Minutes Exhibit C
Port Commission Regular Meeting
The HEALAct would put envuvmmenuar *""
justice on the map in Washington state
March 25, 2019 at 6:00 am
By Tyrone Beason
Seattle Times columnist

A bill moving through the Legislature in Olympia brings some much-
needed attention to an issue I've told you about before butthat for too long
has gone under the radar in our discussions about the environment:
Communities of color and lower-income households face a greater threat
from air, water and land-based pollution in the Seattle metro area and across
the state.

That's especially true for the culturally and economically mixed
communities of the South Puget Sound and for Hispanic communities in the
farmlands of Eastern Washington.

But if the "HEAL Act" reaches Gov. Jay Inslee's desk    and all indications
are that it will    the specific risks and needs facing these communities will
get special consideration when state agency regulators and lawmakers form
environmental policy.

Forstarters, the act, which has already passed the Senate as Bill 5489,
would define "environmentaljustice" in Washington state as "the fair
treatment of all persons, regardless of race, color, national origin,
ethnicity, language disability, income or other demographic or geographic
characteristics with respect to the development, adoption, implementation,
and enforcement of environmental laws, regulations, and policies."

The bill, now in committee in the House, also calls for setting up a task
force to decide how best to address environmental-health disparities,at least
in part with the help of an innovative online mapping tool I reported on
recently that lets users identify geographic areas that face greater health
risks due to different kinds of pollution.

Thetool also contains demographic data such as income, housing
affordability, race, gender, age, English-language use and educational
attainment. All of these factors can be important when assessing an area's
relative vulnerability to diesel emissions from highways, toxic waste from
industry, lead in the water and other sources of pollution.

The legislation comes at the same time that Inslee, who's running for the
2020 Democratic presidential nomination, seeks to raise the nation's sense
ofurgency about combating climate change.

It's an admirable cause. But Inslee has his work cut out for him in
addressing his own state's efforts to address gaps in environmental-health
risks between people who have the means to protect themselves from the
effects of pollution and climate change, and those who are less likely to be
able to do so.

The HEAL Act and the new pollution map will give him and lawmakers
two powerfultools in this effort by officially making environmentalism a
social-justice matter.
Kent, located in a culturally rich part of South King Country that registers
high among the communities most at risk from pollution in the Puget Sound
Region,is on the front lines of the health-risk disparity issue.
That's one reason that the Rev. Herbert Carey, pastor of To God Be the
Glory House of Worship in the West Valley Park in that city, has been
working hard to educate his congregation and the surrounding area about
the environmental threats they're up against    and get people talking about
what to do about them.

There's plenty of fodder for conversation, especially with recent, attention-
grabbing news stories like NPR's segment headlined, "Whites Contribute
More to Air Pollution: Minorities Bear the Burden."

Carey's happy that news outlets and politicians are talking about health-care
disparities due to problemslike air pollution and proximity to landfills and
factories.

But "that doesn't necessarily trickle down to the community," especially to
people who are preoccupied with trying to make ends meet and who have to
deal with other stresses like racial injustice and poor access to health-care
facilities and child care, he said.

He wants to make people more aware of the possible links between socio-
economic problems and environmental-health threats, such as school
absenteeism due to pollution-related illness, missing work to care for a sick
relative and crushing pollution-linked medical bills.