 Yeah, while Latinx communities are disproportionately burdened with environmental hazards in the US, there's limited room information available in Spanish, especially from the Environmental Protection Agency. Environmental enforcement watch monitors EPA-enforced grid of facilities, as well as inspections and violations. This helps community know which are the big polluters in our neighborhood. However, we often have challenges with accessing and analyzing such environmental data. The Environmental Data and Governance Initiative is a network of more than 50 members from multiple academic institutions, non-profit and grassroot organizations and professionals from a broad spectrum of work and life backgrounds. We document, analyze, and advocate for the federal provision of environmental data and governance from policies and institutions to public access information and environmental decision. We seek to improve environmental formation stewardship, to promote environmental democracy, health and justice, and to better adapt these to digital age. So we can go ahead and do that. And to just provide an overview of the Zoom features, you can have the chat right here, or is it right here, the raise hand button and the Q&A functions on the bottom of your bar. And we welcome questions and comments in the chat. If you have a technical problem, please use the Q&A. At the end during the discussion, you can raise your hand if you would like to be promoted to a panelist to have your video and voice seen and heard. Otherwise, you're welcome to use the chat if you prefer. And so once again, I'd like to remind people, for anyone that might be arriving a little later, you can still participate and listen to the event in Spanish by clicking the interpreter button in the Zoom bar and clicking Spanish. Unfortunately, this option is not available for attendees calling in using our phone, but it is available if you are calling in through Zoom. And at you, we do like to acknowledge the land we are occupying while participating in this online discussion. All of us Indigenous refugees and our settlers acknowledge this land as a gathering place of Indigenous people across the Turtle Island, including tribes within our regions. I, myself, and I'm on Shikori land, which is also near North Carolina. And I encourage you to visit the sites which will be dropped in the chat in Spanish and in English to see where you're located. And also, this is a reminder that all links used during the events are also available in the etherbed doc. And the link for that will also be dropped in the chat once again. So we'll take a few minutes to do that. And while we are doing that, I'm going to go ahead and tell you about our Code of Conduct. So it would have developed a Code of Conduct to ensure the safe space and protocol for reporting any issues or conflicts. And the link for that is also going to be dropped in the chat. And again, it is also available in the etherbed document in case it gets lost. It is a little long, but pretty much to summarize. The Code of Conduct, we ask people to be present both physically and mentally to respect themselves and others and to step up and step down because everyone should have a chance to speak. If you are someone who doesn't tend to speak, we encourage you to voice your opinions in comments and questions in any way that makes you comfortable, whether it's out loud or in the chat. And if at any moment you feel this code was violated, please contact Sarah Wiley or Eric Nost whose emails will also be dropped in the chat. Oops, it's not moving, there we go. So here is our agenda, which is also available in the doc again. We went through the introduction portion and we'll have a presentation for a project, the Environmental Enforcement Watch. And then present it, and then we will have some presentations by leaders in the Environmental Justice Movement. At the end, we invite everyone to participate in a conversation about access to environmental data for Spanish-speaking communities. And we're going to go ahead and Lordus, go ahead. Yeah, so to begin with a description of Environmental Enforcement Watch, we are beginning with the problem and when it comes to access to environmental data for Spanish-speaking communities. We know that Latinx majority communities tend to bear the brunt of environmental pollution more than majority white communities. For example, a study on particulate matter, which is solid and liquid droplets in the air that affect human health, shows that Latinx people are on average exposed to 7.2 units, while whites are on average exposed to 5.9 units of particulate matter. And given this burden of environmental pollution, where would we look to find the worst polluters in our neighborhood? And one place is the EPA's Enforcement and Compliance History Online Database. You can enter your city, state, or zip code and see the facilities in your area that report their emissions to the EPA. And this is very helpful information because you can see whether the facilities around you are complying with their permits, when the EPA has inspected these facilities, and whether they have received any penalties. Now the EPA oversees three major programs, which focus on air under the Clean Air Act, water under the Clean Water Act, and hazardous waste under the Resource Recovery and Conservation Act. And there are other programs, but these are the ones that we are focusing on today. Information about these programs is on the EPA website. Although the EPA site is available in Spanish, some of the resources from the site, like articles on the Clean Air Act and the Resource Conservation Recovery Act, are not available in Spanish. The resources and articles that are available can be overly technical, difficult to understand, and they sometimes have conflicting language where they use different words to refer to the same thing, which can be confusing. Overall, the EPA website itself is somewhat acceptable, but there is some work to do to make it more. So the EPA permits these facilities to release a certain amount of pollutants and may inspect them to see whether they're complying with their permits. When a facility exceeds the permit, this is recorded as a violation. Sometimes facilities receive penalties for their violations, and other times they do not. A lot of this information is self-reported, as the EPA can't inspect all of these facilities all the time. So we don't know exactly how accurate the violation numbers are, and some of the other data can be pretty murky and hard to get through. So this information about enforcement and violations and inspections is available on ECHO. However, when you use the interface, the data only cover the last three to five years, and years going further back are only available by downloading data. The content is organized by individual facilities, and there is no summary report for a given area, such as which facility is polluting the most in your neighborhood, or what the total violations are in a region. You can see from the screenshot that it can be hard to interpret. Okay, there we go. Unfortunately, the only way to get to this data is through the ECHO portal, which is only available in English. And even then, the data and the ECHO site-risk resources are only available in English. The only resource that is available in Spanish on the website is this page for reporting environmental violations, which is a great start, but nowhere near enough to make this information available to Spanish speakers. And this is why we have developed report cards about facility inspections, violations and penalties under the Clean Water Act, and resource conservation recovery. We made this report cards according to Congressional Districts and States, so you can contact your representative and let them know about enforcement patterns in your district or state. So, how can you access these report cards? So, you can access them to our website. So, let's go there. So, when we click this link, it should take us