| Comment | My name is Crystal Sanchez and I am the President of the Sacramento
Homeless Union and I support the position of the Sacramento
Environmental Justice Coalition that AB617 in South Sacramento was
a major disappointment due to following issues and impacts to our
poverty stricken BIPOC communities:
Lack of transparency and commitment to the law. AB617 is intended
to address non-mobile pollutions sources. The local AB617
committee and Sacramento AQMD deliberately avoided major areas of
concern to local BIPOC and low-income communities by creating
boundaries and geographic restrictions to exclude high impacted
areas (See Map).
$23 Million has been with AB617 spent and it has had no impact on
the most polluted neighborhoods intentionally excluded from the
process.
We ask that CARB establish higher standards for local Air Quality
Management Districts to have a robust, inclusive and broad based
process to implement AB617 according to the law.
The number of committee representatives on AB617 cannot be
arbitrarily restrictive. The Sac-EJC.org is the largest EJ
organization in Sacramento and after several attempts to join,
BIPOC EJ leaders were not selected to be on the board.
There has to be an accounting of how the funds are used with strong
evidence that marginalized communities in EJ zones directly benefit
significantly through transformative health outcomes and cleaner
industry practices. Health Program Evaluators must be included in
the process.
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