EJ concerns and which facilities might be contributing to disproportionate releases potentially affecting nearby residents.

T.J. Pepping Abt Associates

11:15 a.m.—12:15 p.m.

Pragmatic Approaches: Reaching Students in Areas with Limited Broadband to Access College Education

Lack of broadband access is a limiting factor to academic advancement of a remarkable number of youths in rural areas in America and worldwide. It has been documented that in rural areas, nearly one-fourth of the population – 14.5 million people lack access to this service. In tribal areas, nearly one-third of the population lacks access. Even in areas where broadband is available, approximately 100 million Americans still do not subscribe (FCC 2022). Consequently, an outreach was conducted in a rural area (Marion) of South Carolina with ineffective or no access to broadband. Parents and their high schoolers were invited. During this event, we had on board from Allen University, officials from the admission office, financial aid office, the university counsellors, a faculty and one junior student from Allen University.

Application forms were already printed out and handed over to high schoolers during this outreach. Seven high school students completed the application form on the spot. The financial aid officer succeeded in assisting one of these seven students to complete her FAFSA right on the spot using our personal hotspot internet access provided at the outreach site. Application forms were given to the high school students that attended with the promise to share with their friends. It is uber-important for colleges to make concerted efforts in reaching suburbs with limited broadband access. Such that youths in these areas will not be left behind. This workshop intends to shed more light on pragmatic approaches employed to forestall bottlenecks encountered during the outreach.

Oluwole Ariyo, PhD Principal Investigator, Environmental Justice Institute Allen University

2:00 p.m.—4 p.m.

EJ & NEPA Workshop: Considering Cumulative Effects and EJ in the NEPA Process

Increasingly, decisionmakers are recognizing the importance of looking at projects in the context of prior impacts and developments within the community or region. Direct effects continue to be most important to decisionmakers, in part because they are more certain. Nonetheless, the importance of other environmental stressors requires the need to address cumulative impacts on environmental justice (EJ) populations. The purpose of the workshop is to increase understanding of cumulative effects consideration of environmental justice (EJ) populations in the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) review process. The specific focus is the importance of understanding cumulative effects are caused by the aggregate of past, present, and reasonably foreseeable future actions that, for many EJ populations, may last for many years beyond the life of the action that caused the effects. The goal is to provide an understanding of the principles of a cumulative effects analysis within Environmental Justice (EJ) communities.

The Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ) published their Phase 1 revisions to the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) Regulations which focused on a narrow set of changes to the 2020 regulations that restores some of the regulatory provisions from the 1978 NEPA Regulations. One of the changes restores the definition of “effects,” including use of the terms “direct,” “indirect,” and “cumulative” and removed potential limitations on effects analysis.

The NEPA Subcommittee of the White House Interagency Environmental Justice Council (WHEJAC) formally known as the Federal Interagency Working Group on Environmental Justice (EJ IWG), produced the “Promising Practices for EJ Methodologies in NEPA Reviews” (Promising Practices Report) and address various methodologies for addressing effects within an EJ analysis and will be utilized in this session.

The workshop is designed to address the changes in NEPA regulations, provide expectations for cumulative effects analysis and provide case study examples for cumulative effects.

Denise C. Freeman Co-chair, NEPA Committee, WH EJ Interagency Council Senior Advisor/Communications Liaison Office of Legacy Management U.S. Department of Energy

Jomar Maldonado Director for NEPA Council on Environmental Quality Executive Office of the President

Carolyn L. Nelson, P.E. Co-chair, NEPA Committee, WH EJ Interagency Council Sr. Project Development/Environmental Specialist Office of Project Development and Environmental Review USDOT-Federal Highway Administration

The Consumer Protection and Commerce Subcommittee will hold a hearing on Daylight Saving Time on Wednesday, March 9, at 10:15 a.m. (EST) in the John D. Dingell Room, 2123 of the Rayburn House Office Building. The hearing is entitled, “Changing Times: Revisiting Spring Forward, Fall Back.”