to the website here. And it will lead us to the Spanish version of the website. And you can switch back to English and switch back to Spanish using this button here. And here you can access the democratizing data report, which we'll discuss a little bit more about later. And then here you can access the report cards for the states in the Senate, Environment and Public Works Committee or the Congressional Districts for the House, Energy and Commerce Committee. And we can click on a random one, say, California 44, which we have here. And it will open up a report card. And as you can see here, the report cards provide more specific information on the Clean Water Act, as it does here. And then you can also find information on inspections, violations, enforcement and penalties from the year 2000 to the year 2019. And you can also compare inspections and violations in your district, in the state and at a national level, at these charts here. And there's a lot more to see, like the top 10 violations for each program. And I really encourage you to look at this report. These report cards in your own on your free time. And yeah, there's just a lot to see here. Now, we can go back to the, Loris is going to show you a Jupyter Notebook and we'll go from there. Go ahead, Loris. So we made these reports by analyzing the data that we downloaded from the ECHO website, the Enforcement Compliance History Online website, and put into a database at Stony Brook University. Then we retrieved this data using the programming languages SQL and Python and open source notebooks that anyone can access online called Jupyter Notebooks. And this notebook that is we've translated it into Spanish. So Leslie is scrolling through it here. It can look a little intimidating, but it has directions on how to use it. And all you have to do is click play in the code box. And it will generate charts and maps and graphs that are then fed into the reports that we just showed you. So you can. So this is for the states Delaware and Wyoming and the report cards we made were for congressional districts. We also have made notebooks for zip codes and watersheds. So we're working with different geographic scales. And what you can see here. So Leslie just scrolled through some of the charts showing enforcement and inspections and violations over time. And now she's going to go down to show math of Delaware. And as you zoom in on Delaware, you can see different facilities that say you live in Delaware and you want to know what's in your neighborhood. So as you zoom in, the facilities get closer and closer. And then you can click on these dots to get the names of the facilities in your area. And then moving down, we can also find some statistics about the facilities and in the area and EPA enforcement. And then we can also see a chart of. The most non-compliant facilities. And this is something that echo cannot show you. So that's the Jupiter notebook. And we if you're interested in learning more about it, feel free to contact us because right now we're working with. Communities to run their own. And so this Jupiter notebook and our work with the report cards went into a report called democratizing data. And so the overall patterns we saw in this this report cards, which we published in the democratizing data report, is that in both congressional districts and states during the Trump administration, violators of the violations of the Clean Water Act increased. And while inspection rates, enforcement actions and penalties decreased. And these patterns were consistent in both Republican and Democrat states, congressional states and congressional districts. And we did publish these findings in a democratizing report, which you can find in the on our website, as I showed you earlier. And so thank you, guys, for listening. Now we can introduce a video sent in from Senator Markey and Senator Ed Markey is Senator of Massachusetts. He's a consumer champion and national leader on energy, environmental protection and telecommunications policy. And he has a prolific legislative record on major issues across the policy spectrum and a deep commitment to improving the lives of the people in Massachusetts and our country. He has previously worked with the Environmental Enforcement Watch. And just so you know, while we watch your video, Lord, this is going to show you the video, but you're welcome to look at the report cards page while you're listening to the video and look at your own report card. So let me stop sharing. And let's go ahead. Let me just make this bigger. Senator Ed Markey, and I want to thank Environmental Enforcement Watch by having me here today to discuss their important efforts to make environmental protection agency data more accessible to affected communities. Too often, people of color, marginalized communities, low income communities bear the brunt of pollution and other environmental injustices. We have to work to address the harms committed against these communities and hold polluting industries accountable for their violations of environmental law. In these efforts, we have to ensure the fair treatment and meaningful involvement of all people with respect to their protection under our nation's environmental laws, regulations and policies. The EPA is responsible for enforcing laws that keep communities safe from air pollution, water pollution and hazardous waste. It maintains a database where it publishes information on environmental law violations and EPA enforcement actions. The EPA database is complex and can be difficult to navigate. There's also only published in English, writing a language barrier that renders it inaccessible to the many Americans who do not read or speak English. This problem is especially concerning given that Latinx and Spanish speaking communities are disproportionately affected by pollution. That's why the work that Environmental Enforcement Watch is doing to improve the accessibility of EPA data is so important by creating both English and Spanish language of report cards on environmental law violations, EPA enforcement. Environmental Enforcement Watch is equipping communities with the critical information they need to hold polluting industries accountable and understand their own risk to create a better future for our communities and the planet. We must strengthen environmental regulations and their enforcement and we must strengthen transparency and accountability so that people across the country can trust that the government is fulfilling its mission. This, unfortunately, was not the case during the previous administration. During the Trump administration, EPA came to stand for every polluter's ally. And EPA inspections fell to a record low and the EPA even imposed a sweeping moratorium on environmental enforcement in March of 2020. Under the cover of the COVID-19 pandemic, the EPA effectively waived the enforcement of existing clean air, clean water and climate rules. As a member of the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works and Chair of the Subcommittee on Clean Air and Climate, I am fighting to ensure that the EPA is fully enforcing environmental laws that protect people from air pollution, water pollution and hazardous waste. In the Senate, I'm fighting to make sure we clean up existing hazardous waste sites and that we address the historic and systemic oppression of vulnerable communities that have borne the worst burdens of our fossil fuel economy. Our future, our children's future and the future of our planet depends on what we do to address today's public health and environmental issues. I will continue to work with EPA Administrator Michael Regan and the rest of the Biden administration to restore and strengthen the federal government's commitment to scientific integrity and enforcement of environmental laws. I thank the Environmental Enforcement Watch for its invaluable work in ensuring that EPA's enforcement work is accessible to everyone. And I look forward to continuing to fight alongside