 Okay, hello everyone and thanks for joining us this afternoon. I am Harvey Miller from the Ohio State University and I am co-chair of the committee utilizing advanced environmental health and geospatial data and technologies to inform community investment. I'll be co-chairing this committee in this consensus study along with Eric Tate from the University of Iowa. And what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna start off by just going around the members of the committee and asking them to quickly introduce themselves. So we'll start with Lauren Bennett. Hi, I'm Lauren Bennett. I am a program manager for spatial analysis and data science at Esri and have a background in spatial analysis, spatial data science and geography. Thank you, Jay. Hi, I'm Jay Chakraborty from the University of Texas at El Paso. I'm a professor in the Department of Sociology Anthropology and my interest include the Environmental Health, Environmental Justice and Social Vulnerability to Hazards and Disasters. Also serving as member of the US EPA Science Advisory Board and the Environmental Justice Science Committee. Thank you. Thank you, Susan. Hello, I'm Susan Anenberg. I'm the associate professor and chair of the Environmental and Occupational Health Department at the George Washington University Milken Institute School of Public Health where I'm also the director of the GW Climate and Health Institute and I study air quality and climate change. Hey, Ibrahim. Hi everyone, Ibrahim Karai. I'm an assistant professor in the Department of Population Health at Hofstra University. Also the director of Health Science. I study the physical and mental health impacts of injuries and disasters on the socially vulnerable populations. Hey, great. And Marcos. Hi everyone, my name is Marcos Luna. I'm a professor of geography and sustainability at Salem State University in Salem, Massachusetts. Also the graduate program coordinator for the Geo Information Sciences Program and I am on the Massachusetts State Environmental Justice and Advisory Committee and I work with communities in New England on environmental justice issues affecting them. Thank you. Brahma. Hi everyone, I'm Brahma Mukherjee. I'm the chair of biostatistics at the University of Michigan School of Public Health. I'm also a professor of epidemiology and global public health and serve as the associate director for quantitative data sciences at the Kansas Center. My interests are in modeling complex environmental exposure data and establishing connections to health outcomes in particular cancer and reproductive health. Thank you. Is Monica on the call? She is not. I don't believe. Then Walker. Hello everyone, Walker Wheeland, research scientist with the Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment part of the California Environmental Protection Agency. I develop environmental health screening tools and have backgrounds in geographic information systems, environmental justice and environmental health. Okay, and Eric Tate I believe will be joining us later during this open session. I also want to introduce the NAS staff who will be helping us coordinate this meeting. There's Samantha Magsino, Anthony DePinto and O'Shane Orr. And also Amechi Ukpabi will be producing the webinar. So we have a full agenda today and this here's how we'll be proceeding. We'll first have presentations from the White House Committee on Environmental Quality and our study sponsors, the Bezos Earth Fund. There will be brief time for the committee to ask clarifying questions following each presentation. We'll take a brief 15 minute break from 2.45 to 3 p.m. between the presentations. There will then be a general discussion between the committee and presenters from CEQ and the Earth Fund. And there'll be an opportunity for public comment from those who have registered to speak ahead of time. Members of the public will be called on in the order in which they've registered and we'll each have two minutes to provide their comments. At the end of two minutes, the next commenter will be called. Written comments for the committee are always welcome through the project website, the link of which will be dropped in the chat. I also want to mention the following disclaimer. Any conclusions or recommendations made by individuals during this event should be considered dependents of those individuals alone and should not be considered conclusions or recommendations issued by this committee or the National Academies of Science, Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. Okay, so we'll get started with our first presentation. I want to welcome Natasha Gidjarnat, Deputy Director of the Environmental Justice Data and Evaluation at the White House Council on Environmental Quality and she'll provide an overview of the Climate and Economic Justice screening tool as well as provide information on the types of recommendations from the committee that would be most useful to her effort. Natasha, please. Thank you so much. Appreciative of this opportunity to share on behalf of the Environmental Justice Team at the Council on Environmental Quality. So in late 2022, the tool was launched and you'll be happy to know that that webinar was recorded. So please visit the White House's YouTube page to watch the recording and gain more insights on version one of the C-Tests. Next slide, please. So we're pleased to announce the release of version 1.0 of the Climate and Economic Justice screening tool also known as the C-Tests. And for some context, CEQ was charged by Executive Order 14-008 to create a geospatial mapping tool to help us identify what we call disadvantaged communities. And for your reference, the term disadvantaged communities does not characterize the people in the communities, but it really gets to the disinvestment, the marginalization and potential overexposure to environmental hazards affecting the lives and well-being of these communities. So the goal of the C-Tests is to help agencies to identify disadvantaged communities that are geographically defined. And we've been able to create this tool in deep partnership with the U.S. digital services, digital services. So for the purpose of this tool, it was to be a resource for federal agencies to help guide the targeting of resources. So the Justice 40 Initiative priority of this administration directs our agencies to make sure that 40% of the overall benefits of federal investments reach these disadvantaged communities and this will flow in areas like climate change and transit and workforce development. And so that's really the purpose of this tool to help our agencies identify these communities and the C-Tests serves as a powerful tool for our federal agencies to help guide the targeting of resources. Next slide, please. So we've worked hard to have a very well-informed tool. And so to do so, we solicited much feedback from people with a diversity of areas of expertise. In total, we had over 3,000 comments, emails or survey responses. And so for those of you that participated, which I'm betting some on the committee did, we thank you for your feedback and hopefully you see yourself reflected in version one of the C-Tests. Next slide, please. The communities are considered disadvantaged if they're in a census tract that meets one or more burden threshold and corresponding economic indicator for at least one of the tools categories or are in the lands of a federally recognized tribe. And these areas on the screen come from Executive Order 14-008 which focuses on tackling the climate crisis at home and abroad and highlight the need for investments in these areas to flow to disadvantaged communities as discussed in the interim justice 40 guidance. Next slide, please. So communities are considered disadvantaged if they're in census tracts that meet the threshold for at least one of the tools categories of burden. But in addition, communities are also considered disadvantaged if they're on the lands of federally recognized tribes. Next slide, please. So in the next two slides, I'll share with you some of the changes from the beta version to version 1.0 of the C-Tests. And I realize that by way of introduction, you're immediately hearing about changes. But I think this will provide you with a good overview of what's included in the tool and why. So the tool depicts the lands of federally recognized tribes. And this is a really important change that we heard during consultations that we have with tribal nations. In addition, we work closely with our partners at the Bureau of Indian Affairs at the U.S. Department of the Interior to identify an appropriate data set to show the lands of federally recognized tribes and to show the locations of Alaska Native villages. And we're using the land area representation data set of the Bureau of Indian Affairs to represent that data. In addition, there are 10 Alaska Native villages in the tracts that are also considered federally recognized. Also, we have a lot of new data sets and responsive feedback, which I'll describe more in the next slide. The burdens are categorized according to areas that relate to both the justice 40 areas of investment as well as how President Biden describes disadvantaged communities in the executive order. I will also note that we've made some changes on how we calculate this low-income indicator. So the low-income indicator is set at the 65th percentile for all categories that use that indicator with the exception of workforce development. And for this particular methodology change, we've set that at the 50th percentile so that we're capturing low-income communities but capturing those that might have just missed the threshold that was set by the beta version change. Another change pertains to the tracts surrounded by disadvantaged communities. During the public beta period, we received a lot of feedback about communities that are completely surrounded by disadvantaged communities. And now the methodology allows those tracts to be captured in the tool and identified as disadvantaged communities if they're completely surrounded and if they meet an adjusted low-income threshold. In addition, there are user interface enhancements. So the tool displays demographic information at the census tract level. This includes race and ethnicity as well as age and is being provided solely for information purposes. This information is not part of the methodology and is not being used to define disadvantaged communities. Rather, it's in response to public feedback seeking to have that information available. Now there are technical changes that have helped us address missing data. We had hundreds of census tracts in the beta version that were actually just disqualified from being considered as disadvantaged communities because they simply didn't have income information that now in line with the best of typical practices were imputing income from those tracts. During the beta period, we received a lot of feedback about the way in which we had two socioeconomic indicators for most categories. And that was low income and then a higher education non-enrollment indicator. And our goal here was to simply ensure that we're capturing communities that were low income and that's a threshold set by the methodology, but not in a burdenly capturing communities that are solely comprised of students that do not report income. So we've now modified the way that we calculate low income by basically removing the student population from that population and then calculating low income. So our example is the community that's surrounding Morehouse College, which wasn't considered a disadvantaged community in the beta version, but is now considered disadvantaged. And so by doing so, we've actually been able to more appropriately reflect low income communities in the tool. We have added data on U.S. territories, including the U.S. Virgin Islands and Guam. In addition, there are a host of changes that make the tool more user-friendly, including geolocation features, plain language explanations and the better ability to zoom in. So overall, there are a little over 27,000 census tracts that are identified