HomeMy WebLinkAboutMINUTES - 06232009 - C.110RECOMMENDATION(S):
Authorize the County Hazardous Materials Commission to provide periodic feedback on a
research study being proposed by professors from the University of California at Berkeley
School of Public Health to develop methodologies for addressing the cumulative impacts of
both chemical and non-chemical stressors on communities.
FISCAL IMPACT:
No fiscal impact to the County. Funding for this proposed study is currently being sought
by University professors through a competitive grant from the United States Environmental
Protection Agency.
BACKGROUND:
The issue at hand is whether or not it is appropriate for the Hazardous Materials
Commission to provide feedback or advice to a body other than the Board of Supervisors or
other bodies so designated in its by-laws, and to consider issues outside its traditional scope
of hazardous materials and hazardous waste in the development of policy recommendations.
In this case, the Commission was asked by a team of Professors from the School of Public
Health at the University
APPROVE OTHER
RECOMMENDATION OF CNTY ADMINISTRATOR RECOMMENDATION OF BOARD COMMITTEE
Action of Board On: 06/23/2009 APPROVED AS RECOMMENDED OTHER
Clerks Notes:
VOTE OF SUPERVISORS
AYE:John Gioia, District I Supervisor
Gayle B. Uilkema, District II
Supervisor
Mary N. Piepho, District III
Supervisor
Susan A. Bonilla, District IV
Supervisor
Federal D. Glover, District V
Supervisor
Contact: William Walker, M.D.,
957-5403
I hereby certify that this is a true and correct copy of an action taken and entered on the minutes of the
Board of Supervisors on the date shown.
ATTESTED: June 23, 2009
David J. Twa, County Administrator and Clerk of the Board of Supervisors
By: June McHuen, Deputy
cc: Tasha Scott, Barbara Borbon, Michael Kent
C.110
To:Board of Supervisors
From:William Walker, M.D., Health Services Director
Date:June 23, 2009
Contra
Costa
County
Subject:Participation of the County Hazardous Materials Commission in a study addressing cumulative impacts
BACKGROUND: (CONT'D)
of California to provide periodic feedback to them during a two-year period on
methodologies they will develop to address the cumulative impacts of chemical and
non-chemical stressors (such as health status, income levels, access to health care, and
housing quality). These professors are currently preparing an application for a United
States Environmental Protection Agency grant to conduct this research.
The Commission first considered this request at two subcommittee meetings, and then at
its full Commission meeting on May 28th, 2009 when they voted 7-0-1 to support the
request. One Commissioner abstained because he believed the proposed activity was
outside the purview of the Commission. Other commissioners, including the
representatives from the Mayor’s Conference, also questioned whether addressing
non-chemical stressors was within the purview of the Commission. The Commission
conditioned its participation in the research project on Board of Supervisors approval due
to this concern and the additional concern that providing direct feedback to an outside
research project such as this might be outside the mandate of the Hazardous Materials
Commission.
The Hazardous Materials Commission was established in 1986 to advise the Board,
County staff and the Mayors’ Council members, and staffs of Contra Costa cities, on
issues related to the development, approval and administration of the County Hazardous
Waste Management Plan. In addition, the Commission was charged, in part, with the
following tasks:
• Further develop recommendations involving hazardous materials issues, which should
include obtaining broad public input.
• Recommend further charges for consideration by the Board of Supervisors, or
recommend changes in the existing charges to the Commission for consideration by the
Board of Supervisors.
One of the additional charges the Hazardous Materials Commission has addressed is
Environmental Justice. The Commission was instrumental in the establishment of the
County’s Environmental Justice policy in 2003, and has continued to examine issues
related to Environmental Justice since then. During 2008, the Commission conducted a
comprehensive review of the status of Environmental Justice policy implementation at
the federal, state, and local levels, resulting in a letter to the Board of Supervisors on
September 19, 2008 concerning the implementation of the County’s Environmental
Justice policy.
