Lawmakers in the state Senate unanimously supported a bill, S.148, that would establish an environmental justice policy. If it passes, Vermont will join the vast majority of states in the country that already have such a law. The Senate is set to take a final vote on the bill. If approved, it would be sent to the House of Representatives. “This bill is fundamentally about fairness in operations of government,” said Sen. Chris Bray, D-Addison, who chairs the Senate Committee on Natural Resources and Energy and spoke about the bill on the Senate floor.
The policy would require the state government to acknowledge and address environmental harms, and to include people who are most burdened by those harms in decisions about projects and funding that could touch their lives. Throughout the session, lawmakers have heard how some Vermonters — including those who are Black, Indigenous, people of color, have low incomes or are not fluent in English — generally are harmed more than others by environmental dangers such as pollution and extreme weather.
Those same Vermonters are less likely than others to have access to environmental benefits such as affordable energy, fresh food and green space. Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale, D-Chittenden, introduced the bill this session. She’s been working to pass environmental justice legislation for more than a decade. Through her work, Ram Hinsdale said, she has seen an “intersection between poverty, pollution and political power that we must understand in this state and this country” in order to make progress.