as disadvantaged in version one of the stages. Next slide, please. And did it advance? Okay. Yes, it did. Okay. I wondered if it was a little bit frozen on my end. So just wanted to share with you briefly some of the new data sets that have been incorporated into the CES. We have data sets that are projecting climate risk that are showing flooding and wildfires, transportation barriers as well, lack of green space. And then also redlining. This has been added to the tool to capture communities that have historic that are communities that are informally redlined areas. We've also got data that shows legacy pollution, specifically proximity to abandoned landmines as well as formerly used defense sites. And finally, we have a data set that shows underground storage tanks that may be leaking and thus are able to capture some additional data on water pollution. Next slide, please. So in the tool, burdens are grouped by categories of climate change, energy, transportation, housing, legacy pollution, waste and wastewater health workforce development similar to that of the justice body covered programs. A community is highlighted as disadvantaged in the CES map is in a census tract that is at or above a threshold burden for, I'm sorry, at or above the threshold for one or more of the burden indicators. And if that tract is at or above the threshold for an associated socioeconomic burden. So for example, for climate change, communities are identified as disadvantaged if they're in census tracts that are at or above the 90th percentile for expected building, agricultural or population rate loss or projected flooding or wildfire risk and are at or above the 65th percentile for low income. And I'll step through energy and I'll spare you going through exactly what's all on the screen, but for energy communities are identified as disadvantaged if they're in a census tract that is at or above the 90th percentile for energy costs or for fine particulate matter in the air and are at or above the 65th percentile for low income. If you go forward to the next slide, please. For all of the indicators except workforce development the socioeconomic indicator is at or above the 65th percentile for low income, but for workforce development it's a little different. So communities are identified as disadvantaged when it comes to workforce development if they are at or above the 90th percentile for low median income, poverty or linguistic isolation or unemployment. And if they have fewer than 10% of people ages 25 and older that have a high school education. In addition, a census tract is completely surrounded by disadvantaged communities or is above the 50th percentile for low income. This community would also be considered disadvantaged or this tract I should say would also be considered disadvantaged. Next slide, please. Realizing that we're getting low on time for question and answer, but I do want to share with you just how we intend for agencies to utilize the CGS. So we're really excited to have recently issued guidance and instructions for federal agencies to use CGS. And as described in the instructions the federal agencies will use CGS to help identify disadvantaged communities. We have the website set so that you can either use the CGS website directly or you can download the data on disadvantaged communities from the website. So very briefly just a few things I wanted to point out to you from the recent guidance and instructions at a company. So the Addendance of the Justice for the Interim Guidance direct federal agencies to use best efforts to transition to using the CGS as expeditiously as possible. And we're happy to work with agencies to ensure that this transition occurs smoothly. CEQ will update the CGS at least annually and the annual update is expected to coincide with the start of each federal fiscal year. So fiscal year 2024 will begin this October 2023. We look forward to feedback that we'll receive from the National Academies and recommendations for future updates to the CGS. So CGS will use a grandfathering approach to avoid any potential problems that occur when a major update to CGS changes the list of disadvantaged communities. So if a census tract loses its disadvantaged community status due to an update to CGS, that census tract will be grandfathered and prioritized as a community for the next three years as a disadvantaged community for the next two years. I'm sorry, I said that incorrectly. And CGS generally defines disadvantaged communities at the level of census tract, which is the smallest geographic unit for which reliable nationwide data exists to support the CGS methodology. Next slide, please. So the guidance as well as the instructions are available on the CGS website. CEQ is also available to respond to questions that anyone may have. All that information appears here on this slide. Next slide, please. I did advance it. Okay, thank you very much. So if we have time, we'll have a screening tool demo, but we do have some responses to the questions and the task of the committee. So I'll prioritize that. But if there's time, I'm happy to provide a demo afterwards. So you can go to the next slide, please. So in terms of the statement of task of the committee and in terms of item number one, there is much information that is published on CGS and the peer review literature as well as in the gray literature. So targeting indicators that are using other tools that are related to CGS that are using effectively would be of great interest. For us, items two, three and four on the statement of task are of greatest interest to CEQ. So we are very interested in what you'll identify among the types of data to consider what environmental health factors would enhance our ability to identify disadvantaged communities related to the Justice 40 cover programs like climate change, clean energy, transportation, housing, legacy pollution, water and wastewater training and workforce development. For example, if there are further health and climate indicators that would enhance our ability to identify disadvantaged communities, we'd be greatly interested in that. In terms of challenges, evaluating the data available will be a challenge. CGS uses data that is nationally available and at the U.S. census tract level. This helps ensure that we have consistency and availability of information within the tool that captures the entire nation. But this means that there are some data sets that may otherwise be of interest but may not be available for use in the CGS. When it comes to cumulative impacts, for example, we're interested in approaches that consider weighting and additive effects of the methodology that supports these. So those are some approaches that are of interest to us. Next slide, please. So what CEQ seeks to ensure is what CEQ seeks to ensure that the CGS continues to accurately identify disadvantaged communities. So things that are of interest are relevant data sets that are publicly available, nationally consistent, and available at the census tract level that could be considered for incorporation into the tool. Also potential improvements to the methodology, one being methodology to better reflect cumulative burdens that communities are facing. Another key area of interest is to identify existing data gaps and the potential for future research opportunities. And lastly, CEQ welcomes any other possible strategies that would support updates and further implementation. And the next slide, please. So the biggest challenge is related to the feedback that we've received regarding CGS. One thing to keep in mind when it comes to that is that this is an iterative tool. We're going to continue to enhance it as much as possible with updates annually to occur. So enhancing it, especially as it pertains to incorporating relevant data sets and updating the methodology is especially pertinent. We acknowledge that one of the concerns is not yet having a cumulative impact indicator. And another concern that we've heard is when there are census checks that are middle income and don't reach that low income threshold but are still experiencing some environmental burden, the tool doesn't quite capture that right now. So we welcome your ideas and your recommendations on potential solutions that help address these concerns. And that brings me to the end of the slides. Happy to take any questions. And if there is time for a demo, I'm happy to do so. But you are clearly aware of the CGS and these slides do include the web link to visit the CGS website. Hey, thank you so much for that very helpful presentation. That really did help illuminate really what's going on here and what do you expect from the committee? I'd like now to open it up to questions from the committee. It looks like Jay has his hand up. Jay, please. Yeah, thanks for the excellent presentation. I just had a quick question regarding, you know, some of the changes that have been made from the beta version to what are you calling 1.0. I remember that some of the public comments and concerns focused on the non-inclusion of race as an indicator of disadvantage. I was wondering if you thought about addressing that or if you have any related comments or suggestions. Thank you. Oh, thank you. So yes, in response to public concerns, data on age and race have been added to the tool that they're only included as part of the user interface and they're not included as part of the methodology for identifying disadvantaged communities. Now it is however very well documented that communities of color suffer disproportionately from environmental health burdens due to decades of under-investment and they also face greater risk when it comes to climate change. So that is fully acknowledged. But the CGS does not include race as an indicator. It uses climate, environmental, and socioeconomic and other burdens to identify disadvantaged communities. We create a map that reflects the on the ground burdens as it relates to the burdens that, I'm sorry, a map that creates a picture of the underground burdens that disadvantaged communities face. But we do have this demographic information that is available to people immediately when you enter the tool and it's also available when you download the data through the spreadsheet, but it's not a part of the methodology. But thanks for asking. This is an important question and as the committee assesses CGS and looks to some of the areas of interest, particularly around cumulative impacts, I appreciate that you raised this question. Okay, thank you. Other questions from the committee? Kathleen, yes, please. Yes, thanks so much for the presentation. Really interesting and good overview. So you had specifically said that you view this as a resource for federal agencies. So I just wanted to make clear that that is your target audience here and you're not envisioning this as something necessarily that would be used by the communities themselves. Or can you just say a little bit more about audience and intended clients in some sense for the tool? Well, thank you very much for this question, Kathleen. Yes, the tool is designed for federal agencies to identify disadvantaged communities that will benefit from programs included in the Justice 40 initiative. This tool is publicly available. And so all who are looking to understand disadvantaged communities have access to use it. But the tool is designed for the purposes of the Justice 40 initiative and for agencies to use it to identify disadvantaged communities. And can I just add onto that? So, Sharma Limerick. Yes, of course. Which is that, of course, the tool was designed with federal agencies in mind. But a lot of federal agencies are beginning to use this tool in their notices of funding opportunities and other announcements. And for that purpose, they may be asking applicants, whether they're individuals, community groups, states or others, to actually identify whether or not to what degree they are targeting disadvantaged communities, whether the benefits of the program will actually reach disadvantaged communities, and thus actually making the tool accessible and having