The Justice Forty Oversight Committee holds a series of community listening sessions focusing on environmental justice issues in Delaware.
In 2021, the General Assembly created the Justice Forty Oversight Committee after President Joe Biden unveiled a plan to deliver 40% of all benefits from federally-funded clean energy projects to disadvantaged communities.
Committee Chair State Rep. Larry Lambert (D-Claymont) saw Biden’s infrastructure plan as a way to leverage federal dollars for underserved communities disproportionately affected by environmental justice issues.
Now that the committee has been garnering community input and compiling recommendations for close to three years, Lambert says they are holding a final series of listening sessions before compiling their report in June.
“We have ideas, we have some solutions, but it’s imperative that we begin with the community. When we kicked off this Justice Forty journey, we started with the community, and as we’re wrapping it up, we will go back to the community as well," he says.
While community turnout was low at Tuesday’s Kent County session, members from state agencies presented on ways their departments are helping to accomplish the goals set forth by the committee.
One step the committee set out to reach was determining what communities in Delaware qualify as being "disadvantaged," and the Delaware Department of Transportation (DelDOT) created a tool to do just that.
DelDOT Resilience and Sustainability Director Stephanie Johnson presented the Delaware Equity Analysis Tool, an interactive map she helped to develop to determine Equity Focus Areas based on median household income, language isolation, percentage of population in poverty and minority population percentages in the state.
Lambert says the tool is already gaining national attention and is just an example of initiatives Delaware is helping to produce to aid other states in implementing the federal benefits.
Deputy Director of Delaware's Division of Public Health Tesha Quail also says she's also advocating for the creation of an office or bureau of environmental equity within the Division of Public Health, which she hopes will focus on lead assessments and Polyfluorinated Substances (PFAS).
Lambert says the oversight committee plans to hold two more full-body meetings to solidify their report before it heads to the General Assembly, the governor’s office and the White House, but wants to make sure the community has one final opportunity to voice their recommendations and concerns.
“We want to do these last listening sessions going back to the community so that as we proceed, it is informed by the community input as opposed to being informed by our institutional knowledge," he said.
The final two listening sessions will be held at the Indian River Senior Center in Millsboro on Wednesday and the Wilmington Police Athletic League on Thursday.
