Federal Environmental Justice Setbacks and the Impact on Colorado
By: Isabelle Munsell
The Environmental Justice Movement gained momentum in the late 1980s and early 1990s in response to a community in North Carolina being designated as the future site of a hazardous waste landfill riddled with PCB-laced waste. PCBs are a group of manmade chemicals that were used in industrial and commercial settings and were banned in 1979; yet, they do not break down easily in the environment. As a result, PCBs remain in the air, water, and soil, and likely are transported far from their point of origin. In addition, PCBs are bioaccumulative, meaning that they compound as an organism moves through the food chain and eventually can be exposed to humans. The public health consequences of PCB exposure include cancer and negative effects on the neurological, reproductive, nervous, and endocrine systems.
In 1982, Warren County, mainly comprised of African Americans, and other organizers stood up in protest–leading to the arrest of around 500 people. Despite the protests, the landfill was constructed within the community; however, the national attention did not fail them. Environmental justice advocates noticed that there seemed to be a pattern pointing to corporations and agencies targeting low-income communities of color when determining where to place a new hazardous facility (landfill, incinerator, industrial farming operations, etc). In fact, in a 1983 study, researchers found that an estimated 75% of all landfills were located in communities comprised of low-income African Americans or Latinas.
In 1994, former President Bill Clinton signed Executive Order 12898, requiring federal agencies to mitigate disproportionate health and environmental impacts on marginalized communities and prevent discrimination in federally funded health and environmental programs. Warren County laid the groundwork for the Environmental Justice Movement, encouraging the emergence of grassroots organizations and pushing for policy changes.
Despite the progress amassed since Warren County and statistical data supporting environmental justice, in 2025, President Donald Trump signed an executive order ending environmental justice programs. Following this, the EPA announced that it would be removing EJScreen, a screening tool that mapped socioeconomic, climate, and health data to display how specific geographic areas face disproportionately higher risks related to pollution, climate, and poverty. EJScreen has played an important role in industry by collecting data for sustainability metrics and using it as a tool to make decisions about permits. Outside of the EPA’s use of EJScreen, other members of the public and grassroots organizations also use the information to raise awareness in their local areas. Although the EPA has stopped using EJScreen, Harvard University has recently created a similar version with data scraped from the original version, in addition to Public Environmental Data Partners, who have also reconstructed a version. A step further, as many as sixteen states have developed their own state-specific environmental justice mapping tools in an attempt to combat EPA’s dismissal.
Alongside, President Trump’s administration has significantly decreased the EPA’s practice of conducting environmental justice analyses on air and water pollution permits–the analyses that determines the amount of toxic chemicals a company can release. This directly impacts those disproportionately impacted by pollution, as they will continue to drink contaminated water and breathe in polluted air without the funds to monitor the pollutants. As a result, President Trump has also made it easier for companies to apply for and receive a permit to change the level of pollution produced.
These changes apply to communities in Colorado such as Commerce City, as a majority of the pollution sources are in low-income and diverse communities. Suncor, a major polluter in Commerce City, Colorado has already begun making changes at its refinery as soon as it filed a minor modification notice, without modeling to determine whether the changes would violate federal air quality standards. In response, the Colorado Health Department proposed a new rule, creating a process for public notification and comment before adopting minor modification permits and allowing the communities directly impacted to determine the severity of toxic emissions. Colorado is one of twelve states that have adopted environmental justice into law and is committed to reducing cumulative air pollution impacts in disproportionately affected communities. As a result of the recent federal setbacks, more of the burden now falls onto states, nonprofits, and grassroots organizations to ensure the movement continues.