you for transparency, for accountability and for protection of all communities. So I'm back to sharing this screen. That was a pretty good video, Senator Markey. Claude, you send it to us. Now we're going to hear from our first speaker. Let me put that in presentation mode. So Dr. Teresa Cordova is the director of the Great Cities Institute at the University of Illinois in Chicago. She's also professor of urban planning and policy in the College of Urban Planning and Public Affairs. Professor Cordova received her PhD in Sociology from the University of California, Berkeley in 1986. She is a share of the Chicago Plan Commission and a member of the Cook County Economic Development Advisory Committee. She has probably worked with environmental justice organizations like Southwest Organizing Organizing Project SWAP, SWAP, which is here with us, who is here with us, who is going to be a speaker and the Just Transition Alliance, who always also has a speaker that is currently working with the Little Village Environmental Justice Organization and other groups and activists on the southeast side of Chicago. So we can go ahead and let Dr. Teresa speak. Great, thank you. It's nice to be here. You're going to put it on the PowerPoint for me, right? Yeah. Super. So while you're doing that, I will thank the Environmental Enforcement Watch not only for inviting me here, but also for that wonderful presentation and all of that data. That's really fantastic. I'm so glad to know about that. And I'm sure that we will use that that resource. So so thank you very much. Also want to give a shout out to my brother, Jose Bravo. Always good to be with you. And also I'm meeting Alejandra for the first time, but she's with an organization that I was with for many years and along with the Southwest Network Environmental Economic Justice and still collaborate with the Just Transition Alliance. In fact, I put in the chat earlier a report that we just released in the last couple of days called Climate Justice Meets Global Health. And Jose Bravo was was part of that effort. And you can see his great remarks in that report. What I want to do today is talk a little bit in my five minutes on the southeast side of Chicago and some of some of our work there. So this is an area along the Calumet River region and an area that is really characteristic of a of a very intense industrial area, some of which a lot of which was abandoned, leaving behind a great deal of contamination and then still some continuing contamination. So if you can put that into presentation mode and go to the first slide, I would appreciate it. And I'm not sure how to make it bigger. I was trying to figure it out, but I couldn't figure it out. You have to go to a slide show on, you know what? Because it's a PDF, maybe you can't. I didn't give you to you in PowerPoint. We just go ahead and go to the next slide then. And I'll work with that. Can I don't I'm not sure if folks well folks can see it. OK, so I see it's you've got it that I go ahead and just move it up to the next one. All right. So what I wanted to do is talk a little bit about you saw in the bio that I'm director of the Great Cities Initiative and we have something called the Great Cities Great Rivers Initiative. So we were looking to do what we've been doing. We had been doing some work in the southeast side of Chicago. Again, this is an area where United Steel was a lot of a lot of steel mills, a lot of heavy industry, a lot of industry that was connected to the steel industry. And when those industries left, they left behind a great deal of contamination and pollution, both water pollution, because so much of dumping occurred in the Calumet into the Calumet River and into Lake Michigan as well, but also a great deal of soil contamination and so on. So much of most of that has not been cleaned up. Some of it has, but most of it has not. And yet there's still an interest in continuing to develop in that area. For one thing, as other parts of the city are developed, I don't want to just say gentrified, but as they develop with new kinds of developments, a lot of the heavy industry that might have been in other parts of industry are being relocated into this part of the city. So that raises questions and concerns about the intensity and the concentration in an area that is both heavily Latino as well as as black. And there's even one pocket that was a that is a white working class community. And so at the same time, there are people who want to see if there's something that can be done in trying to make this a cleaner area. So we embark on this as part of our great cities, Great Rivers initiatives and looking at the southeast side. And I'll tell you in a minute where the quote comes from that's on this PowerPoint, right? We focus on an area that epitomizes the problems of environmental about resulting from more than a half a century of prior actions. Next slide. So you can see from this map, probably not very well, but you can see from the map that you can see up on top there, United States Steel, that we could make it bigger, you could, but because of the formatting here or the manner of presentation, U.S. There you go. That helps U.S. Steel Southwest site the Wisconsin Steel, so heavy industry around this whole area. And and this is down in the southeast side of Chicago. So a lot of our work began in this in this area when we were doing commercial revitalization plans in the South Chicago community. South Chicago was the first one of the first neighborhoods, one of the first three neighborhoods where you had a large influx of Mexican population into the Chicago into the Chicago region, working on the steel mills. So all those steel mills are now gone. And so there's some question there about what will happen to those sites. There's been that question on for a bit now. We can go to the next slide. So our work any any time we do any kind of anything, we always begin with as part of the of the invitation that we receive from communities to work with them. We always begin with various forms of engagement processes. Some of those are small start with small groups and then become big visioning groups. They incorporate everything from surveys to focus groups to going to festivals and where people are gathered and meeting them. So this project that we engaged in had a lot of community engagement. Next slide. So this is where we work with a lot of partners in the neighborhood surrounding this Calumet region. And so we partner with over 20 organizations. One of the things we do is we form something called Calumet Connect, which is an umbrella organization, bringing them all together. Next slide, please. So again, mentioning that community engagement is central to what we do as after we analyze the various the many, many sources of insights and understandings and perspectives that come to us through this process. We then we then pull from that. What is a what seems to be the priorities of folks? And then and then we go from there. So we developed this framework for that came out of this community engagement process. Next slide, please. This is a document. You can find this on our website. If you go up to practice and go down and move over to the Calumet region, you'll be able to find this this document. And so one of the things we did is we again, I mentioned the perspectives that come out of that. So what people said they wanted is to focus on what they want to focus on is public health and the environment, social equity, economic development. And so we do that and we we mirror back then what the combination of that was. But most importantly, we provide a lot of data to the residents that they can use to then proceed with lobbying and and and we're doing work around their own environmental issues. So a lot of our work in this and keeping with the theme of our of today's event is the providing of of data, but then in a way that then is usable for then further advocacy as well as further development of their own agendas. Next