a user interface that was easy to use, easy to navigate, was actually a priority of the design team. Thank you. Susan. Hi, yes. Thank you so much for this presentation explanation, Tasha. I have a question about the data sets and the selection process for them that are included. Could you say a little bit more about how that goes to what extent the idea is to defer to the agencies within each domain, for example, EPA for the environmental data sets? That is a great question. Thank you, Susan. So I have a few folks that are here on the line that were part of the original data gathering for CDES. So, Sharma, can we call on you once more? Sure. But Susan, I would love for you to clarify the question, what you mean by deferring to the agencies? Sure. Yeah, happy to. So for example, the data sets that are currently an EJ screen, are you intending to just take those directly or do a whole separate analysis of which data sets are appropriate for a particular indicator? So just to make it more tangible, let's say, PM 2.5, would you prefer to defer to the EPA and what they use an EJ screen, is the role sort of open in terms of which PM 2.5 data set to use in this tool? Well, I see. OK, so in terms of just think, I think our goal really is to use publicly available data. And so generally using data sets that agencies have collected was really our first approach. And so if you actually were to go to the screening tool website, we have a methodology and data page that actually hyperlinks to all of the data sets. And you'll notice that we pull in from many of EJ screen data sets, for example. And if you're thinking about what's the universe of data sets that this committee might be able to recommend, I think we're open to your ideas. If there are other data sets that sort of meet our basic criteria, which is nationally available, nationally consistent, publicly available and available at the census track level. And in particular, we have found that there are certain data that we would really like but is only available at the county level or at the water system level or at a geographic resolution that we just can't easily integrate with enough data integrity. Lauren? I think related to Susan's question, what about how thresholds were chosen? I know that sometimes federal agency may have a particular threshold that's used for some things, but that may not necessarily be widely agreed upon by, let's say, the environmental justice community or other sorts of communities. So how did you navigate figuring out what the thresholds were? Great question. And I'd like to pull a formula in back on the thresholding as well. Thank you, Lauren. Yeah, no, it's a very good question. And I think for the purposes of this committee, I think if there are particular indicators that you think we did not hit it correct on the threshold, I think that it would be great to hear those suggestions. And as we said, there was a lot of testing done. We were really trying to assess how did the map look? Were we pulling in communities that we thought we should be pulling in? And ultimately, as you know, you are drawing the line somewhere and we tried to draw the line in a way that we thought would really reflect what President Biden was hoping to achieve when he signed Executive Order 14-08 and instructed CEQ to build a geospatial mapping tool to identify disadvantaged communities. But having said that, if with your expertise, the community's expertise, you think we ought to draw on the line differently, we would love to hear those ideas. Ramar, please. Hello. Along those line of data and combination questions, so there are many, many different ways of combining risk scores from different domains. And so how did you decide on how to combine the methodological approach? And typically, when you calculate a risk score, we always think about how does it work? What is the goal? How am I evaluating in a validation sample? So for that, what is it that you wanted to achieve if we wanted to validate this score? So the first question is about how do you think about different combination? And the second question is how do you assess it? Next week, we're going to be having a developer's panel. And I think it would be great to bring some of those questions to the team. I think in terms of thinking about how, I think one of the reasons that we were very excited when the National Academies was interested in developing this committee was because we know that there are various methodologies, whether it's CalEnviroScene, other state-based tools, but that are using different datasets that are available at, for example, the state level. We didn't have the exact same comparative datasets that were available at the national level. And there was a sense that we really wanted to have that we would like to be reflecting cumulative burdens in the tool in some way, but that ultimately going with the thresholding approach was allowing us to actually cover an incredibly diverse geographic area. We're trying to develop a tool that would fit for Alaska, that would fit for Puerto Rico, that would fit for the island territories, as well as for the middle parts of the U.S. And really thinking about what are the different datasets that are available, not trying to bias one region over another. This is really what led us to develop the thresholding approach, and then, of course, the fact that they're clustered into these categories was once again mindful of what President Biden put in Executive Order 14008, and the goal of having this tool be a key part of being able to implement and achieve the goals of the Justice Form Initiative. We have time for at least one more question, Walker. Thank you for the presentation. So my question is about evaluating change. And so I'm wondering if it's of interest to the CGS team, or perhaps within the scope of looking at change over time for the results of CGS. So, for example, measuring increases or decreases in impact or burden? I think this is a very interesting question, because the tool is designed for the purposes of the Justice Form Initiative, which is for the purposes that we're... Sorry, I'm getting a little caught up in my words. Bear with me just a moment. For the purposes that 40% of the benefits of federal investments in the Justice 40 program are reaching these disadvantaged communities, the change over time is also important. One way that we are viewing change is through an environmental justice scorecard that will soon be released. So I think that you're asking the right question and in a perfect world and in a future world, we would love an opportunity where these two tools would begin to speak to each other, the scorecard and CGS. But in the meantime, we would definitely be interested in recommendations from the group on being able to evaluate change over time in communities in terms of disadvantaged communities. So I greatly appreciate this question, Walker, and would be very interested in what recommendations the committee might have around that. And Walker, just to clarify, you're talking about progress or regress with respect to environmental justice and asking your question or about the cumulative impacts over time? I think it could be both, partly. So we're thinking about, you know, whether places are getting better or worse and tying that back to program effectiveness or measuring environmental conditions and whether those are getting better or worse. So I think the concept of change would be applied to both of those. Okay, thank you. No, please. I was just going to add a piece of this, which is from the agency perspective, having changing lists of communities because of changes over time, also we recognize can, you know, it can create programmatic challenges. And for that reason, we've thought about the agency guidance, the instructions make clear that there will be at least a grandfathering approach in place so that as... Because changes are important to understand from the standpoint of understanding what's actually happening, but at the same time, we have to think about how this might actually be impacting the way in which agencies are implementing their justice voting program. Okay. Thank you very much. We're out of time at this point. So thank you for joining us and answering the questions and that excellent presentation. I'm sure it'll make our task a little bit easier to have these clarifications. And we will take a break now for 15 minutes and then we'll come back at 3 p.m. for another presentation. So I'll see you at 3. Okay, welcome back everybody from the break. My name is Eric Tate and I'll be working with Harvey Miller over the duration of the study to co-chair this panel. I'm fortunate enough in this next section to welcome Dr. Cecilia Martinez. Dr. Martinez works with the Bezos Earth Fund and has been involved to CGS for quite a while. Is Dr. Martinez ready? Yes, I'm here. Excellent. So I think in the meantime, we're bringing up your slides and we'll really... I actually don't have any slides. Okay. All right. Well, then I will turn the floor over to you. Thank you for coming. Of course. Thank you for having me. It's really a pleasure and an honor to be here with you all and just completely and thoroughly excited about this committee and its work and what it will bring to the fore in terms of how we implement some major initiatives in the federal government and beyond. So I thought I would start just a bit of context setting. As some of you might know, I was in the first year of the Biden administration, the Senior Director for Environmental Justice at the Council for Environmental Quality. So I was in on the first year of the foundational work of how to move both this Climate Economic Justice Screening Tool as well as Justice 40 and some other environmental justice initiatives that were outlined in the executive order getting the foundation set up for that. So I am very familiar with the process of getting it to a certain point and what we might need to continue to develop it in the most scientific and methodologically sound way. But now I have switched gears and I am part of the Bezos Earth Fund, which has provided the funding, a good part of the funding for this committee to do its work. And I am just thrilled that we were able to do that and our leadership and our team at the Bezos Earth Fund was really excited about being able to fund your work precisely for the reasons that I outlined earlier. But in this role as the sponsor of the research, I just want to be very clear that we are excited for you to do your work. We in no way have any inclination to either guide or help guide what kinds of conclusions or recommendations you might bring. We're just excited that we were able to support the top scientific minds that have an interest in building the Climate and Economic Justice Screening Tool. So with that, I thought maybe I would just put a little context both from my previous role and now this current role, why this Climate and Economic Justice Screening Tool is so critically important and what makes it transformative and historic in many ways. And I'm sure you've all heard and have been briefed on how the Climate and Economic Justice Screening Tool got initiated through Executive Order 14008, which was one of the first executive orders that President Biden issued tackling the climate crisis at home and abroad. And I think it's pretty significant that this initiative was embedded in the climate executive order. It speaks to why and how we need to continue to address equity in our climate agenda. And I think this obviously points to that effort. And so in that executive order, I just want to paraphrase what was in that executive order. And it was that, you know, that we need to turn our disadvantaged communities, those that have been historically marginalized and overburden into healthy, thriving communities by taking robust actions to mitigate climate change while also at the same time preparing for the impacts of climate change across rural and urban and tribal areas. Now, as part of that executive order, agencies were directed to achieve environmental justice as part or make