“Twice a year, in the spring and fall, people across the nation adjust their clocks and modify their schedules to adjust to the new time,” Pallone and Schakowsky said. “Historians will provide all sorts of justifications for why we do this, but increasingly our changing of the clocks twice a year is getting harder to explain. Next week, the Subcommittee will hear from a panel of experts on the impacts of springing forward and falling back, and whether it still makes sense in our modern times.”

Witnesses

• Beth Ann Malow, MD, Professor of Neurology and Pediatrics, Director, Vanderbilt Sleep Division, Vanderbilt University Medical Center
• Steve Calandrillo, Jeffrey and Susan Brotman Professor of Law, University of Washington School of Law
• Lyle Beckwith, Sr. Vice President, Government Relations, National Association of Convenience Stores

This hearing will examine how the findings of the latest reports on climate impacts underscore the urgent need to develop a national climate adaptation and resilience strategy. It will also focus on ways to activate all sectors and levels of government to deliver actionable climate risk science, information, and tools, while also helping drive funding and investment to vulnerable communities.

Witnesses:

• Dr. William Solecki, Professor, Department of Geography and Environmental Science, Hunter College, City University of New York (CUNY). An expert in urban environmental change, resilience, and adaptation, Dr. Solecki founded the CUNY Institute for Sustainable Cities, which works to make cities part of the solution to sustainability challenges. He was an author of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Working Group II’s Summary for Policymakers and chapters on climate risks to cities, and a coordinating lead author of the US National Climate Assessment chapter on Urbanization, Infrastructure, and Vulnerability.
• Dr. Lara J. Hansen, Executive Director and Chief Scientist, EcoAdapt. Dr. Hansen leads EcoAdapt’s work to support professionals in adaptation and management sectors. She serves on the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and is a United States Environmental Protection Agency Bronze Medalist. Dr. Hansen previously worked as the chief climate change scientist for the World Wildlife Fund, where she created their international Climate Change Impacts and Adaptation Program.
• Matthew Jewell, President, St. Charles Parish, Louisiana. Jewell was elected in 2019 as the chief executive of St. Charles Parish. He currently serves as the President of the Parishes Advocating for Coastal Endurance (P.A.C.E), an organization of more than 20 coastal parishes fighting for coastal restoration. Jewell previously served as a Legislative Advisor to the U.S. Department of Energy during the Trump Administration and as the District Director for Congressman Steve Scalise.
• Dr. Lauren Alexander Augustine, Executive Director, Gulf Research Program, National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine. An expert in water, natural disasters, and resilience, Dr. Augustine currently oversees the management and use of criminal funds from the Deepwater Horizon disaster. She previously led efforts to build community resilience at the Resilient America Program and as the country director for the African Science Academy Development Initiative

Register for The 2022 National Environmental Justice Conference and Training Program at the Washington Marriott at Metro Center

Day 1 Agenda

YOUTH/EMERGING LEADERS SUMMIT

8:00 a.m.—4:00 p.m.

Registration

Exhibit Hall Open

9:00 a.m.—9:30 a.m.

Welcome/Opening Remarks

Conference Facilitator Ms. Carolyn Sawyer Communications Strategist Tom Sawyer Company

Dr. Melinda Downing Environmental Justice Program Manager U.S. Department of Energy

9:30 a.m.—10:30 a.m.

PANEL: Virtual Environmental Justice Academy. Undergraduate students Sierra Generette and Justice Wright spent their Fall 2020 and Spring 2021 semesters interning with the Mentorship for Environmental Scholars (MES) Program. Their internship focused on creating virtual Environmental Justice trainings to be delivered to middle and high school students. The results of this 10-week academic year internship formed the Pre-College University’s Virtual Environmental Justice Academy.

Clarence T. Brown Executive Director Pre-College University, Inc.

Sierra Generette Former Mentorship for Environmental Scholars (MES) Intern

Justice Wright Former Mentorship for Environmental Scholars (MES) Intern

Dave J. Wess Dean of Students Pre-College University, Inc.

10:30 a.m.—10:45 a.m.