slide, please. So there you see some of the the community's vision and public health, environment, social equity and along with each of these statements is what it is that they feel they want. So they certainly want and this understanding that public health and environment go hand in hand, the idea of reducing disparities and the and the knowledge that they do need jobs. And so one of the things when you hear Jose Bravo speak, it's not today other times in this sort of false juxtaposition where we need to have the jobs there for we have to put up with the environmental pollution and in part of what what folks are saying here. So we want the jobs that we don't think we have to have put up with the pollution as well. And especially when some of the data that we've done shows that a lot of the people who are filling these jobs are not necessarily the people living in these communities. So people come to and they work here and then they leave and then the contamination then is left behind by those who who live there. Next slide, please. So the overall vision is that this is again comes from the processes working with folks overall vision the southeast side will become a thriving community where the environment improves the health of residents. Infrastructure and investments are equitable and beneficial to all and economic development can provide for the needs of residents and business owners without being detrimental to the health of workers and residents. Next slide, please. So you can't really see this too carefully. But again, you can go with the document and see. So one of the things that we did is we provided them. Thank you, Leslie. One of the things we did is we provided them a timeline of some of what's been going on in their own neighborhoods. And many of the people we talked to were actually involved in many of these events. But given a timeline that talks about each of these of the various forms of activism and what it resulted in. And so what, you know, what they what they were advocating for or against what the impact of that was, what the outcome of that was. And we did that from 1980 up through, I believe it's 2018. Next slide, please. And you can see in this timeline, we also mentioned the various people that were involved. And I want to keep going to this relatively quickly so we can keep our keep our our conversation going. We also then provided a lot of public health data and a lot of demographic data. And that's a lot of what we do a lot when we work with folks. We give them a lot of data that they can then use. And so in this case, pooling from from this is why your data would be really great for us that would have been nice to add something along that. And and maybe could be we could at some point. But it's comparing sort of the different neighborhoods. So we focused on three neighborhoods in this area, South East Side and South Deering. And you'll see there the numbers of people without health insurance, the asthma rates, lead toxicity levels per 100,000, stroke deaths per 100,000 and life expectancy. And part of what you what we did is we do with all of our data. We make a comparative. So we're comparing these three neighborhoods, but then we compare to the city of Chicago as a whole. And then we compare it to those neighborhoods and other parts of the city that are more affluent, more white. And you can see then some of the differences in terms of some of these health indicators. Next slide, please. We're at time. OK, and I will. I think I've got three slides left. So then we also identify them where the potentially hazardous sites are. You can see this. And so not so much, I think, in what I'm presenting to you here, but we do a lot of mapping with our data. And then the next slide is the and so then these are a cleanup opportunity sites looking at the various Brownsville developments where they currently exist, what their current conditions are and sort of what some of the cleanup issues are going to the next next slide. Some of the guiding principles for that cleanup. And you'll see that we borrowed from we pulled out seven of the is it 16 principles from environmental justice. First, people of color summits as key to some of these efforts and the idea of environment of advancing environmental justice and eliminating disparities and health outcomes becomes really key in these principles. Next slide. So some of the considerations for the future, prioritizing remediation, increasing access to public health resources, advocating for more environmental health, programming and building the organizational capacity. So you can you can visualize you can see that glancing at that slide. Let me go to the next slide. Obviously, we need stronger enforcement, stronger regulations. One of the things we've been not we great cities so much, but environmental justice activists have been really trying to push for getting a department of the environment at the city level. There had been one, but there isn't one. This is a big struggle and something they continue to fight for. They'd hoped that this mayor would would would would make that happen. And then obviously, the importance of collaborating with the Department of Public Health to ensure that the contamination is both identified and that health impacts are mitigated. Next slide, which is a which is a second. So last slide. Here's what's still needed. Obviously, the better environmental data, along with the analysis of their impacts. A lot of times we get the data, but what is the impacts of a given environmental contamination site? How does that show up? And so a little village environmental justice organization has done a lot of that with respect to the truck traffic, for example, and some of the asthma issues they face over in Little Village and then clearly something that's important to you all, which is the accessibility of that data. Awareness of among the elected officials and decision makers. I think this is something that EJ movement has always done is to try to educate them and make them aware equity and zoning and permitting and certainly more community participation. And then the last slide. And so I wanted to call attention to this. There's always this ongoing struggles, but here's something that has made a difference. So we had a big issue there around general iron, which is moving from one part of the city that's being cleaned up to to being concentrated in this area. Stop general iron. There was a hunger strike for about 30 days. People have been fighting really hard from that. But here's the good news that you see pressure from Biden's EPA chief and basically saying to the mayor they need to halt and there needs to be a study. And again, this is an this is an example of where data will be very important in and you see there where my quote came from about this area epitomizing because this is all taken from the same area, epitomizing the problems of environmental justice that result from a half century of prior actions, actually longer than that, really a whole century. So with that, I will I give it back to Leslie. Thank you. And thank you, chapters, that I saw for her great presentation. We're going to hear from our second speaker of today. So Alejandra Lyons is MCRP is an environmental justice organization from Southwest Organizing Project, Albuquerque, first swap. She is a Chicana organizer from Los Lunes, Nuevo Mexico and a first generation college graduate with a master's in community and regional planning from the University of New Mexico. Alejandra first joined swap as this club staff as an environmental justice intern in 2015. Then later she worked at the yes as the yes team lead during the summer of 2017. Alejandra worked as a program assistant for the Center of Social Sustainable Research. She has also worked to help launch the Bosque Cultural Healing Initiative being from New Mexico. She understands the importance of protecting land based cultures while standing up against opposing industry. And Alejandra, do you need me to