environmental justice as part of their missions by developing programs, policies, and activities to address the disproportionately high and adverse human health, environmental, climate-related, and other cumulative impacts on disadvantaged communities. And so towards that end, the administration also initiated the Justice 40 initiative. And the Justice 40 initiative had as its goal, has as its goal, that 40% of the overall investment benefits across agencies would flow to disadvantaged communities. So 40% of overall investment benefits flow to disadvantaged communities. In the areas of, and this is where it becomes so critically important to think about the transformational nature of the Seadjust, in the areas of clean energy and energy efficiency, in the areas of clean transit, in the areas of affordable and sustainable housing, in the areas of training or workforce development, in the areas of remediation and reduction of legacy pollution, and in the area of critical clean water infrastructure. So Justice 40 as a goal, 40% of overall benefits in all of those areas towards disadvantaged communities. And so then the Climate and Economic Justice Screening Tool was also stood up in that executive order because the first question that comes to mind is, how do you define what is a disadvantaged community? And particularly, how do you define that in the areas that I have just noted? Clean energy, energy efficiency, clean transit, et cetera, et cetera. And so in Executive 14008, the administration stood up the need to have a climate and economic justice screening tool. Now, obviously it's clear that that is a very tall order. Anything transformational is going to be difficult. But it would be the screening tool by which it would be the instrument by which disadvantaged communities would be defined for the purpose of Justice 40. And it's also clear, as I know you all are the experts in this area, it's clear that a tool of this scope and scale has never been developed in this country as of yet. And I'll explain that for a moment. There are models of screening tools, obviously, that have been developed that are very rich and robust in what they've been able to do. For example, oftentimes in the environmental justice world, Cal and Byros screen is seen as the gold standard, particularly at a state level. It was first released in 2013. And as I mentioned is often seen as one of the premier environmental justice screening tools. We also know that EPA began development in its EJ screen back in 2010. And it also has been in over a decade of development and reclinement. And as a more traditional screening tool, it served as an initial screening of key environmental issues, which enabled agencies to delve into further investigations into the issues of environmental pollution and equity and justice. Well, let me just say that what we have now is a unique opportunity in that the climate and economic justice screening tool has a little bit of a different origin in that it was established by executive order. And that it is a tool that will help in the implementation of justice 40, a massive federal investment approach towards addressing remediation and a whole host of other issues that affect the most vulnerable communities. So from the onset, CGS has and been a tool that will ultimately result in some sort of resource allocation. It will support agencies in the fulfillment of their justice 40 programs and policies. And we know also based on executive order that presumably agencies will also be evaluated in a scorecard in terms of how well they are doing in achieving that goal of 40% investment benefits. A second area that is a bit different from previous tools is that because justice 40 is more than only pollution remediation as important as that is. And that's why I named all the different issue area buckets in the executive order of energy, transit, et cetera. So this screening tool also needs to encompass what does a disadvantaged community look like from the point of view of energy investments, transit investments, housing investments, water infrastructure investments, workforce development and job training investments, climate investments, not only in terms of pollution remediation, which makes this obviously a much more complex methodological question than if it was only for a particular issue area. And all of this shows that, you know, the CGS brings a whole new level of scientific and methodological complexity. It has to compare what it means to be disadvantaged with respect to energy and energy efficiency investments, with respect to transit investments, with respect to housing investments, like I said, in addition to the pollution remediation. And so at the Basel's Earth Fund, what we know was that we need to develop the best cross-disciplinary and interdisciplinary minds to begin to tackle this very complex methodological issue, but one that has very applied and immediate effects for how the federal government will address its most vulnerable communities in this country. So for example, you know, what is a hazard? What is a climate risk? How do you even begin to compare across communities with very different socioeconomic conditions with very different climate risks? There's rural areas, there's urban areas, those coastal areas, there's plains areas, there's mountain areas. There are differences across regions. There's all of these things point to that the comparison of these issue areas across the country is at a scale of complexity much greater than a tool that only has to look at a particular state into a comparison. And what does it mean to be disadvantaged in each of the buckets? What criteria or sets of indicators exist? And what data or sets of indicators need to be developed? And then what is the best method to compare these? So for example, I often cite if you are a community in the plains areas of the United States and very rural, your climate risk is going to be very different than a coastal community. And yet we have to figure out in this country how to compare the climate risks of those two very different regions in a way that will enable us to define where the most vulnerable community is that has a priority for justice for the investment. That is a pretty complex problem. And we have to do so in a way that is constitutionally passed mustard. So as a sponsor of this work, please know again I want to reiterate that we are in no way wanting to interfere with your process and or your conclusions. We're just elated that we were able to support this groundbreaking work. The Bezos Earth Fund has invested already approximately 300 million plus in climate equity and environmental justice and we're looking to do more. So I think the work that you do on developing this climate and economic justice screening tool recommendations can have an important contribution into the future for how not only government but also how philanthropy and the private sector invest equitably in climate. So with that, I will stop because I believe you want to have some interaction with the community if I remember correctly. So happy to entertain questions. Thank you so much for your presentation. We'll have some time for some general questions in a bit but I thought we'd start with if there's any clarifying questions for Dr. Martinez before we proceed. Harvey has his hands up. Harvey, please go ahead. Yeah, hi. Thank you for your comments. Really appreciate that. I'd like to drill down a little bit into what you mean by the complexity and comparisons because right now the way the tool looks is that there are like thresholds and then the community is identified as having an environmental justice challenge or not. So I'd like you to give us more of your thoughts about what you mean by the complexity of the interactions of these different dimensions and how you would like to see comparisons done. Sure. So I think a key question is obviously the first suggest had to be based on existing data and existing data sources. So what did the federal government already have in place that could be utilized into the suggest tool? I think a good question for you all is are those appropriate indicators? Are there other appropriate data sets that need to be put in there? And are there, is there data that needs to be developed that may not be available or accessible at this point? So absolutely the way the tool works is at a threshold level 90% or more based on certain socioeconomic indicators, etc. The question I think we have to pose is can we do more and are there more indicators or data that need to be included to make this a more robust tool into the future? And as I mentioned, you know, initially we began this process knowing that there was going to be iterations of this tool. I mean, coronavirus green over a decade of development, EJ screen over a decade of development, that this is going to be a process to continue to become a more robust tool as we move forward. If I can follow up really quickly, I guess I'm wondering some of these comparisons you want to make. Like you gave an example of like how a climate justice issue in the Great Plains may be different than let's say Appalachia. I don't know if you said that exactly, but I'm just picking two regions. And some of this has to do with how these different environmental justice dimensions interact in creating this injustice. I'm wondering if that's something you would like you imagine being developed in further iterations of this tool? Absolutely. That's absolutely what I would recommend. And also just a reminder, and I think that it depends on how you define environmental justice, but what we've got here is also when we think about it, the energy, right? The energy investments, the transit investments, the housing investments. So not only are we, or should we be trying to assess what the environmental risks are for certain communities and how they compare with each other across the country to define their priority. But we also have these added dimensions of what does it mean to be a disadvantaged community in terms of energy investments? And what are the key data or indicators that need to interact with energy, right? With energy indicators to make that the best possible indices for justice 40? Kathleen. Yeah, thank you. So I'm trying to just understand exactly how the tool works and what your goals are for it. So one of the questions that I have is if I understand correctly, and maybe I don't, that the way it works based on the thresholds and based on the indicators is you're either in or out in some sense. You either are categorized as being underserved or disadvantaged or not. And there isn't any gradation in terms of the degree to which that is true. And also, there isn't any idea that you're in or out based on one indicator or you were, you know, it would have been the same even if you had had five indicators that put you in there. So I just want to make sure if that's in fact correct. And if there's any thought about moving beyond that binary approach that is very much, you know, you could have different communities qualifying in some sense that in terms of the magnitude as well as the number of problems they face could be quite different. So not, not even, I mean, you mentioned for instance within one category like what does energy efficiency look like, okay, in one place versus the other. I understand that's complex, but it's even more complex to think about that across indicators as well as within indicators in terms of just the magnitude. So can you just expand a little bit on what the thought process was there and what the sort of hopes or aspirations are? Sure. Sure. Yeah, and I'll just I'm in a little bit awkward space in the sense that I no longer represent the federal government or CEQ. So I can speak to I can't speak to the specifics about what we would, you know, what CEQ would want or the administration. I can say that you're absolutely correct in the sense that it is a binary function. It's, you know, whether whether a census track meets a particular threshold in one of the categories and a socioeconomic right threshold. So and that, you know, again