Health Equity Zones

January 15, 2016January 23, 2016

Alternatives and Solutions: Strategies for Climate Justice and a Just Transition

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The Environmental Justice League of Rhode Island (EJLRI) has created a brilliant position paper, “National Grid’s Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) Liquefaction Facility: Toxic Hazards in the Port Providence: Proposals for a Just Transition” that eviscerates National Grid‘s plans to build a new liquefaction facility for fracked LNG at Fields Point in South Providence. Over the next few days RI Future will be presenting the EJLRI’s position paper in its entirety.

Solutions and Alternatives

The information presented in the previous posts show that in addition to not being necessary, National Grid’s proposed LNG Liquefaction Facility would be dangerous and would contribute to existing environmental racism. LNG Liquefaction is not needed in Rhode Island in general, and it certainly should not be placed in the most toxic and most impoverished part of the state.

The immediate solution is to stop this facility from being built. The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) needs to deny National Grid LNG LLC’s application, and the RI Department of Environmental Management (RI DEM) and RI Coastal Resources Management Council (RI CRMC) need to deny the state level permits.

That being said, the proposed liquefaction facility is not the only problem outlined in this position paper. Even without the added significant risks of the liquefaction facility, the existing LNG storage tank, the Motiva oil terminal, the Univar chemical plant, the Enterprise LPG terminal, and other facilities in the area all pose significant environmental health hazards, and create the overall context of environmental racism. Toxic and hazardous facilities are dangerous for communities and dangerous for workers. Yet families are dependent on them for jobs, municipalities are dependent on them for tax income, and the way our socioeconomic system is set up we are all collectively dependent on the products they produce. Regardless of our dependency, the reality of climate science is that the fossil fuel / petrochemical industry is rapidly pushing our planet past its limits, producing present and future catastrophic impacts, and making people sick, especially front-line communities of color and indigenous communities. Our dependency on these industries is literally killing us.

As an organization, the EJ League is interested in big picture, long term, real solutions to interlocking crises that impact communities of color, marginalized communities, and planetary ecosystems. We are members of three national coalitions of grassroots, membership based organizations: Right to the City, Grassroots Global Justice, and Climate Justice Alliance. Together, and lead by our members and our communities, we are developing and sharing solutions that address these intersecting crises from the grassroots. These community based solutions are in opposition to the corporate top down false solutions that pretend to address a single symptom while reinforcing the underlying root causes of the problems.

True solutions are rooted in the work of grassroots internationalism, and using the framework of a “Just Transition”. We are collectively building a different context and a different system, an economy for people and the planet. The Just Transition framework emerged from partnerships between environmental justice and labor organizations. In the words of the Just Transition Alliance, “together with front-line workers, and community members who live along the fence line of polluting industries, we create healthy workplaces and communities. We focus on contaminated sites that should be cleaned up, and on the transition to clean production and sustainable economies.”

As part of the Climate Justice Alliance (CJA) Our Power Campaign, we are part of a collaborative that is:

uniting front-line communities to forge a scalable, and socioeconomically just transition away from unsustainable energy towards local living economies to address the root causes of climate change.

“We are rooted in rooted in Indigenous, African American, Latino, Asian Pacific Islander, and working class white communities throughout the U.S. We are applying the power of deep grassroots organizing to win local, regional, statewide, and national shifts. These communities comprise more than 100 million people, often living near toxic, climate polluting energy infrastructure or other facilities. As racially oppressed and/or economically marginalized groups, these communities have suffered disproportionately from the impacts of pollution and the ecological crisis, and share deep histories of struggle in every arena, including organizing, mass direct action, electoral work, cultural revival, and policy advocacy.

“Together we are strengthening relationships between community based organizations, environmentalists, labor unions, food sovereignty/sustainable agriculture groups and other sectors of society.

“As CJA we are coalescing our power to reshape the economy and governance in the coming decades we are communities united for a just transition.”

CJA’s Our Power Campaign has the long term goals to: 1) End the Era of Extreme Energy, and 2) Implement a Just Transition to Local Living Economies. This will be achieved by:

Building Local Living Economies with a model that that centers on: Zero Waste, Regional Food Systems, Public Transportation, Clean Community Energy, Efficient Affordable and Durable Housing, and Ecosystem Restoration and Stewardship
Building Community Resilience: Creating climate jobs that will build stronger, resilient, and more equitable communities through Grassroots Economies (ex. worker owned cooperatives) and Rights to Land, Water, and Food Sovereignty.

