EPA to Investigate Civil Rights Complaint on Cumulative Air Pollution in Albuquerque
ALBUQUERQUE, NM – The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has opened a federal civil rights investigation into whether the city of Albuquerque and its Environmental Health Department are violating the rights of the city's residents by discriminating on the basis of race. This comes in response to a complaint filed by Los Jardines Institute and NRDC (Natural Resources Defense Council) that was sparked by what advocates say are environmentally racist policies that disproportionately harm Bernalillo County’s communities of color.
The EPA will investigate whether the actions of the Environmental Health Department surrounding the Albuquerque-Bernalillo County Air Quality Control Board’s rulemaking proceeding and issuance of a cumulative impacts air pollution regulation, the Health, Environment, and Equity Impacts (HEEI) Rule, discriminated against Albuquerque residents on the basis of race, color, and national origin, in violation of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the EPA’s nondiscrimination regulation.
“Every decision to allow yet another polluter to operate in neighborhoods that are already filled to the brim with polluting facilities is a debt that generations will be paying for with our health,” said Dr. Sofia Martinez, co-coordinator of Los Jardines Institute. “We are hopeful that this investigation will shine a light on the deep discrimination that exists in Albuquerque and force our local government to recognize and reverse the harm created by dangerous air pollution.”
Local environmental justice advocates first called for federal intervention a decade ago when the Southwest Organizing Project alerted the EPA to the region’s inequities by filing a Title VI complaint alleging discrimination by the air quality permitting authorities. For eight years, the city failed to correct the injustice that prompted the 2014 complaint. Then, in 2022, community groups petitioned the Air Board to issue a cumulative impacts regulation, the HEEI Rule, requiring the Environmental Health Department to map overburdened communities and limit their exposure to additional air pollution by requiring certain facilities to adopt best available pollution control technology.
Rather than supporting the rule, the Environmental Health Department and the Albuquerque City Council did everything they could to keep it from being promulgated. The city council went as far as enacting an ordinance attempting to dismantle the current Air Board—all to stop the rule and limit the Air Board’s ability to take other actions to protect communities in the future. Such local defiance and the long and pernicious history of air permitting in Bernalillo County raises the specter of intentional race discrimination and underscores the need for the EPA’s intervention.
“Every Albuquerque resident deserves the right to breathe clean air. That’s ultimately what this civil rights complaint is about,” said Sara Imperiale, director of community lawyering at NRDC. “This federal investigation into practices that have harmed the city’s communities of color is long overdue.”
Within Bernalillo County, communities of color suffer disproportionate air pollution and associated adverse health impacts, traceable to a long history of discriminatory housing and air permitting. It is disturbing, if unsurprising, that these neighborhoods are nearly all above average—and in many instances in the 80th percentile or higher—for the state in cancer risk, respiratory health risk, and prevalence of respiratory illnesses like asthma. The county earns an “F” grade in all air quality metrics evaluated by the American Lung Association.
The EPA also accepted for investigation a separate civil rights complaint filed by the Mountain View Neighborhood Association, Mountain View Community Action and Friends of Valle de Oro, represented by New Mexico Environmental Law Center, against the City of Albuquerque and its City Council due to its discriminatory actions during the cumulative impacts rulemaking.
NRDC (Natural Resources Defense Council) is an international nonprofit environmental organization with more than 3 million members and online activists. Established in 1970, NRDC uses science, policy, law, and people power to confront the climate crisis, protect public health, and safeguard nature. NRDC has offices in New York City, Washington, D.C., Los Angeles, San Francisco, Chicago, Bozeman, MT, Beijing and Delhi (an office of NRDC India Pvt. Ltd). Visit us at www.nrdc.org and follow us on Twitter @NRDC.