that would be my offering to you is what's your best given your expertise recommendations on a way to do that better or is that your recommendation is if that's the way it is, given the context of the CEGIS tool that's the best way to do it. Absolutely just you know, that would be that way appropriate. But yes, you're absolutely right that that right now it's and there's, you know, there's a process if I remember correctly for making sure to smooth, you know smooth that over over time so that, for example one year a community isn't is in and then the very next year it's out because that you know, that provides some very critical transitional issues that you don't want to have across communities but it is binary at this point. Jay. I really enjoyed the presentation and thanks for clarifying a few other issues I was thinking about but I just wanted to hear a little bit in terms of, you know aligning with what we are our tasks the scope of our work and the definitions of the term community, which is very relevant to the whole initiative and of course this tool specifically and right now it's operationalized in the form of census tracts and you know, which is which matches some of the tools other tools like you just created use blog groups, etc. So I was wondering if you have any thoughts or suggestions on you know how we can if we should you know rethink the community beyond census tracts or beyond census units in general if there has to be more contextually relevant or flexible definitions we should also think about thanks. Again I leave I leave the question back to you I can offer thoughts in terms of what that what you're stating was a critical question that we were addressing at that time in the sense that first of all is the geographic unit the right unit of analysis for this and if it is are there other units of analysis that are just as important or critical for the tool and the answer was at that time yes the issue being that for data particularly the kind of data that we were that are needed for a screening tool that's usually at a census track level right or in some way geographically based and because we know that that there does have to be a or we did we thought there did have to be a geographic component to this we built that in but other questions that aren't necessarily geographic in nature for example a question that we got from the we jack the white house environmental justice advisory council was what about when it's not geographically based so for example farm workers farm workers technically could be defined as a disadvantaged community under justice 40 but it's very difficult to find data around their geographic right that would show that and so absolutely there was then this question of what is the right methodology to be able to include those that are non geographic in nature absolutely just a road map we're going to have public comments a little bit later after the committee discussion has completed Marcos please continue thank you Dr. Martinez you made it real clear that the CGS tool is an instrument of the justice 40 program in terms of implementing it I wonder to what extent there's interest in the CGS tool being measured the progress of that program in the sense of tracking or displaying information about the investments themselves because right now it shows sort of outcomes on the ground or conditions but not necessarily the flows of effort from the federal government yeah that's a very good question I think there's two sources of information on that one is most obviously I think it would be good to get CEQs perspective on that whether they would like to have that information whether that would be useful to them the other one is you know and I'm not sure how this would work honestly I'm not sure because I'm not a FACA sort of lawyer so I don't know how the particulars of that but I know the White House Environmental Justice Advisory Council was always also looking into and I think believe they had a working group in terms of the scorecard about what needed to be done in order to get that to the best possible position so I think connecting with those two entities is as useful as possible obviously to the extent that the scorecard is going to address how agencies are doing on Justice 40 and a primary instrument of how they are doing is assessing how those communities are doing that are prioritized by the CEQS I would think that it would be an important piece of information that you all could delve in but again I that's just my personal opinion so for members of the public encourage to if you have any questions to place them in the chat and we'll get to them I actually had a question for you Dr. Martinez was there you know these eight categories are part of the tools associated with these Justice 40 dimensions was there any relative importance or relative concern with the ability to measure these different dimensions absolutely I mean I think we vetted and again, CEQ can more officially speak to this but during the time I was there we vetted hundreds of different data and different data ideas about what would be the most appropriate to include and again because this tool is starting such a significant process we're literally starting from ground zero in terms of doing that so there was various levels of vetting was the data able to measure what we needed it to measure was it available how timely was it updated and accessible for the tool all of those questions we used to try and assess what the best sort of data sources in there that process continued after I left and I'm sure so they have more updated versions of how that process continued to unfold but also just by virtue of physical and intellectual capacity in the short period of time I don't think there was any way we could vet every possible data source that was available for the CEGest and so that also I think why we pointed to this is going to be a process of constant iteration that the best possible tool set up and running but as we move forward and as the federal government continues with the expansion of its data and research agenda there might be additional data that comes to the fore as we move forward that should be included that is more appropriate or you know that can be added in. RV? I think I know the answer to this question in some ways and might help to discuss this a bit. It strikes me that indicators for environmental justice are going to vary depending on geographic context. So what we mean by let's say a transportation barrier in an urban area may be different than a rural area. Is this a complexity that you would like us to look at or do you want something like universal indicators that are geographically agnostic for lack and I would like you to bring your best expertise to that subject as a sponsor of the work. I don't think we want to preclude or preempt your thinking on that is it? So I would just I apologize if I were in a different position I would definitely give you my druthers but I think as the funder of this we trust completely which is why we chose NAS for you to bring the best objective and expertise on that subject. Apologize that I can't. Well maybe we can discuss this later in more general. I see someone from the CEQ is still here. Sure. Yeah, if there's not any other questions specifically for Dr. Martinez I'd like to open it up for both her and our previous speakers. We had a number of questions that it looks like Dr. Martinez could provide some comments but also it's maybe also best addressed to the folks that are in government right now so if we had any questions from the committee now's the time. I can repeat my question and ask Ms. Murphy could you trust that you're muted. I'm joined two ways by phone and computer the question about data indicators and whether this should be agnostic or geographically specific I would agree with what Dr. Martinez suggested which is that as we mentioned one of our priorities has been to have data sets that are publicly available and consistent but even having said that there are data sets for example that aren't available for the U.S. territories and so we have those that available on the website if this committee was to make recommendations around certain data sets and was to suggest a way in which we could still build a tool that was nationally consistent but that had certain kinds of was able to sort of thread the needle in the way that you're suggesting I think we were open to those suggestions but I think one of the challenges that we have faced is trying to look at data sets that really can cover the entire country and the U.S. territory that is really the gold standard for us. I wasn't thinking in terms of data coverage I was thinking about how we would define these environmental justice dimensions based on geographic context independent of whether the data is available that's kind of a the next follow-up question from there but what do we mean by environmental justice and say an urban area on the east coast versus a rural area in the middle of the country versus somewhere in California? And can I just and I just want to correct a little bit I know this because there is this strong approach on environmental justice but this is actually climate and economic justice the screening tool with environmental variables as one component so just because we did have to constantly sort of to the public as well make sure that folks understood it's not the EJ screening tool you know it's a different tool for a different purpose but I'll let Sharma and hi Sharma answer that first yeah I mean I would just say that the question of defining first in some ways I think we put the we prioritize really actually trying to understand what data was available and because obviously having a theoretically good definition if we don't actually have the data to actually meet that standard then we can't actually have a tool that is achieving the purposes that President Biden directed us to achieve in Executive Order 14-08 I was I apologize unable to be here for the beginning of the public session but I had a question about the public comment process on the beta version of the CGS tool were there sets of comments or typologies that didn't make it into the November release low hanging fruit complex issues that are of concern so as you know yes during the beta period we had we had a lot of really great comments that came through both written comments we did public consultations we engaged in tribal consultations and had a very you know all about 3,000 comments that we actually process and I think some of the comments reflect actually what we've talked about today we know that we're thinking about the need to ideally have some way of representing cumulative impact and I think we think of that in two ways one is the question of ranking across different different those that have one indicator versus five or six or seven indicators of burden that is something that we receive that we're hoping this committee can help us think through as Natasha mentioned earlier there are communities for whom they may suffer numerous environmental and climate burdens but they are above the low income threshold and those communities were not representing a tool because of the way the socioeconomic indicator actually prevents them from being included so that's another way in which we're thinking about cumulative impacts so we also received suggestions for data sets that we just don't have access to that for example like drinking water quality or the location of lead pipes which might be available in certain geographic settings but aren't available in a nationally consistent way and then finally a question that came up at the very beginning which is we were asked by numerous members of the public to consider adding grace into the tool and that is a decision that we did not take but as we said we've used other indicators to try and represent the realities on the ground without actually including race or ethnicity in the methodology itself Any other comments or questions from the committee for our speakers? Okay so Sam I don't know if you'd like to move to the public session if we