One reason factories and other sources of industrial pollution tend to cluster in Black communities is the pollution-permitting process: when an industry or manufacturer wants to emit fine particulate matter or other chemicals, state regulators weigh those emissions in a vacuum, without considering other pollutants already getting pumped into the air.
Under a new system announced this week, Massachusetts will become the first state to examine the cumulative effect of pollution in so-called environmental justice communities, with a permit-seeker having to account for all the emissions in a given area, not just their own.
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Massachusetts Governor Maura Healey, a Democrat, has made climate justice a big focus for her administration. In addition to the new permitting system, she also appointed Maria Belen Power, a Latinx environmental organizer, as the state’s first undersecretary of environmental justice and equity.
But while the new permitting process sets a higher bar for would-be polluters, it may not make that big of a dent in the state’s overall air pollution, and it seems unlikely that even other blue states will quickly follow suit. That’s because of the particular nature of emissions in Massachusetts, which doesn’t have as strong a heavy-industry economic sector as there is in, say, Illinois or Pennsylvania.
Consider where, exactly, pollution is coming from in Massachusetts: The state’s dirtiest power plants all burn gas or biomass; there are no coal-fired power plants, which are far dirtier, remaining in the state.
The city of Everett — which is right next to the Mystic Generating Station, the power plant with the largest generating capacity in Massachusetts — is just over 14 percent Black, and there is a large Latinx population too, but the plant is closing later this year. While Massachusetts has a manufacturing sector, it’s not the leading source of the state’s air pollution: fully two-thirds of the state’s overall emissions come from transportation, including airports and shipping.
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Transportation emissions are one of the most inequitable types of pollution exposure, with Black and Latinx people inhaling far more exhaust than white people, according to a 2021 study. The Biden Administration has been working to reduce the overall amount of fine particulate matter from car and truck exhaust by tightening emissions standards, which could help reduce the disproportionately high rates of asthma found in Black communities.
The worst air quality in Massachusetts is found in Chelsea, in a prototypical example of lopsided exposure. The diverse city just outside of Boston is home to a seemingly endless cluster of fuel-oil storage containers, visible along the route to Logan International Airport.
But the state’s new industrial pollution rules won’t help Chelsea, because exhaust emissions are still the leading source of its air pollution — from jetliners arriving and departing from Logan, nearby freeway traffic and trucks coming and going from the large wholesale produce market located there.
While the cumulative rules are an important step, if Healy really wants to help reduce the pollution that Massachusetts’ Black and brown residents are exposed to, she’ll have to look at cars, trucks and other forms of transportation next.