Economic strategies around Just Transition require strong partnerships between environmental justice community advocates and the labor movement. Too often the corporate 1 percent strategy of divide and conquer is successful, but Just Transition pushes us to build powerful working class alliances to overturn the economic and political power structures that simultaneously harm workers, create widespread economic inequality and poverty, and destroy the planet’s ability to sustain life. There is a growing international movement to change this, and the following reports outline some of the strategies to build strong labor/environmental alliances around energy systems and a Just Transition:

Just Transition in Port of Providence

Working with our national alliances and using these strategic frameworks, EJ League will continue to convene local and regional coalitions to develop and implement Just Transition strategies in Rhode Island, focusing on the Port of Providence as an urgent need. Our goal is to develop concrete strategies and tactics to leverage a rapid transition away from natural gas and all fossil fuels, with democratic front-line community ownership over the development of the sectors for truly renewable energy and energy efficiency work. Through workshops, teach-ins, and hosting a Just Transition Assembly with Grassroots Global Justice in late summer / early fall, we will be doing the collective work of developing local solutions to massive social and planetary problems. We will share our joint understandings and perspectives on the problems, learn about the frameworks and strategies that are effective elsewhere, and will forge pathways to transform our oppressive realities.

There are too many solutions and alternatives to list, and most solutions will be built collectively through praxis and not through theory. As a starting point, one could easily envision how the $100 million price tag for the proposed liquefaction facility could be better spent in ways that would address energy needs, create jobs in the economically marginalized and oppressed front-line communities next to the Port, support renewable energy and energy efficiency, and build greater community health instead of increased toxic risk. With the high percentage of old housing stock and rental units in low income communities, there is a large need to improve housing quality with weatherization, energy efficiency, and improvements in indoor air quality, lead abatement, and other healthy housing requirements. This investment would reduce the need for heating fuels, improve health outcomes, and would be able to employ many people from the community.

Job training programs around weatherization and housing work are already in place, and are focused on people of color, youth, and people with records who are excluded from many other sectors of the dominant economy. EJ League has a Board Member who is a weatherization job training specialist, energy auditor, and is working on seeking investors to build a production facility for cellulose to be used in blown-in insulations and home weatherizations. Worker owned cooperative enterprises in the industries of energy efficiency would transform economic power dynamics, bring democratic control into the workplace, and build wealth at the local level. These types of economic developments would be community owned, community led, would employ community members, and would support true community wealth development in stark contrast with the corporate fossil fuel and petrochemical model developments that poison, displace, and extract wealth at the expense of community wellbeing.

In addition to worker owned businesses for energy efficiency, we need community owned renewable energy development. National Grid is required to make a bare minimum level of investment into renewables, and is allowed to add a surcharge to all consumer bills to cover this. Despite the fact that everyone is paying for this, National Grid’s limited investments into renewables have been in affluent white suburban communities. Front-line communities, which have been sacrifice zones for hazardous energy developments for generations, need massive investments in renewable energy. But these investments cannot operate like most investments in the dominant capitalist economy, which come in from outside with disregard for residents, take advantage of poverty conditions, lead to gentrification and displacement, and extract wealth for the investor’s return on investment. We are also not asking for charity or handouts that would support public relations campaigns for polluting industries. We are demanding reparations.

We are exploring mechanisms to make it possible for renewable energy to benefit our communities, given that current capitalist market mechanisms favor larger corporations, municipalities with surplus budgets and strong tax bases, and families that are homeowners who can afford upfront costs in order to get the return on their solar/renewable energy investments. We are determined to make renewable energy a working reality that benefits low income communities of color in multiple ways, from reduced toxic hazards, lowered bills, better jobs, and shifting away from energy sources that are literally killing us. We know this will not happen overnight, and it will be a massive cross sector effort to manifest this vision. But we also know that we cannot afford to wait, and nothing is more urgent. We invite you to join us.

Economic Inequality: high cost project that will cause economic damage

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Economic Inequality

The Fields Point Liquefaction Facility project takes advantage of, and will increase problems with economic inequality and economic injustice related to energy. First and foremost, the massive $100 million price tag for construction will be passed onto consumers as an added charge. National Grid tries to hide this fact by saying “the cost of the natural gas commodity on a customer’s bill is a pass through cost. This project will allow National Grid and other companies who use the Fields Point facility to supply domestic LNG at a more stable cost.” But “pass through cost” means they pass that cost through to us, and there is no guarantee that prices of domestic fracked gas will be any more stable than prices of internationally sourced LNG. If anything, the international prices of LNG have been steadily declining while domestic fracked gas prices are at historic lows and likely to increase as the industry builds LNG export terminals and fracked gas power plants that increase demand and lead to rising prices. There are existing plans and proposals to connect the Spectra Pipeline (the source of the fracked gas for this facility) (See: here and here) to an LNG export facility in Canada and to build a massive 900 MW power plant in Burrillville, RI that would be powered by gas from Spectra’s “Algonquin” pipeline.