have any comments I understand if people are pre-registered they can ask their comments directly We have two people who have pre-registered to make some public comments only one as far as I can tell has joined us so far although they aren't scheduled to be making their comments until 4 o'clock so we might give that person but perhaps we can Amici can we bring Amanda Dwelley online or give her access to her microphone so that she can make her public comments and while we're trying to get her online I will just remind everybody that well I'll call, right now we only have one person online but I'm calling them in the order that they've signed up they'll have two minutes to provide their comments at the end of the two minutes we're going to turn off the microphone and well if our next speaker has shown up we'll give the microphone to her we ask all our commenters to provide respectful comments that are relevant to the statement of task and if they aren't relevant to the committee's work we'll go ahead and move on to the next comment if that other person has shown up there will be opportunities in future meetings for public comment for spoken comment I should say but we do welcome written comments from members of the public at any time and O'Shea is going to drop the link to our website where you can provide that comment so with that I will introduce the person Amanda Dwelley from sorry I'm moving to that part of the agenda from Beech Hill Research Hi can you hear me? Yes we can thank you I'm a social science researcher I worked on New York's definition and I've gotten deep into the CGS data I'm going to focus my comments on the income indicator since all the other factors are filtered through it just some thoughts that will also write up about sampling non-response and measurement error and self-reported ACS income data this variable is published with sampling errors which are fairly wide and a threshold approach there could be misclassification risk when there's sampling error non-response bias tied to people's housing stability whether they get the survey trust in government and then the question of the reliability of self-reported income how people really conceptualize their income and this has come to my attention through a lot of discussions with people in the fishing community who are surprised that they're not in a map and have some questions about how income is captured the question of whether this single socio-economic indicator really captures the full picture of economic and financial resources and capacity in a community as you've kind of noted areas with similar income could have far different financial resources linked to age, debt, wealth or justification or local cost of living so I'm so excited that you're talking about data hope there's opportunity to consider both kind of the really small granular questions and the big questions I know there's no perfect indicator so just with income I wonder if there's ways to pull in income from other non-sampled sources like the IRS or benefits data or possibly create a composite or index for income and wealth if cumulative impacts are possible that could be another way I'm sure you're thinking about to smooth out some of the biases sampling and measurement error inherent in any sampled or self-reported data thank you thank you very much Amanda and Jingbo Lu have you joined us yet? we'll try again to see if she's joined us at four o'clock when we actually scheduled this so with that I will hand it back over to Harvey and Eric thank you Amanda do we want to address any of the questions or questions we received in the Q&A window? I'm sorry are you asking me? We certainly can do that if they're relevant feel free to do that hey well would you like me to read them out loud or do you want to just go ahead and read them and I can go ahead and read them this process in a little bit right now here's a question about the CGS2 online shows partially disadvantage if a trend census track overlaps tribal areas while there isn't mention of partially disadvantage in any attribute and downloadable data how should folks who download the data capture partially disfand tracks accurately I don't know if that's is that something we should answer at this point? it may be an issue we need to address in our discussions as a committee I will say them there go ahead Natasha I'll start and I'll pass it by sign so you can thank you yes communities may show that when you use the tool online and you indicate the location whether by zip code or whether by address or whether by city name if you have landed in an area that has 1% or more tribal lands it may show as partially disadvantage one example I would love to do a demo with you right now one example you can go into the tool and you can type in the search Navajo nation and you may see some census checks there that identify as partially disadvantage now to download this information you go to the download window so you go to the methodology and data under that is your downloads option go into the downloads and you download the Excel file and so there in the Excel file you'll need to narrow that down to the specific community or city or area of interest it starts in alphabetical order by county and the census checks therein so let's say you go to areas that are in the Navajo nation this is going to be a distraction for a moment I hope that you can hear me over the background okay thank you sorry for that distraction so if you go to an area for example the Navajo nation and you see that there are some communities that are partially partially disadvantaged within the tool there are a number of indicators everything that you can see on the website are included there in the Excel file you may want to remove or hide some columns that are not of interest the demographic data is there for example right when you open it and you'll need to navigate to whether it's true or false that this community is indicated as a disadvantaged community of course true would be or this census check so true would of course be that it is disadvantaged census check while false would indicate that it is not and I believe it will indicate partial as well within that I heard the question I want to check to verify but I believe it will indicate whether a census check is also partially a disadvantaged community as well on that basis and the interruption in the background and I also know that Charmala unmuted to share as well I think Natasha did a good job of telling me to explain that essentially you need to be just one clarification so the short answer is yes you can find this information from the spreadsheet and I think this comment indicates that we at CEQ should actually work on putting together how to and how to navigate the spreadsheet so we will take that back the spreadsheet itself won't say we don't use the word partial but you can in fact navigate to the percentages and I think that this we could better provide an answer to this question by actually being able to show you the spreadsheet and that is something that we will take back and just to be clear if you recall at the beginning of our presentation when Natasha was going she talked about two different ways that a community could qualify as being or a census tract issue and they could qualify as being disadvantaged one was meeting the burden and the other was being the lands of partially the lands of federally recognized tribes and so there are some census tracts that do not otherwise meet the environmental, social climate burden but that do contain the lands of federally recognized tribes those census tracts that are classified as partially and as I said if we could screen share we could very easily show you some examples on the map. I could share my screen if you want to walk me through and if that would be helpful or would that be too difficult our wheels are turning if we have time let's attempt okay well let me share my screen because I've already got the tool open here because I just did a quick run to make sure I could do it before I offered and apologies that somehow we did something that isn't allowing us to allowing you to share your screen so I'm in here I already plugged in the Navajo Nation for example and you want you wanted to see the Excel spreadsheet was that what you were interested in in the search bar would you mind oh actually will you click on any one of the communities maybe one of the ones that's not completely shaded and that's where you'll see a partially shaded community that one is identified as yes that would be a great one I'm sorry yeah just just one quick note this census tract so the wonderful thing about this tool is it's very easy to use and the census the side panel here will change and explain exactly what is happening so this is a track that is actually it's not partially disadvantaged it is disadvantaged you see very clearly yes because it's both meeting the underlying or one one I shouldn't say underlying but one method which is the burden threshold and the associated socio-economic threshold and it's containing the lands of federally recognized tribes and the two tone is actually just the two data layers so the fact that one is shaded a little bit darker than the other is actually not at all relevant to whether or not a community is considered disadvantaged we often use the example of Natasha if you can't easily find a tract here I might suggest a different part of the country any suggestion Palm Springs California Agua Caliente this is where the Agua Caliente so if you zoom into one of those tracks that looks like a checker board and just click so that we can see the outline of the tract so this would be an example of a disadvantaged census tract where it very clearly tells you you'll see that none of the categories of burden are actually shaded in navy blue so you actually are needing the burden threshold the category will change to be navy blue none of those are lit up instead the side panel tells us that the lands of federally recognized tribes cover 61 percent of this particular tract and so if you were to go and Sam if you want to go if you go back up to methodology and data and the download page right here downloads right here further up sorry you could go so we don't have to go through the spreadsheet that that will actually be quite challenging to try to explain how to do this but if you were to go into the into the spreadsheet one of the columns that's all the way over to the right it might be column the downloads link this is by the way the page just since we're all here for the rest of the members of the committee that page that Sam was just on would show you all of the categories of of data where the data where we got the data from and on the downloads page pop open the Excel spreadsheet some year yeah okay I thought we were oh I may move it over when over on my other screen there we go okay and go over to I believe it's column T I'm sorry which column I believe it's did you say T T no that's the true that is the through fall that is so this is the column that's identified as disadvantage so this is an important column to see and then you could see the next one view percentage of the track that is disadvantaged by area so anyway the point is that the information is in the spreadsheet and I we will take back that we should perhaps post a an explanation better explanation of how to actually navigate the spreadsheet okay does anybody have any any more questions on this or shall I stop sharing my screen one other thing since you're on the web page just so that the committee knows and is available this information at the top of the screen would you mind clicking on about and then click on about once more we wanted to make sure that the committee also is aware of where the memo and the guidance memo and the instructions are located and you can see that there are two bullets that point towards the memo and instructions there was a question before about the intended use of the tool intended audience and that will give some insight around the intended use and instructions of use that have been issued towards federal agencies thank you