Comment Log Display

I attended the 9/10/14 Public Workshop in Mecca re: the investment
of cap-and-trade auction funds. I was impressed with
CalEnviroScreen 2.0 and the work that has gone into gathering data
on a wide variety of indicators in every census tract and then
compiling it into scores to readily allow comparison. But during
the meeting, the data gap for a number of indicators for the
Coachella Valley became apparent. An example is emergency
department visits for asthma. The eastern part of our valley has no
emergency departments - nor any hospitals or urgent care. Other
indicators may have data gaps due to insufficient air monitoring -
we are a major freight corridor, both truck and rail, are subject
to seasonal heavy winds, and have the Salton Sea and all its many
environmental problems at our eastern end. In addition, there are
many parcels of tribal sovereign land not subject to the same
statutes, reporting, etc. as surrounding properties. 

It is likely that other areas of the state have data gaps, for
these or different indicators, due to sparse population in
unincorporated rural communities. If these gaps could be filled,
their CES scores would no doubt be higher. For this reason, I urge
you to select the top 25% of disadvantaged communities for receipt
of cap-and-trade funded projects to help insure that those in need,
and deserving, of reduction in the health issues caused by
greenhouse gas emissions will not inadvertently be left out due to
inadvertently lower scores. 

As to the five methods for using the score components to identify
the communities, I think pollution burden only, and population
characteristics only, undermine the great effort that has gone into
CES to provide a balanced assessment of environmental risk and
should not be used. (I do not have sufficient knowledge of
statistics to weigh in on the other three methods.)