Despite the industry’s claims of needing to build these projects to lower prices, with power plants and other major purchasers getting preferential treatment with locked in prices in long term contracts, individual consumers in Rhode Island will see rising gas prices for home heating and cooking. The $100 million construction costs for the liquefaction facility will be added on top of the price of gas, and collectively we are the ones who will end up paying the bill. On a purely economic level, the proposed facility does not make sense and will be locking us into further dependency on fracked gas.

Income and wealth inequality in Rhode Island means increasing gas prices won’t impact everyone equally. There are only four municipalities in RI that qualify as high poverty “core cities”, with childhood poverty rates over 25 percent – Providence, Pawtucket, Central Falls, and Woonsocket. Providence as a whole has a 27.7 percent poverty rate, almost twice the national average of 12.8 percent, and the front-line communities close to the Port includes the census tracts with the greatest concentrations of poverty in the state, specifically census tracts 5, 7, and 12. Five of the twelve census tracts in the adjacent neighborhoods are within the top 10 poorest tracts in Rhode Island, ranking 1st, 2nd, 4th, 6th and 10th. The median family income is $31,800 with the poorest tracts having median family income as low as $14,067. On average, 35 percent of people in the community live below the poverty line and 63 percent are below the 200 percent poverty line. In the poorest census tracts, 64 percent live below the poverty line and 83 percent are below the 200 percent poverty line. EJLRI Position Paper_Page_27

The Providence unemployment rate of 12.4 percent is much higher than the statewide average of 7.7 percent , while the highest unemployment levels were found in Wards 8, 9, 10, and 11 (South Providence and Washington Park), where unemployment rates range from 15.3 percent to 40.5 percent . Ward 10, directly adjacent to the Port, has the highest unemployment levels including Census Tract 5 which is the highest at 40.5 percent.

Given this data, it is clearly a myth that expanding operations at the Port will create jobs to solve economic issues such as unemployment. There is no public data available on the workforce in the Port, but based on personal accounts and parallels with other comparable sectors, the jobs for work in Providence are not given to residents of Providence, let alone residents of the neighborhoods that are directly impacted. With the limited number of temporary jobs promised with the proposed LNG Liquefaction facility, the high paying jobs requiring specialized skills will be going to Kiewit, a multinational corporation that has also worked on the Keystone XL pipeline.

The increased costs of home gas prices will have a devastating impact in Washington Park and South Providence, where families living in poverty are already dealing with the frequent impacts of National Grid terminating utility service. This is especially true in rental units which are often less energy efficient: because tenants pay utility costs, landlords have no incentive to invest in weatherization or energy efficiency, making heating costs higher. In violation of state and federal law, National Grid routinely shuts off utilities for low income medically vulnerable people who are dependent on heat and/or electricity for medical needs. The RI Center for Justice filed a class action lawsuit against National Grid and the RI Division of Public Utilities and Carriers to stop these utility terminations.

The press release for the suit included the following:

“In my work on behalf of medically vulnerable children and families, I have witnessed National Grid’s routine disregard for health and safety considerations,” says attorney Jeannine Casselman, legal program director of the RI Medical Legal Partnership at Hasbro Children’s Hospital. “Even in cases involving children with severe illnesses and disabilities, we see utility shut offs happening on a regular basis. In some instances, this can lead to loss of housing altogether. Rather than provide a reasonable repayment plan for struggling families, National Grid too often shuts off services, causing further disarray and trauma to low income households.”

In collaboration with the George Wiley Center’s Lifeline Project, this effort is working to protect the health and welfare of families that are put in danger by National Grid’s reckless and greedy energy policies. The EJ League endorses the George Wiley Center’s campaign and the full demands described in the letter from health care professionals and delivered to the RI PUC:

1. A one-year moratorium on termination for all accounts that are coded as ‘medical’.

2. The engagement of an independent third party monitor to review the Division of Public Utility’s approval of petitions for permission to terminate for all accounts coded as medical. The monitor will be selected by a joint committee composed of members of the George Wiley Center, the medical community, the Department of Health and the Public Utilities Commission.

3. The Public Utilities Commission immediately begin requiring data submissions from National Grid that are consistent with those requirements placed on the company in Massachusetts, as per the George Wiley Center’s formal request from March of 2015.

4. The Public Utilities Commission immediately begin accepting and thoroughly reviewing petitions for emergency restoration and providing timely responses to each request.