okay and since you're on I'll also just say that off of the methodology and data page not only are there links to all of the data sets that are used you can also find from the download page the technical support document okay thank you for this impromptu demo to the tool okay so here's the methodology okay yeah so earlier sorry it looks like it looks like marcos has a question oh good marcos please go ahead thank you so on the you might have said this before I apologize but given the partial disadvantage categorization I know it's a very unique situation but because we had a conversation about the binary classification of communities about whether they're in or they're out so partial disadvantage means that they're in in terms of qualifying as a disadvantage so in terms of you know these are lands of federally recognized tribes and so you would often have I mean agencies have some progression in terms of how they're actually implementing their justice 40 programs and so for example if you had a program that was targeted to federally recognized tribes then the point was we were just trying to ensure that all lands of federally recognized tribes would in fact be recognized as disadvantaged in addition the guidance that was it was in the form of an MMO that was issued by OMB and the Climate Policy Office also makes clear that there are some federally recognized tribes that don't have land those tribes would also be considered disadvantaged for the purposes of the justice 40 initiative regardless even though they themselves are not shown on the map and since we're on this I'll say that if we were you were to go for example Sam if you were to click the AK in the the left hand little margin it says 48 AK we have shortcuts to Alaska, Hawaii and the territory all of those dots are actually the locations of Alaska Native villages and the side panels explain exactly why communities are census tracks are identified as disadvantaged so if I could follow up on that point this is Marcos again so brought very interesting element of that that I think came up earlier was about disadvantage communities that are not geographically defined because by virtue of like you said tribes that don't have federally recognized land so how does that appear show up in this tool or does it show up in this tool in that respect so the justice 40 interim guidance which was issued by the White House in July of 2021 makes clear that there are two different ways that communities are considered disadvantaged one of which is geographically defined communities and the recent guidance makes clear that the CGS tool is the tool for doing that but it also makes clear the guidance from 2021 states that geographically dispersed communities can also be considered disadvantaged and there are some parameters that agencies can consider but the idea is that those are not necessarily going to be able to be displayed in a geospatial mapping tool could I follow up on that with just a quick question does that mean that the criteria are different though for those communities that aren't place based because it seems as though the indicators some of those indicators are very place based so wondering how they're if the exact same criteria are being used in both cases or not I think that I wish I could I would screen share this but I'll just say that the Justice 40 interim guidance from 2021 agencies should define community as either a group of individuals living in geographic proximity to one another or a geographically dispersed set of individuals such as migrant workers either type of group experiences common conditions the answer is that yes there may be a different set of there are a series of variables that agencies are asked to look at and the new guidance that was just released basically like amend that the 2021 guidance but only with respect to geographically defined individuals and so you know going back to once again what's the purpose of the Justice 40 initiative it is really a asking agency to ensure that 40% of the overall benefits of investments in climate clean energy housing water are directed to disadvantaged community and there are really two different ways that we can think about disadvantaged communities one is through CGS and then the other is geographically dispersed individuals So speaking of the spreadsheet that was pulled earlier and going through the variables in the spreadsheet is there a variable that aggregates that sounds like an index for all the variables a kind of a composite measure that we could tell that we could use to kind of compare between sense of stress for example the spreadsheet itself does not have that aggregating you know an aggregating function there is a threshold count and a category count and so you know in terms of when you looked at when I say category count that would have been you know climate change clean energy the big categories and then there is a count as well that you could identify through the spreadsheet of the number of burden thresholds that are actually exceeded so basically paralleling what you are seeing in the side panel here Thank you I had a question that expands on something Harvey asked Dr. Martinez earlier around that she made the point that this is not just the EJ tool this is a climate economic justice screening tool you know the economic part is distributed throughout the methodology in terms of these the secondary burden that needs to be accomplished the climate is just one of these eight categories how how are you feeling about how well integrated this climate idea is in the tool given it is prominent in its name in the tool and its choice of indicators I see some of them were new in November so for the climate you know for the climate okay I've heard of that so for the climate indicators as you're looking in the tool just to make sure everybody that might not be looking in the tool can see it includes expected building loss rate expected agriculture loss rate expected population loss rate projected flood risk and projected wildfire risk so any indicators at or above the 90th percentile in addition to low income so we have a robust set of indicators that are assessing climate change but we are very interested to see if the committee identifies additional climate indicators that would be useful for understanding whether or not a community is disadvantaged and helping to ensure that we are capturing those communities using this tool and especially if there are climate and health indicators for example we would love to see if the committee has recommendations there as well and I saw Shamala unmute so Shamala more to add no I think you covered it thanks for this question Ibrahim Ibrahim did you have another question or did you just forgot to put your hand down sorry I forgot to no worries so Sam you had mentioned that we might have one other public question let me hold on a second let me move this over to my other screen because it's my information is being blocked by my sharing my screen hold on a second are we done with that for now we can go back to it because we had one other speaker but there has been no I haven't seen that this person has logged on but they might be logged on under a different name is Dr. Jingbo Lu logged in Dr. Jingbo Lu going once going twice okay please if you're there we'd love to hear from you and get your public comment get your comments please do submit it in writing via our public website okay I'll give the floor back to you all do we have any other lingering questions from the committee or speakers someone actually did suggest a attract that might be a good example of what we're talking about I'm pulling it up right now I feel like I'm getting to be an expert on using the tool that's how easy it is to use look at this at least for the user interface I can tell you is easy to use because I'm figuring it out right now as we go oh except for it saying location not found I guess I have a question I'm thinking of what's going on in my state right now there there was a freight car derailment East Palestine as we pronounce it Ohio where communities being exposed to you know some toxic chemicals that were released you may have read about this in the media I'm just wondering like is that a dimension of transportation that would be of concern this you know that we think about road shipments we think about road traffic we think about pollution we think about things like that but we don't often think about freight and the risk and cost of that especially since the less affluent communities are the ones who tend to bear the burden of those type of risks and burden so I was just wondering your thoughts on that I think that we're open to all of your suggestions the you know the goal of the tool is to be capturing environmental burdens environmental health burdens climate burdens and really trying to ideally ensure that communities that have been long neglected and under invested in for a very long time actually are identified as disadvantaged and thus prioritized as part of the Justice 40 initiative and so I think if you have suggestions for data sets that you think would allow us to capture that kind of data I think we'd be happy to hear it and since I'm speaking let me also just say that I'm just so grateful to all of you for all of the time that you are taking to be part of this committee I think that we all are committed to this work because we know that that there's really a vision for a world where everyone is breathing clean air drinking clean water and that trying to actually identify communities that aren't yet being able to realize that dream is something that we hope through the Justice 40 initiative will be able to change so thank you I guess perhaps a more general way to state that question is there are things like this incident describing that are more rare but catastrophic I guess I see a little bit of that in the current tool with flood risk but we could be thinking more broadly about that I guess I'm just wondering if there's any kind of reaction to that comment I appreciate this question but I'll decide within the tool on transportation it's diesel particulate matter exposure traffic proximity and volume as well as transportation barriers which is large CA and economic indicator and so there is opportunity for consideration and we'd be grateful to see what additional measures to understand transportation and how this may impact disadvantaged communities the committee may unveil so we are grateful for what you may uncover on this and excited to see the wheels turning on this topic as well as the others that have been raised thanks Harvey I ask that question because I notice that that town is not currently meets the threshold in the current tool yeah I mean I think one of the challenges that we face when creating national school is simply that there are you know there are states we have a lot of overlap with existing tools but it's not perfect and that we'll hear from communities that say I'm identified as disadvantaged by say my state screening tool but not by the CGES and if there is a way that this committee thinks that with sort of data integrity that there was a way to actually thread that needle because you know one of the challenges is having data sets that are only available for certain parts of the country it presents a challenge when you're trying to build a national tool so we appreciate your thoughts and thinking on that Lauren Lauren go ahead sorry hi I think also it seems that it's more than just a data question right because there is also it's also you're kind of asking two different questions asking are you disadvantaged in California is different than asking are you disadvantaged in the United States of America so there's kind of that question of scale isn't just about what data is available but also about what questions you're asking and like depending on the skill you ask the question you're actually asking a different question and so trying to imagine navigating that is is quite the challenge but I think that I mean it's interesting because Harvey your question you were talking about the catastrophic incident but