Fawn Dendy, a resident of Brown Grove in Virginia, talks with Adam Ortiz, director of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Mid-Atlantic region, about pollution and land use concerns in her community.
Gov. Glenn Youngkin spoke at the Environment Virginia Symposium in Lexington, VA, on April 10, 2024.
Fawn Dendy, a resident of Brown Grove in Virginia, talks with Adam Ortiz, director of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Mid-Atlantic region, about pollution and land use concerns in her community.
Some environmental justice advocates in Virginia have denounced recent actions by Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin that they say undermine efforts to protect vulnerable communities in the state.
The governor has appointed a half-dozen members to the Virginia Council on Environmental Justice whose professional or business interests, advocates say, may put them at odds with the council’s mission. He also recently vetoed a bill that would have given the council additional authority and more funding to travel around the state to communities affected by environmental justice concerns.
In March, Virginia legislators narrowly passed a bill that would have provided additional travel funding and authority to the council. A fiscal impact statement for the bill suggested that the additional travel would have increased the council’s travel costs from $1,500 to about $10,000 per year. The measure also would have required Youngkin to fill vacancies on the council by the end of August.
Former Gov. Ralph Northam revived former Gov. Terry McAuliffe’s version of the council as an advisory panel to help the administration “protect vulnerable communities from disproportionate impacts of pollution.” Northam signed a bill making it a permanent body of the executive branch in 2019 — as environmental justice issues in the state reached a boiling point over infrastructure projects with a disproportionate impact on underrepresented communities.
Virginia code states that the council should consist of 27 members, 21 of them citizens that represent American Indian tribes, community organizations, the public health sector and civil rights organizations, among others.
After the bill was passed by the legislature — but before the veto — Youngkin appointed five individuals to fill some of the vacancies on the council. At the end of March, he filled another vacancy, adding a total of six appointees to the council.
The appointees each work for companies or represent companies that are regulated entities whose projects — such as landfills and natural gas facilities — have historically impacted environmental justice communities.
“None of the … appointees represent any of the seven constituencies [that] council members are required by law to represent,” the letter stated.
The governor’s appointments include Lisa Kardell, director of public affairs for Waste Management Inc.; Courtney Malveaux, principal of Jackson Lewis PC; Eddie Ramirez of Ramirez Contracting, which specializes in construction site preparation; Morgan Whayland, director of government affairs for Virginia Natural Gas; and Ronald Olswyn White, vice president of Southside Electric Cooperative. At the end of March, Youngkin appointed Elizabeth Cherokee Williamson, a partner at Richmond-based Balch & Bingham, LLP, who served as lead counsel in a case opposing Virginia’s participation in the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative.
When asked how the appointees further environmental justice in the state, Youngkin’s press secretary, Christian Martinez, responded via email.
Gov. Glenn Youngkin spoke at the Environment Virginia Symposium in Lexington, VA, on April 10, 2024.
“The governor’s appointments reflect a variety of communities and stakeholders across Virginia who are committed to furthering Governor Youngkin’s efforts to protect our natural resources and vulnerable communities throughout the commonwealth,” Martinez wrote.
In his veto of the bill that would have expanded travel opportunities for the environmental justice council, Youngkin said that he opposed the specific provisions of the bill but recognizes “that environmental issues can have varying effects on different communities.”
“In a broader context, however, the theory of the council conflicts with its duties as a state-level body capable of obstructing local projects,” he wrote in the veto. “The proposed top-down approach would perpetuate past disparities, preventing the construction of infrastructure in underserved communities, hindering permits necessary for the advancement of clean energy and imposing regressive costs that disproportionately affect Virginia’s poorest citizens.”
More than two-dozen environmental organizations and individuals signed a letter in late March condemning the governor’s stance on environmental justice. Youngkin, they wrote, mischaracterized the role of the council as a body that is “obstructing local projects.” Rather than wanting additional infrastructure projects, the letter pointed out, many “Black, non-White and low-income Virginians [have opposed] infrastructure projects that would pollute their communities, disturb or destroy cultural heritage sites and degrade their health and quality of life.”
The letter pointed to recent examples in Virginia, such as local opposition to a gas pipeline compressor station at Union Hill, power plants and a landfill in Charles City County and a grocery distribution center in Brown Grove.
The letter urged Virginia’s General Assembly to reject the governor’s appointments and asked the governor to reappoint existing council members whose terms have expired but still wish to serve. The council, which currently has 20 out of 27 positions filled, held its most recent meeting including the new appointees on May 14. The meeting included discussion about community issues and a status update on the council’s 2023 annual report.
Separate efforts to focus on environmental justice within the state Department of Environmental Quality also seem to have stalled out in recent years. The agency had appointed a director for a new office of environmental justice in 2021, but she left the position by late 2022. A guidance document detailing how environmental justice would be worked into the agency’s permitting processes was completed in 2023, and the office of environmental justice is now run by a program manager, Danielle Simms. The guidance document is still waiting for review by the governor’s office.
Melanie Davenport, director of regulatory affairs and outreach at DEQ — a position that includes oversight of the environmental justice office — represented the agency during a recent panel discussion on the subject as part of a virtual summit hosted by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
“There’s an interesting twist, in that our [environmental justice] statute is not within any of DEQ’s organic statutes,” she said during the panel, comparing Virginia’s approach with that of other states. “It’s in this general part of the code that talks about how we do business in Virginia, which means it’s not quite as authoritative in terms of what [DEQ] can do and not do.”
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