share the screen? Yes, can you allow me to share? I just have a quick map and photo. Yeah, so start measuring. Yes. And it's such a big deal to have that I saw on here because I mean, I've crossed paths with Teresa myself, but as an organization, you know, Teresa's done a lot for our community here in Albuquerque. She was actually the, I believe, chair of the school that I actually went to here in University of New Mexico in the planning department. She helped serve, you know, as a, believe, a commissioner here and was a part of swap and has, you know, knows a lot about some of the stuff I'm going to talk to you all about today. So just to put into context, so Southwest Organizing Project, we are a 40 year old, now going to be 41 years old in September. Chicano Organization, a lot of our activists or young activists of color that came out of the Chicano movement that wanted to give power back to the community and a lot of these land based folks that we still come from. My family is from Los Nunas, and so we deal with heavy industry. New Mexico is a very extractive state as far as our economy. Right now we are in the midst of talking about a lot of just transition issues moving away from oil and oil industry. Yes, I will definitely speak slower. Very sorry, I have to be conscious of the interpreters. Um, but a little bit, one of the communities I wanted to talk to you all about today is San Jose, which is a community here in Albuquerque. There's maybe a little less than 3,000 residents here and 56 percent of our residents in that area speak Spanish in their home. So I just want to show a map. So. And to get back to the land acknowledgement, Albuquerque is located near unceded Sandia and this is led up by low land, also known as TWA people. So that's the indigenous lands that we occupy. But getting back to San Jose community. So this is a community that really is located in a really hard spot. Part of it, most of it is within Albuquerque, but some of it is located within our county, which is Bernalillo County. And as you can see, it's near I-25. And so just to put in context, this community, there's the rail yard facilities and terminal facilities. There is an asphalt plant located here. There is this core biofuels industry. And to this day, we still fight quite a few air permits through help with data collected by the community. We have we have created an ordinance for Albuquerque that will allow for no more manufactured zoning in this area because this community already faces so much. So one of the statistics that we gathered when we were doing our bucket brigade, which was a environmental health and air impact study where community members got literally a plastic bucket like the ones you can get at the utility stores and they would fill it up with air and we went and we got it tested. And there was very high volatile compounds, different particulate matter and very high air quality issues in these areas. So but within this community. So now we have a city ordinance that where we could no longer allow manufacturing within this area, taking into account a lot of these cumulative impacts. So a lot of folks have been talking about cumulative impacts with Cory Booker and a lot of other progressive folks talking about this now in the current administration. Unfortunately, we are still trying to pass a cumulative impacts ordinance that includes air quality. And so getting to data, we need a lot of this data. So this is data that we would like to have for our census and with with the help of some of these report cards and we would like for some of our communities members to present this. So as I mentioned, a lot of the community members are Spanish speaking members and we need this data so that we can prove there are health impacts. A lot of these residents live 10 years less than other residents just within our city of Albuquerque, which is really small. And for the most part, we have great air, but not in this neighborhood. And this is also common in the four corners area of New Mexico. This is also the area that a lot of people call, you know, where Navajo Nation is located. And this is where the San Juan Generations Generating Station was recently closed. So that's a lot of information, but I wanted to show you all exactly where it was located. And then just really quick, a picture of our community. Another thing to know is we've also. Filed a Title Six complaint against our local health environmental environmental health department. And it's because they weren't allowing the community to give testimony and constantly we're told we don't have the data to back up a lot of our claims. And this is partially probably due to an accessibility language barriers. So currently we're still in negotiations with our city and local environmental health department. But these are things that just to contextualize what is going on in New Mexico. And this is just one community of many. And so this is just the example of some of the on the ground organizing here, that the Southwest Organizing Project is currently engaged in. And really what this is about is giving power back to the community so that they can talk about, you know, they need a good neighbor agreement from large industry. And that's what our organization has done. And we continue to do. And so this year in this picture of the community members, this stop poisoning our families and on the back shirt is a do your job. So we're a bit of an organization that likes to stand up against these kinds of industries. So I'm sorry, my connection I see is not very great. So I will pass it back to Leslie. He stops sharing my screen now. Let me start sharing again. OK. Oh, I haven't started sharing. OK, so right now we're going to be taking a five minute break. So that's on two six fifty seven. Just to process the amazing talks we heard. And then we are going to come back from the break here, two more speakers. And then we're going to have a conversation about about all the stuff we've heard. OK, so I'm going to stop where I guess I'll just. Make this bigger, leave this here and we'll come back. OK, everyone, so we should be coming back six fifty seven. And we'll just wait about a minute to get everyone back for more like 30 seconds. I'm going to go ahead and start sharing my screen again. OK, we'll start in a few seconds. All right, let's go get started, get started. So Jose Bravo is the executive director of just transition Alliance. He is a longtime leader on just transition climate justice and chemicals policy as they relate to communities fighting for environmental justice and labor justice, both organized and unorganized, born in Mexico and brought to the US's child who says work in social justice issues is ruining his upbringing in the southern California avocado fields alongside his alongside both his parents. Since 1991, Jose has gained recognition as a national international leader, both in environmental justice and climate justice movements. Over the past 30 years, as a community organizer, Jose has worked on numerous campaigns in the US, Puerto Rico and Mexico. So we're going to go ahead and let Jose get started. Well, thank you for that introduction. And I'm calling. I'm talking to you today from Kumei territory on the Mexico-US border in San Diego, California. So, you know, a lot of what Teresa was talking about is really important. But, you know, the reality is that we need more centers like Teresa's to give our information to communities. And because we have in the past needed a lot of a lot of information community organizations, such as SWAP and many others, are the organizations that take on the task of translating information, both the technical information and both the language aspect of the process. So, you know, again, I think governments should do a better job. And, you know, when we do talk about enforcement, I want to move into this enforcement piece. Not all regulations are created equal. And, you know, a lot of regulations depend on companies actually