Addressing the cumulative impacts of pollution has long been considered an
Environmental Justice issue. Communities disproportionately impacted by pollution are
often impacted by more than one pollutant and by more than one source, but
methodologies to account for these multiple pollutants and sources in environmental
decision-making are lacking. Executive Order 12898, signed by President Clinton in
1994 to address Environmental Justice acknowledged the need to conduct research on
cumulative exposures. In 2004, the California Environmental Protection Agency adopted
its Environmental Justice Action Plan that contained the goal to develop guidance on
cumulative impacts analysis. The Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment
(OEHHA) was assigned the responsibility to lead this effort, and in June of 2008
convened the first meeting of an advisory group that was formed to provide input into the
development of this guidance. One of the members of the Hazardous Materials
Commission, Sharon Fuller, was appointed to this advisory group (independently, not as
a representative of the Commission), as was the Director of the County’s Hazardous
Materials Program, Randy Sawyer.
As part of the comprehensive review of the status of Environmental Justice policy
implementation conducted by the Commission in 2008, Commissioner Fuller provided a
review of the efforts of the cumulative impacts advisory group in which she was
participating. The Commission, in keeping with their mission to educate and engage the
public on issues they are addressing, decided to host a panel discussion on addressing the
cumulative impacts of pollution in December of 2008. The speakers on this panel
included representatives of the Bay Area Air Quality Management District, the Western
States Petroleum Association and Dr. Amy Kyle from the University of California’s
School of Public Health, who was serving as the principal investigator for the OEHHA
effort.
The Commission invited Dr. Kyle back to a regularly scheduled Commission meeting on
February 26, 2009 to continue the discussion of how to address the cumulative impacts of
pollution. In this presentation Dr. Kyle discussed her thinking on different methods to
address cumulative impacts, and that these methods needed to include consideration of
both chemical and non-chemical factors impacting communities and individuals. These
non-chemical factors include such issues as current physical health status, income levels,
access to health care, and housing quality (The presentation prepared by Dr. Kyle is
attached). Soon after, Dr. Kyle extended an invitation to the Commission to provide
feedback on the research project currently under consideration.
The breadth of issues that should appropriately be considered under the umbrella of
Environmental Justice has been widely debated, and consensus has not always been
reached. The same is true for defining how to measure cumulative impacts or how to
identify the ranges of factors to include as cumulative impacts.
As an example, in October 2000, when the Hazardous Materials Commission issued a
report to the Board of Supervisors on Environmental Justice, it read, in part:
In the 1980’s, while developing the County’s plan for addressing hazardous waste, the
Commission took note that communities where industrial hazardous wastes and
hazardous materials were created, stored, used and disposed of tended also to be
residential communities of lower-income working people, with higher proportions of poor
and unemployed residents than elsewhere. The Commission’s early perception that these
were often communities with high proportions of African-Americans, Hispanics, Asians,
Pacific Islanders, and other people of color was confirmed by maps prepared for the
Commission by the United States Environmental Protection Agency that showed a
striking overlap of sites with hazardous materials or wastes and low-income communities
of color, in our County and throughout the Bay Area.
People with low incomes are at greater risk of health problems generally than those with
higher incomes. They have low access to health services and other services that provide
for health and well-being, and a higher level of disease and mortality. Low-income
people in Contra Costa County and nationally experience higher rates of overall
mortality, chronic disease mortality, infant mortality, low birth weight, accidents and
injuries, homicides, AIDS, and tuberculosis.
But the report also addressed the limitations of the scope of Environmental Justice. It
continued:
A view of environmental justice that was expressed by a variety of Commissioners and
other members of the public encompasses themes of economic development, education,
safety, health status and health care, transportation, and other elements of overall
community health (along with concepts of inclusion, participation, and fairness). For
some business representatives, matters that are not closely related to hazardous materials
and environmental laws, policies and public participation were deemed beyond the
Commission’s purview.
Ultimately, the report did not express a definitive conclusion as to whether the
appropriate scope of Environmental Justice should include these more expansive themes,
but it did express the desire of the Hazardous Materials Commission to continue its own
education and dialogue about the issue, and it made the recommendation that the Board
of Supervisors take the initial step of formally supporting the concept of Environmental
Justice.
In a similar vein, when the California Environmental Protection Agency Advisory
Committee on Environmental Justice developed a report in 2003 that made
recommendations to include the development of guidance on cumulative impacts
analysis, it included an interim definition of cumulative impacts. A minority report was
written by one of the members, the California Council for Environmental and Economic
Balance, that objected to this definition and cited numerous complexities that needed to
be accounted for before arriving at an appropriate definition of, and application of,
cumulative impacts in the setting of environmental policy-making. This report, however,
did not talk specifically about the appropriateness of taking into account non-chemical
stressors.