There is no publicly available address specific data that shows geographic distribution of utility shut offs. Regardless, the concentration of extreme poverty and high levels of chronic disease and health problems in the front line communities next to the Port make it highly likely that these neighborhoods are disproportionately impacted by utility terminations. Testimonials for grassroots membership based organizations in the community confirms that utility termination is a major problem for many families living in front-line communities next to the fossil fuel energy complexes in Port of Providence which provide energy for the entire region. This is yet another sign of environmental injustice and systemic injustice that is built into the normal business operations of the fossil fuel industry.

Public Health: health disparities and impacts on health care institutions

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Public Health

All of the above issues discussed in this position paper are also public health issues. In looking at the social and environmental determinants of health, public health paints a picture that helps explain why particular populations are more likely to be sick. Issues of potential disasters, environmental racism, climate change impacts, and economic inequality are all public health issues. The EJ League is the backbone organization for COHEP (Community Organizing for Health Equity in Providence), a collaborative effort with DARE (Direct Action for Rights and Equity), PrYSM (Providence Youth Student Movement), and the RI Doula Collective. COHEP is funded through the RI Department of Health’s “Health Equity Zones” (HEZ). As a place based initiative that works to develop collective impact strategies to address health problems and health disparities, COHEP’s HEZ work focuses on a few neighborhoods in South Providence including Washington Park, a front-line community to Port of Providence. Research and GIS mapping conducted as part of the HEZ community assessment show that Washington Park has largest concentration by far of chemical exposures in Providence, and also has the highest concentration of leaking underground storage tanks:

EJLRI Position Paper_Page_24 At hearings and public events about the proposed liquefaction facility, multiple community members have spoken out about issues of high asthma rates in the community being a major concern. Public health data backs up this concern, and shows that the area is one of the state’s largest asthma hot spots. While most of the state has asthma rates of 04.4 percent or 4.56.2 percent, most of Providence has asthma rates of 8 – 10.3 percent and the neighborhood next to I95 and the Port has the highest levels in the state at 10.4 – 15.4 percent. (link)

On top of the high level of children with asthma, the front-line community and asthma hot spot next to the port also has some of the highest levels in the state for Emergency Department visits or Hospitalizations due to asthma. Among children with asthma living next to the Port of Providence, 15.5 – 24.1 percent have had an Emergency Department visit, compared to rates of 03.3 percent for more affluent neighborhoods in Providence. Similarly with asthma related hospitalizations, for front-line neighborhoods adjacent to the Port or Providence, children with asthma had inpatient hospitalizations at a rate of 5.1 – 8.3 percent compared to the rate of 00.7 percent in the more affluent neighborhoods in Providence.

In addition to the many health problems and health disparities impacting the neighborhoods of South Providence and Washington Park, there are also public health impacts relating to healthcare facilities in these communities. The Lifespan and RI Hospital complex is the largest and most visible concern, containing the state’s only level 1 trauma center, Rhode Island Hospital, Women and Infants Hospital, and Hasbro Children’s Hospital.

In addition to this major hospital complex, there are many other healthcare facilities within a close radius (1 to 2 miles) from the proposed liquefaction facility and close to the other hazardous facilities in Port of Providence. These include but are not limited to:

Hasbro’s Medicine Pediatrics Primary Care (245 Chapman St) this facility offers primary care for children, and also offers specialty services for chronic conditions including asthma, diabetes, and hypertension, which exist at very elevated levels in this neighborhood. The facility also offers gender and sexual health services. It falls within the one mile radius of the proposed liquefaction facility.

Providence Community Health Centers (375 Allens Ave) PCHC serves approximately 50,000 patients in Providence, many of whom are low income, uninsured or under insured, and suffering from health problems impacted by social determinants of health. This location has their administrative building for all 9 health centers in Providence, as well as the Chaffee Health Center which serves patients. It is located within the half mile radius of the proposed liquefaction facility.

Providence Community Health Centers Prairie Avenue complex (369 Prairie Ave) this health center location also includes the asthma and allergy specialty clinic for the entire PCHC health center system across Providence.

Fertility Solutions (758 Eddy St) specializes in fertility treatments and in vitro fertilization and other related services

New Beginnings (717 Allens Ave) offers perinatal and ultrasound care

It is clear from this limited list, that any cumulative or emergency related impacts from the proposed liquefaction facility would not only impact the whole state’s health care system, but would particularly impact health care services related to maternal and child care, reproductive care, chronic disease care, and emergency response services. Ongoing background pollution and risks in this area should be seen as a public health crisis. Any potential future disaster impacting the port could cause a public health emergency of unimaginable proportions.