reporting and many companies under report. And when we see regulation and how it's applied in communities of color in the income communities and indigenous communities, a lot of time we see that there's a disproportionate, well, there's disproportionate impact because of many, many other types of environmental problems in our communities. But when we see these regulations put in place, we see that there's selective enforcement as well. So, in many communities of color, regulations are enforced differently than they are in white communities and more affluent communities. So, again, I think that what little information we get from industry and what little enforcement, and I will say little enforcement, there is of environmental regulations in the country that still plays into the issue of health effects, access to information, access to education and many other things that go along in our communities. But we also have to look at the fact that when we have a community meeting in the community, there usually is not a federal official, even a state or a city official available to give that information out. We have to decipher that data and give it out into that process. And then I think that if I can make a recommendation to government agencies that are thinking of translating, not all Spanish is the same. A lot of the Spanish that we speak here on the Mexico-US border is much different than the Spanish spoken in other places in the United States primarily. And I think it's really important for government agencies to get to know and to understand who your audience is and how to deliver those types of messages. I wanted to bring up this issue around cap and trade. I saw that Ed Markey was on the video and there was this thing called Waxman Markey Bill and I just wanted to give you an example of regulation or proposed regulation in this case and how it would impact communities of color. The Waxman Markey Bill was really pushing for cap and trade and cap and trade started here in California with AB 32 many years ago and we have always said that we don't support commodifying the air, commodifying the water, commodifying the earth, the natural resources and other things. And as a result, we have very clearly now understood that cap and trade is not beneficial to communities of color. The impact of air emissions is going up in communities where there is disproportionate amounts of industrial uses. So for us cap and trade was not something that we would have supported and we didn't support. And ultimately to tell the truth, we were actually happy that the Waxman Markey Bill didn't pass legislation. So again, I think it's important for us to also think about how we translate data. When we translate data, a lot of our communities don't have the capacity to understand big technical terms and actually move towards understanding what those impacts are. And last again, community organizations and other organizations translate that data. And in many instances, our communities aren't necessarily word driven, but they're driven by more around what's called popular education. So we have to look at different types of relating data and information to our communities. It's super important. I remember working in supporting the issues around that swap had with Intel in New Mexico and the impacts that Intel was going to put on the water in New Mexico and how the state was subsidizing Intel to literally like a million dollars per employee in regards to the use of water. A lot of people didn't understand the fact that those issues were linked. So there was toxics that were being put in the water by Intel. And at the same time, Intel was taking millions and millions of gallons of water out of the sole source aquifer that the community depended on. And so we really need to put a lot of these things together and understand that information is important, but it's also the way that's delivered that's important. Thank you. Thank you, Jose, for your presentation. Now we're going to hear from another speaker. So we're going to hear from Shona Edberg whenever this loads. So, as Hispanic Access Foundation's Director of Conservation Programs, Shona Edberg works to promote environmental stewardship in the Latino community, elevate Latino voices in conservation policy, activate Latino conservation leaders, and provide them the resources they need to create a more sustainable in just future. Prior to joining the Hispanic Access Foundation, Shona's background includes working on sustainable development at the World Bank and global environmental facility, as well as climate policy at the nonprofit Climate Interactive. She learned her master's in Latin American studies and international economics from the John Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies and her bachelor's in international studies from John Hopkins. Shona lives in Baltimore, Maryland. And Shona, do you want to show your own screen or do you want me to keep it like this? Oh, we're good. I don't have any slides, so you're just going to have to look at my face. Hello, everybody. Thank you so much for having me. As Leslie said, my name is Shona Edberg, and I'm the Director of Conservation Programs for Hispanic Access Foundation. We are a national nonprofit with a mission of connecting Latinos with partners and opportunities to improve lives and create an equitable society. In our conservation program, we work to enable Latino communities to be stewards of the environment, activate new environmental leaders, and provide them with the resources they need to be effective advocates, and elevate Latino voices in policy and decision making. I want to illustrate what's at stake here when we talk about information accessibility and environmental justice. Creating change starts with knowledge, and it starts with the imagination to envision a better world. To begin with knowledge, a very timely example is the pandemic. You may be aware that Latinos in black communities have been hit really hard and suffered worse than white communities. In fact, the data shows that communities of color have seen three times the deaths per million than less vulnerable white communities, three times. COVID-19 is very much an environmental justice issue. Studies show that the coronavirus that causes COVID spreads more quickly in polluted air, and exposure to air pollution is directly correlated to COVID mortality. Latino communities are more likely to be breathing in polluted air in every breath, putting these families at higher risk. And they're also less likely to have access to the green space that alleviates pollution and gives you safe places to exercise and boost your immune system. At an individual level, knowing your level of exposure to these hazards can help you make the decisions you need to protect your family. If you have the time, mobility, and available funds to do so. But at the societal level, we have to make these connections and the very human stories behind them available to policymakers. And we have to urge action based on this data. So making data available, accessible, and easy to use for Spanish speakers allows community members to advocate for the health of their communities and raise the alert to decision makers on the pollution that is harming them. In our work at Hispanic Access Foundation, we have a multi-pronged strategy for addressing environmental injustice. For when we bring information to the communities that most need to act on it. For us, this often means hard to reach immigrant communities that may be language isolated. In particular, we work with faith leaders and faith communities on financial empowerment, health care, career development, and environmental issues. How to be a steward of God's creation. We work with the federal government to offer internships to talented young Latino scholars at the National Park Service, Fish and Wildlife, and many other agencies and organizations. Something we hear from these young people over and over again is, I didn't know these types of