Break

10:45 a.m.—12:45 p.m.

PANEL: Educate, Motivate, Innovate: Building the Next Generation of Environmental Justice Leaders (The Federal Interagency Working Group on Environmental Justice’s “Educate, Motivate and Innovate (EMI) Environmental Justice Initiative”).

OVERVIEW:

Joanna Mounce Stancil EMI Chair USDA Forest Service Washington, D.C.

EMI and CUPP Collaboration: CUPP is a unique program that coordinates partnerships between local colleges/universities with communities in need throughout the southeast. College and university students provide technical assistance, free of charge, to underserved communities through planned projects. CUPP has completed over 100 projects throughout the United States, obtaining several dedicated college/university and non-profit partners.

Jeannie Williamson EPA Region 4 College/Underserved Community Partnership Program (CUPP) Coordinator

PRESENTATION: Redlining and Environmental Justice: Identifying the roots of Child Health Vulnerabilities to Climate Change. This presentation will explore how children’s environmental health disparities correlate with the historical practices of redlining and provide valuable insight on the structural roots of environmental health disparities, in the context of climate change.

Dr. Leslie Isadore Rubin Director of Break the Cycle Program Southeastern Pediatric Environmental Health Specialty Unit

Devon Nenon Undergraduate Student (Junior) Major: Sustainability Studies University of Florida

PRESENTATION: Georgia State University Students Assist Duck Hill, Mississippi Citizens Stay Informed About Their Community. The Georgia State University’s Computer Information System’s Department partnered with the Montgomery Citizens United for Prosperity (MCUP) to assist the Duck Hill community build a digital presence on the Internet. The presentation will show how the webpage will benefit the community.

Alicia Gholar Computer Information Systems Georgia State University

Romona Taylor Williams Executive Director Mississippi Communities United for Prosperity

Carelis Zambrano Bellorin Major: Computer Information Systems Georgia State University

PRESENTATION: Kentucky State University Assists in Preparing Educational Products for Low-income Communities in Kentucky. Kentucky’s Division of Water has partnered with Kentucky State University under the CUPP program to assist in developing easily accessible, easily interpreted educational documents for the lead testing in drinking water program. This presentation will show the research conducted by student to prepare these documents for use in low-income communities within the state.

Gabriel Tanner Kentucky Division of Water

Kabita Paudel Graduate Student, Master of Science in Environmental Studies Major: Environmental studies (GIS, Remote Sensing) Kentucky State University

PRESENTATION: Tech for Environmental Justice: BEEnevolent Hive and Mobile Application. The audience will learn about the plight of the honeybees and technological solutions for the honeybees. The audience will also learn about a tool for environmental reporting, environmental justice education and connectivity.

Sade Shofidiya Graduate Student Major: Public Administration – Museum Administration Savannah State University

12:45 p.m.—1:00 p.m.

Break

1:00 p.m.—2:30 p.m.

Lunch

Luncheon Speaker:

Dr. Britt Rios-Ellis Executive VP of Academic Affairs Oakland University Lake Angelus, MI

Hearing page

Hearing page

Hearing memorandum

Witnesses:

• Bob Holycross, Vice President, Sustainability, Environment and Safety Engineering, Ford Motor Company
• Natalie King, Chief Executive Officer, Dunamis Clean Energy Partners, LLC
• Cassandra Powers, Senior Managing Director, National Association of State Energy Officials
• Thomas Pyle, President, Institute for Energy Research (Republican witness)

Hearing page

• Herman Haksteen, President, Private Railcar Food and Beverage Association
• Brad Hildebrand, Member, National Industrial Transportation League and former Vice President of Cargill – Rail and Barge Lead
• Dennis Pierce, President, Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen
• Ian Jefferies, President and CEO, Association of American Railroads
• Dennis Newman, Executive Vice President of Planning, Strategy and Accessibility, Amtrak
• Chris Jahn, President and CEO, American Chemistry Council

Chair Raúl M. Grijalva (D-Ariz.) will convene the full Natural Resources Committee for an oversight hearing titled, “Examining the History of Federal Lands and the Development of Tribal Co-Management” on March 8 at 10:00 a.m. Eastern time.