it made me think about some of the environmental justice things that come up where where I live which is actually close to August Caliente but there's in San Bernardino County there's a lot of big distribution centers big warehouses moving a lot of a lot of products I can get pretty much anything delivered to my house within four hours which is super convenient but also has really big implications for things so it's interesting that it feels related to the freight question because it's things are moving through and you're thinking about transportation in a different way and transit in a different way but also very different from a catastrophic event so yeah I just kind of food for thought while we're thinking about these issues and how they relate to each other if I can ask one more question I think this is kind of a naive question but I want to ask it anyways there are other environmental justice screening tools you know we know the EPA one and the CDC one I'm just wondering if you can imagine a bright future when all these tools are somehow used in conjunction or in some kind of ensemble to to not only identify these communities then move forward more proactively but we definitely appreciate this question and it is a question that we receive with frequency as well as think about often there are a number of environmental justice screening tools across the federal agencies and they serve different purposes they have different areas of focus as it may contain to different agencies so this is for the purpose of that 40% of the benefits of those federal investments for the Justice 40 program reach these disadvantaged communities that CDC just will identify but there are strengths in these different tools and being able to that may have different data different methodologies that may be very useful to identifying disadvantaged communities so we certainly encourage exploration of the other tools and identification within those tools of data sources and methodologies that that may add to and further ensure the ability to identify disadvantaged communities and I saw Charmilla unmute so I'll pass the baton. This is such a great question because we are just living at such an exciting moment in time where I think we are seeing the ability to be developing these tools and I think our hope is, as Natasha said, is for them to be able to be integrated in some way and I think a nice example is there's a new climate mapping for resilience and adaptation tool that has a data layer of suggest on it and I think our vision is that you could have that an agency may have its own tool that might be useful for its own that it's very specific to the agency's mission and that there could be a data overlay with the suggest and that to the purpose of the Justice 4D initiative they could be using their own data layer to be perhaps prioritizing among disadvantaged communities. Lauren? I had a question about something that struck me when Cecilia was talking about the need to keep in mind this idea that this tool exists in a way that passes constitutional muster and I as someone who does not work in government frequently I'm just curious what it meant to you as you've built this tool and if there are things that you hit a wall and said actually no we can't touch that because it doesn't pass that muster. I will just say that I think we've been quite clear that we are trying to build a tool that is reflecting the realities on the ground but that we built the methodology in the way that could withstand legal scrutiny so we purposely don't for example have race in the tool and that is to ensure the tool's durability but we are using other data sets that we think are capturing the communities that need to be captured. Thank you. Walker? So I saw that the tool was developed and really a lot of the coding was out and available on this on GitHub and so I'm just I'm wondering a little bit about criteria for data inclusion and different types of data the CEQ's team is interested in and I'm thinking a little bit about a data set that might be of a particular issue in just one region of the country like Appalachia or perhaps another data set that doesn't have nationwide coverage but might be of a particular interest to a city such as a great air monitoring network within a city. So is there sort of an interest in considering those kinds of data into the tool something that may not have nationwide coverage or be perceived as a nationwide issue but you know has very real environmental concerns and merit behind it. Well very much appreciating this question this is a tough question because understanding environmental health means understanding that environmental health is inherently local and that certain environmental challenges in certain areas may not be the same in other areas but at current state CGS is a nationwide tool and so the data that we require is to add to or that's currently reflected in CGS and that we're looking to add to the CGS is data that is nationally available and we want that to be at the smallest reasonable geographic unit that we're able to gather this information across the nation which is currently at the census tract level. I would just add that you all are experts on this topic and you have a mandate with this committee to be also thinking outside the box and if there are in some ways unstruck by in some ways your question relates to the conversation we're having with Harvey and Lauren before in some ways it's a data question in some ways it's a methodology question about is there a way for example to be using together a series of different data sets across the country in a way but in a way that actually provides integrity to our goal which is to provide a nationally consistent tool using publicly available data so we haven't found a way to thread that needle but maybe you all can and so I would say that we have chosen right now to use data sets that are available nationally but if there is some way that you think methodologically we could do this with integrity I think we're interested in hearing those suggestions and we could see what it looks like on the map but you know that is for you all to think about Marcos So it sounds like I know that CQ had considered a lot of comments as you said earlier with the previous version or beta version of the tool and I wonder if we have access to the comments and or materials where you kind of look seriously at some data sets that you couldn't figure out how to use but you'd love to because I might save us some time in terms of beginning with things that were sort of on the list of desirable but not sure how to go about it I will say that our technical support document already lists a handful of data sets that we looked at and didn't yet find it I think that is a question that we can also take back to see if we might be able to share publicly or share with your committee which is potentially sharing your public good Okay last okay Lauren, there you go I was just thinking you know I know that it's important that all of the inputs be publicly available were there data sets that were maybe expensive but that you thought would have been useful and is there any world in which you know there's data that could be purchased and made publicly available that isn't yet or anything that came up kind of in that realm that made you think So I think I will say that there were certain data for example like from the First Street Foundation that goes into our climate indicators that is not automatically publicly available but they allow you to use it if it's for certain purposes of the other part of your question I think we can get back to you My question is kind of related to that we've been asking you about what kind of recommendations would be useful are there recommendations that would not be useful we'd kind of like to know the boundaries are of our work here maybe can help us This is a great question we do not want to impose limitations as generally was saying before we are very interested in you thinking outside the box Is there more that you would like to add? No I think we would not you know if there we have made a decision that the tool will not include race as an indicator and so if there are data sets that have that woven in that would not be something that we would consider and so aside from that I think we are interested in you thinking critically and some of the questions that were raised before are things that we've been grappling with but we are eager for your mind to help us think through and solve for It's a pretty big playing field for us Easy job Easy job I think we are just about out of time I believe we can wrap up at this point I had one last question it's a follow up to the legal issue around race What is actually considered by all to be a race associated with race Census Bureau will say Native American is a racial category but yet we do want to you know tribal communities is an important aspect of the tool what about ethnicity what encompasses race here I think it's important to realize that federally recognized tribes are actually political entities and so we are in the map because they are sovereigns and so they have a different recognition that the we don't have race in the tool as Natasha mentioned earlier we do pass through information from the census that is just available for informational purposes in the download on the side panel and that other data sets that we have chosen to include in version 1.0 were included because we thought that they reflected for example economic disinvestment so we did include a data set from the 1930s from the government homeowners loan corporation on red lining because when we put that data set into the CGS we saw first of all there was tremendous overlap already with communities that were already being picked up with the other climate and environmental socioeconomic indicators but the fact that there wasn't 100% overlap suggested that there was likely some economic disinvestment that we were not accurately capturing and we did hear review academic studies that show for example that if you live in a formally red lined community the price of your home is less than it would be had your community not been red lined and it was really that economic disinvestment that we were seeking to capture when including a data set like red lining. Thank you for that clarification but Harvey is right we are out of time for the discussion. We really thank that y'all came out and spoke with our committee and answered questions. This is a really fruitful discussion. Harvey did you have any other concluding comments before we close out this session? I just want to add to my thanks this really was very helpful and I think this gets us off into a good start in approaching this difficult but very important challenge that we have given to us and I think Sam is going to walk us out now. Sam? Yes, I want to I forgot that that was the way it was going to go. I want to thank everybody for your time our speakers that was very informative, apologies for the technical glitches but hopefully we got through it and we'll try and figure out we'll do a little postmortem afterwards and try and figure out what was going on this time. I just want to remind everyone that any opinions that you heard here are not necessarily the opinions of the committee or recommendations of the committee or of the National Academy of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine but rather the opinions of those that spoke them. I again invite the public to provide any written comments to the committee that you would like using the link that is available in the chat for our public website. If Oshane you could add that to the chat and and with that committee please go ahead and meet again back in using the same link that we used for our closed session before we opened it up. So thank you, CEQ and Bezos, we really appreciate your being here and I am sure we'll be back at you with a lot more questions after we've had a chance to digest what we're doing. We're looking forward to our open sessions on the 23rd and we hope that we'll see you all again then. So thank you.