Sec. 2. Findings
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Congress finds the following: All Americans, regardless of income, race, ethnicity, color, national origin, gender, or sexual identity, deserve to live in clean and healthy communities free from the burdens of environmental pollution and degradation. Communities of color and lower-income communities have historically been subjected to disproportionate amounts of air, water, and soil pollution, including pollution from numerous and concentrated industrial, commercial, and governmental facilities located in those communities.
As a result, residents of these overburdened communities have suffered from increased adverse health risks, including asthma, cancer, elevated blood lead levels, respiratory illnesses, cardiovascular disease, and developmental disorders. Children are most vulnerable to the effects of pollution and can suffer lifelong consequences. The adverse effects of pollution harm the well-being and stability of these communities and their residents. These disproportionate burdens have been the consequence of policy decisions at all levels of government over many years, and government now has the responsibility and moral imperative to correct these injustices.
No community should bear a disproportionate share of the adverse environmental and public health impacts of pollution caused by economic or any other activity. Overburdened communities should be empowered legally and politically to participate in any decision to allow additional facilities which by their nature increase environmental and public health stressors to locate in their communities. It is in the public interest to limit the future placement and expansion of such facilities in overburdened communities.
The burden of proof that a proposed action will not harm communities should fall on polluting industries and on the Federal Government in its regulatory role, not the communities themselves. Pollutants currently regulated by the Federal Government, including for example criteria air pollutants, may have additive and synergistic negative effects on human health and the environment when combined. Cumulative impacts are the public health and environmental risks and impacts caused by the combined past, present, and reasonably foreseeable future releases of environmental pollution in a specific geographic area.
Cumulative impact assessment considers sensitive populations and other social factors that may heighten vulnerability to environmental pollution and associated health risks. Cumulative impact assessments built into permitting decisions are one critical tool for preventing increased environmental and public health degradation in overburdened communities. At its most basic, cumulative impact assessment requires studying the impacts of having multiple pollution sources and stressors combined together on public health and the environment.
While the effects of a single pollutant from a single source may be less significant when analyzed in isolation, the cumulative impacts of multiple pollutants from multiple sources in combination with each other and with other social vulnerabilities degrade public health and the environment substantially. Cumulative impact assessments should be incorporated into pollution permitting decisions such that Federal regulators are required to deny permits that threaten public health and the environment.
The general failure of the Federal Government to consider and regulate potential cumulative impacts in pollution permitting decisions has resulted in the inequitable distribution of pollution across regions and overburdening of certain communities. Federal Government inaction has forced some State and local governments to act on their own to regulate cumulative impacts, including California and New Jersey, creating a patchwork of cumulative impact regulations across the country.
The Federal Government is aware of the importance of cumulative impact assessment in other types of environmental review, such as with environmental assessments conducted under the National Environmental Policy Act of 1969 ( 42 U.S.C. 4321 et seq. ). The Federal Government should adopt and operationalize cumulative impact assessment in all pollution permitting decisions, especially in overburdened communities, and should deny permits that create a reasonable certainty of harm to communities.
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