The hearing will be the first in congressional history to examine tribal land dispossession enacted by the U.S. government and the impact of dispossession on federal land management practices. Before the arrival of European colonists, Indigenous Peoples lived on and cared for the lands now known as the United States since time immemorial. Centuries of cruel, forcible tactics—coercion, removal, and genocide—and bad-faith congressional and regulatory actions have since pushed Indigenous Peoples off nearly 99% of the lands they previously occupied.

The hearing will also explore the historical and legal support for tribal co-management of federal lands, including current and potential tribal co-management activities. Indigenous Peoples have deep connections to and traditional knowledge of their ancestral homelands, many of which are now federally managed lands. Indigenous Traditional Ecological Knowledge (ITEK) is a tremendous asset to implementing land management practices that promote both environmental sustainability and responsible stewardship of resources. Tribal co-management of public lands is also vital to strengthening tribal sovereignty and promoting self-governance.

The witness panel for the hearing will be comprised of Indigenous voices who will provide cultural, historical, and legal perspectives on the importance of tribal co-management:

Panel I

• Charles “Chuck” Sams, III, Director, National Park Service (Cayuse and Walla Walla). Director Sams will discuss how the National Park Service has and will continue to expand the role of tribal communities in federal land management.
• Carleton Bowekaty, Lieutenant Governor, Pueblo of Zuni/Member, Bears Ears Inter-Tribal Coalition (Pueblo of Zuni). Lt. Gov. Bowekaty will discuss the efforts of the Bears Ears Inter-Tribal Coalition to support and manage the Bears Ears National Monument, and how dedicated funding for tribal engagement can transform ongoing co-management efforts.
• Melvin J. Baker, Chairman, Southern Ute Tribal Council, Minority Witness.

Panel II

• Dr. Doug Kiel, Assistant Professor of History, Northwestern University (Oneida Nation). Dr. Kiel will discuss the history of Indigenous land dispossession enacted by the U.S. government and the historical context of the federal trust responsibility.
• Aja DeCoteau, Executive Director, Columbia River Inter-Tribal Fish Commission (Confederated Tribes and Bands of the Yakama Nation). Ms. DeCoteau will discuss Indigenous cultural and spiritual connections to the land, as well as the role that ITEK serves in tribal co-management.
• Kevin Washburn, Dean and Professor of Law, University of Iowa College of Law (Chickasaw Nation). Dean Washburn will highlight opportunities to expand tribal co-management under existing law. He will share insights gleaned in the formulation of his recent law review article on tribal co-management.
• Cody Desautel, President, Intertribal Timber Council, Minority Witness.

Hearing page

Witness:

• Xochitl Torres Small, Under Secretary for Rural Development, U.S. Department of Agriculture, Washington, D.C.

The purpose of this hearing is to evaluate the Federal Government’s vulnerability to the impacts of climate change, and to assess the status of ongoing efforts to promote greater climate adaptation and resilience throughout Federal programs, operations, and facilities. The hearing will explore the types of climate risks threatening Federal agencies and the urgent need to address those risks in order to protect Federal assets and investments. The hearing will detail the climate challenges confronting NASA, DOE, and NOAA, along with the adaptation and resilience strategies adopted by those agencies to respond to them. Finally, the hearing will discuss potential opportunities to bolster Federal climate adaptation tools, including enhanced interagency resilience collaboration and the incorporation of accurate, up-to-date climate data into agency planning, implementation, and outreach.

Hearing charter

Witnesses

• Dr. Richard Spinrad, Administrator, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration
• Ingrid Kolb, Director, Office of Management, and Chief Sustainability Officer, Department of Energy
• Dr. Joel Carney, Assistant Administrator, Office of Strategic Infrastructure, National Aeronautics and Space Administration
• Alfredo Gomez, Director, Natural Resources and Environment, Government Accountability Office