Abstract Description: Since the inauguration of Biden’s administration in January 2021, environmental justice (EJ) has become one of the forefront policies of the Administration. In Biden’s January 20, 2021 executive order, he emphasized the Administration “must advance environmental justice.” According to U.S. EPA, EJ is to seek “the fair treatment and meaningful involvement of all people regardless of race, color, national origin, or income with respect to the development, implementation, and enforcement of environmental laws, regulations, and policies.”
Industries have been hearing the buzzword EJ for a while and did not see clear action items to their air quality permitting needs. However, beginning in the first half of 2022, state agencies started to require additional permitting action items, additional dispersion modeling analyses, and extra emission controls to address EJ concerns. This presentation will share a couple of case studies on address EJ concerns for air permitting process with additional commitment to use better than minimum required control technology and doing extra dispersion modeling analysis to show protectiveness to the ambient air quality. Although there is no clear guidance on a standardized approach of conducting these analyses for EJ concerns, the way of presenting the results is also important. This presentation will explain several key points to be included in the EJ study, addressing relevant EJ indices, National Ambient Air Quality Standards (NAAQS) and other possible criteria.
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