opportunities were available to me because I never saw anyone who did this job and looked like me. So as the Biden administration creates plans for a civilian climate court and a national conservation plan to protect 30% of U.S. lands, waters, and ocean by 2030, we have to keep pushing to hire from communities of color and from environmental justice communities. Otherwise, it's just too easy for the lives and struggles of environmental justice communities to remain invisible and our concerns unheard. Also in terms of creating community, we have an initiative called Latino Conservation Week every year, which is coming up in July. So the week of July 18, we partner with hundreds of organizations to make the outdoors more accessible to Latino communities and to celebrate environmental stewardship among Latinos. We'll have events like hiking, bird watching, barbecues, river rafting, and online digital conversations as well. It's a ton of fun. We get a lot of issues covered and I highly recommend you check out LatinoConservationWeek.com to see how you can get involved with some of these fun events. One other thing I would like to share with you all is a white paper that HAF releases every year called the Conservation Policy Toolkit. This toolkit contains an overview in a bulleted, easy to read format on pollution and climate change, affect Latino health, jobs, cultural heritage, recreation, disaster preparedness, public opinion, and equity and justice. We also have a set of policy recommendations that flow from the findings in this toolkit that can be applied at the local and national level to make progress on climate justice and a healthy environment for all. The toolkit is available in English and Spanish and we will drop the link in the chat in a moment. It's really useful to have on hand if you ever want to talk to your representative or your local mayor or anyone else about conservation, climate change, and environmental justice in the Latino community. And that leads me to the advocacy that we do on environmental justice. We do direct advocacy, so that's where we talk to congressional offices and the Biden administration about issues ranging from wildfire response to oil and gas pollution. And we also work to develop Latino leaders who can advocate for themselves and their communities. In March, we held our first ever Latino advocacy week, a week of capacity building and direct advocacy to local and national leaders on the issues our communities care about. If you want to learn more about becoming a citizen advocate or if you just know someone who simply cares about an issue and wants to take action on it, you can download our Latino advocacy toolkit in English and Spanish and that will guide you in where to get started. And you can also check out latinoadvocacyweek.org for that and to find out how to get involved in Latino advocacy week next year. I will shortly be dropping all of these links in the chat. Thank you so much for listening and feel free to send me an email if you want to learn more or partner with us or have any questions. Oh, I didn't turn that on. What I was saying, thank you, Shawna, for sharing that with us. We look forward to looking at those links. You can also save the chat if you want to look at the links. There's like three dots here under the chat and then you can save it. And so, yeah, now we're going to be moving forward to our conversation. Yeah, we're going to be moving forward to our conversation. Like once again, there's these three buttons here. Let me share my screen to show you better. So there are these three buttons here. And then you can use the chat button to write questions. And then we can answer the questions out loud. You can raise your hand once again to join the final forum and to be promoted to a panelist so you can speak as well. Or you can use the Q&A. And so now we can move forward here. Oops, that's not it. So now I'm going to stop sharing and then we can just start the conversation. So let's go ahead with that. And again, if anybody wants to go on video and say your question or write it in the chat, you can raise your hand. We'll promote you to be able to do that. And maybe we should start with some questions that haven't been addressed but have been asked. I think Dennis, you already answered this, right? They answered the question in the Q&A. Yeah, but I've got another one from Ashley and I'm working on getting her the answer right now. She asked about the timeline, why we chose 1980 is the beginning of that timeline. So I'm working on getting her an answer for that right now. So hopefully I'll get that in the next couple of minutes. But there's another question about a lot of technical information about the local area and how would you suggest community members could get started? Because I think the answer to the question is we did begin with 1980 because that's what the sort of community said was a relevant timeline for them. But it always starts with the invitation from the community groups that are working. I think that's how you start and you branch out from there. So we've done everything from having big meetings or we conduct visioning sessions. So that's always a really good strategy. Door to door, we're going to where people meet. But I'd be happy, Ashley, to follow up with you in more detail and even put you in touch with the folks that were like the project directors of this that could give you even more specific information if you want. So you can contact me at tcordova at uic.edu. Okay. Here's the answer. Just got the answer to your question. That's the round. That's around the time that the issue started being documented in the neighborhood by the EPA and others. So it's an it was an issue of what was documented. So that's why it was 1980. So cool. I got the answer to your question in real time here. Thanks for asking that. That's a great answer. So I thought we'd get started with a couple of questions. I guess discussing environmental data. What data do you wish you had an access to? And are there environmental health issues you wish you knew more about? And this is open to anyone that is happy to speak? Any of the attendees or the panelists? Sorry, we can move on to another question. No one has anything for that. That's all right. We're all being shy now. We're all being shy. But no, you know, in regards to data, we just found out that the EPA does not regulate TASCA of incoming chemicals into the United States. And we see that there's literally hundreds of millions of pounds of chemicals being brought into our communities and into environmental justice communities that is not being tracked. And so the CH Center for Environmental Health has just sued the EPA in regards to letting them know that they should be enforcing these regulations. That's what I was talking about. The regulations are there. Sometimes they're not strong enough. And a lot of times they're not enforced. I think something else that our organization struggles with is getting specific information for different census tracts and zip codes. It's like here in Nuevo Mexico, we have very small populations. And so they tend to average everything. And that doesn't really work for a lot of our EJ communities because we have to extrapolate on a lot of the information that the community members have, which is good data. But we don't have information that is just a one zip code, because it's an insignificant amount of people as far as a lot of national standards look at it. And so I think more data that is a lot more localized and of these smaller populations would really help us talk about a lot of these smaller EJ communities that have not very much populations. I think that's definitely something that's come up with some of the work we've been doing with watersheds. Some of the groups that we've been working with have asked for smaller, I guess, more geographic locations. Because originally we're just thinking of watersheds, but then they were thinking of sub watersheds. As those were a