Note that several environmental justice and socioeconomic factors have already been accounted for through the initial Environmental Justice analysis; those 17 variables are taken from the U.S. EPA’s EJSCREEN tool. The sample list of environmental indicators below is intended to be representative of the pollutant types that a community may face.
The IPA and the Illinois Solar for All Program Administrator recognize that all data points may not be available in all instances, nor does it always represent the full picture of a community’s unique experiences that may qualify it as an Environmental Justice Community. To account for this, we have identified several qualitative factors that can be considered in this self-designation process.
For responses that cite a specific incident, please include the year in which the incident occurred, as well as an explanation of how your community was more greatly impacted than a comparable geography (can be compared to the state as a whole, surrounding communities, metropolitan areas, or other geographies as deemed most appropriate for the scale of the incident.)
Qualitative indication of Environmental Justice Community designation need might include:
- Historical events (e.g. fire, housing crisis)
- Environmental disasters and/or severe weather events
- Plant (e.g. manufacturing, fossil generation) openings/closures/operations
- Economics (e.g. mass migrations, businesses closing, mortgage crisis)
- Community Toxicity & Poor Health (e.g. number of dialysis facilities, number of abandoned gas stations and/or homes, lead exposure in children)
- Resource Starvation (e.g. lack of access to fresh food, limited access to infrastructure, mass incarceration levels, access to affordable and public housing, and homelessness rates)
Additionally, the form that the quantitative or qualitative support can take is varied and may include items such as:
- Summary tables or values from an existing database
- Reports compiled through Citizen Science
- Expert testimony written specifically for the submission
- For example, a local pediatrician who says that there is an unusually high number of respiratory illness
- News articles demonstrating common knowledge of a local problem, such as
- Evidence of community organizing around an issue through strikes, demonstrations, or other forms of public action
The examples provided are not meant to represent all possible forms of support in the self-designation submission, and designators are encouraged to include any quantitative or qualitative information that they feel is appropriate to the scoring rubric.