little more localized. And then we were thinking of zip codes and trying to get data at that level. And it's been a little difficult, but it's been manageable. And I think that's only because the data we have is enough. But I can see how that would be more of an issue if the communities you're researching are already low population. And that data is just not available. And I wanted to add to that that the EPA uses EJ screen tool and it offers that tool for people to use to see, say the block group level or census tract level, whether a community is designated as EJ as having a low demographic index or not. So then who has the power to determine what an EJ community is? Is it the data that determines EJ communities? The people living in an area how do you navigate that conflict there? You navigate that conflict by saying, one of the principles that Teresa has brought up with environmental justice is that we do speak for ourselves. And the fact is that our communities are disproportionately impacted, not just by environmental impacts, but by the lack of health care, the lack of access to information, a bunch of other things that come into play. So yeah, we have the determination of identifying ourselves as EJ communities. And the other pieces that I think are of interest to Alejandra and Teresa is that a lot of our communities are disproportionately impacted because they're zoned different than white communities, right? There's no white community here in San Diego that has both industrial residential. There's not zero. There's a bunch of barrios communities like Barrio Logan and Southeast San Diego and National City and all the areas where there's larger congregations of people of color in low income communities that do have that type of zoning. So who makes that decision? Local zoning boards do. Who makes that decision that counties do? Who has to be accountable about zoning commissions and counties and cities? Right? So again, I think the problem is that we're, you know, I'm really glad to see actually, I'm really glad to see around, you know, the San Jose community, how that whole piece is coming together because that's a historic environmental justice community. The people in that community have been talking about the issues for years and years and years and SWAP has brought it up a lot of other organizations, but for years and it's not a new thing. So, you know, it's high time for politicians and federal governments and state and local governments to do something about this, not just talk about it. Steve, oh, you want to go, Shana? Yeah, I was just going to add that even when data is available, that doesn't necessarily make it accessible because there's, you know, multiple layers of systemic oppression here. You know, I work for a woman of color led nonprofit that has less resources than our peer nonprofits in the environmental community. And so even though, for example, like we have this really great data set on access to nature and which communities are able, better able to have green spaces nearby and which aren't. But for us, we can't make good use of it because we don't have the resources to have GIS. We need to rely on a partner and to act as a gatekeeper for us to effectively use this data. And so it's more than just the data being there. It's all levels of funding, of staffing, of interest. And lastly, and I will be quiet after this. I think the proof is in, or how do you say things aren't necessarily, the things that actually bring data to us aren't necessarily understanding of the impact. Take for instance, the federal government uses risk assessment to figure out how our communities are impacted, right? And how our community should be impacted. But the last time I took a look at risk assessment, it literally uses a basis of a 150 pound white male as the norm for creating risk assessment. Our communities need better ways to bring data to us and we need hazard assessment and health assessment. Because if you don't have the hazard assessment and health assessment, we're going to be always disproportionately impacted in regards to our risk as well. I think we can go to one last question from Steve. Would more detailed data, the amounts of pollutants emitted by specific facilities be useful? I promise to be quiet. So yes, it is more useful. But it's also what's useful. It's around looking at community data, you know, how it accumulates in our community. And I'll tell you what, in federal meetings, when we brought up the issue of community of impact and synergistic impact. So chemicals coming together and making other chemicals and causing other problems in our communities. That's when I literally seen people's eyes glaze over in federal meetings with the EPA and others. But that's the reality in our communities. So yeah, more data. You know, and this issue of cumulative impacts and synergistic impacts is extremely important. And, you know, EJA's movement has been talking about that for since the get go. And I was even just recently in the one on transportation that the village environmental justice did. And I asked the question about synergistic impacts and the problem that we've gotten for in the answers, you know, now for 30 years is the difficulty in even measuring it. Right. And so that means that that then is that a science issue? I mean, even if we could get the political will is still then becomes an issue of like, well, how would you measure it? How would you even identify? I mean, sure you can. But it's so therefore, is it a matter of political as a matter of resources? Is it a matter of matter of having the tools to measure it? But I think I think the synergistic impact is really huge. You know, and then of course, the other issue from the sciences, well, how do you isolate the different components of that combined of those combined chemicals? How would you even isolate what is affecting what, right? And so I know it's a party, a question of science, but I think overall, there isn't enough resources or effort or money spent on impacts generally. You know, there's like sort of, there's the chemicals. We know these chemicals. And then there's people getting sick. And there's some people who can make the correlation between, well, we've got this concentration. We've got the chemicals here, the concentration of those chemicals and the concentration of those illnesses. And, and so then it becomes an issue of correlation. But now, for example, even in the case of general iron, if the EPA is saying to the mayor, look, we need more data on this to see what the impacts are or would be if you were to site locate this here. I think that there's still this issue around making sure that the sciences are to even assess the impacts. And, but even before the science is also that political will or even that effort. So NEPA, for example, National Environmental Policy Act says when you're doing any kind of, when any kind of federal money is being spent, you have to assess sort of the various alternatives on what might be the impacts of those. And I think translating that to everything else. Okay. Before you proceed, we need to have some sense of what the potential impact should be, could be, would be. Yeah. All right. We are at 730. We are at time. I can share my screen. We have just a last slide to show you with our contact information. And, and a thank you. So please fill out the survey. The link will be dropped in the chat. And it's also in the etherpad document. You can email us at environmental enforcement watch at gmail.com, Twitter tweeted us at you network. And we are going to have an open hour on June 17th from six to 7pm on what's not discussed enough about environmental data. I want to thank you to all of our lovely panelists and also our funders code for science and society, which is funded by the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation. And thank you all for attending. Thank you. Thank you very much for inviting us. All right. I'm going to end the recording now. Not that it's a con-