Ultimately, the California Environmental Protection Agency chose to use the following
definition for the OEHHA project addressing cumulative impacts:
“Cumulative impacts means exposures, public health, or environmental effects from the
combined emissions and discharges in a geographic area, including environmental
pollution from all sources, whether single or multi-media, routinely, accidentally, or
otherwise released. Impacts will take into account sensitive populations and
socio-economic factors, where applicable and to the extent data are available (emphasis
added).”
The United States Environmental Protection Agency has also acknowledged that
cumulative risk assessments should address both chemical and non-chemical stressors,
and the Request for Applications for the grant under consideration specifically asks for
applications designed to address the relationship between these stressors, citing the need
to do so based on the results of several comprehensive reviews of cumulative risk
assessment.
During the discussion leading up to the vote on whether to participate in the study,
several members of the Hazardous Materials Commission expressed concern that their
input would be ignored due to their perception that the researchers would be biased
against the interests of industry, and several members of the Commission expressed
doubt that considering non-chemical stressors would yield valuable results. But as a
whole, the Commission favored participating in the study in question because they felt
that developing methodologies to address cumulative impacts is needed to adequately
address Environmental Justice concerns, and the approach proposed to them by Dr. Kyle
was generally sound and could ultimately yield results that could be of value to Contra
Costa County. They felt their participation as a body representing a variety of
perspectives would provide valuable input, and that they would rather see a study such as
this be done with their input than without.
At the same time the Commission saw this as a unique opportunity to participate in
research that could be important to promoting Environmental Justice in Contra Costa
County, they acknowledged in their final vote that what they wanted to do would need
approval of the Board of Supervisors because they wanted to provide advice to a body
not identified in their bylaws. Also, due to the historic narrow focus of the Commission
on hazardous materials and hazardous waste issues, the Commission also seeks
affirmation from the Board that considering non-chemical stressors in the context of this
study is within the mandate of the Hazardous Materials Commission.
ATTACHMENTS
G:\C&G DIRECTORY\NON CONTRACTS\06-09 HMC CI BO adk CC HazMat 02-26-09.pdf
1Addressing cumulative impactsPresentation to the Contra Costa County Hazardous Materials CommissionFebruary 26, 2009Amy D. Kyle, PhD MPHUniversity of California Berkeley School of Public Health<adkyle@berkeley.edu>
2Many environmental factors
3We experience the environment in particular placesPort of Oakland
4Newer scientific knowledge• Common pathways for effects that involve many compounds • Some people much more sensitive• Children often more sensitive• Health disparities are significant and partly related to environment• Increases in environmental diseases
5What we do now• Pollutant by pollutant• Source by source• Single medium (air or water or food)
6US EPA Framework for Cumulative Risk Assessment 2003Change focus: from “single agent or stressor”
7Change focus: to what happens in communities
8Environmental factors• Contaminant source approach – Air pollution (indoor and outdoor), water pollution, drinking water, land contamination (sites)– Dusts (indoors) and soils (outdoors)– Consumer products, workplaces • Positive factors– Green space, access to recreation areas, walkability
9Adapted from Kyle, 2006.
10Non-environmental factors • People and communities– Vulnerability (e. g., poverty)– Health status (elevated disease)– Resources and resiliency• All interact with environment
11G Gee and D Payne-Sturges. 2004. Environmental Health PerspectivesCommunities and individuals
12Peter deFur et al 2007, Environmental Health Perspectives. Vulnerability
13
14Cal EPA Working definitionsCumulative impactsmeans exposures, public health or environmental effects from the combined emissions and discharges, in a geographic area, including environmental pollution from all sources . . . Impacts will take into account sensitive populations and socio-economic factors, where applicable and to the extent data are available.
15Cal EPA Working definitionsPrecautionary approachmeans taking anticipatory action to protect public health or the environment if a reasonable threat of serious harm exists based upon the best available science and other relevant information, even if absolute and undisputed scientific evidence is not available to assess the exact nature and extent of risk.
16>> Toward tangible actions•Scope• Assessment approach•How to aggregate•Actions
17Scope• Most assessments now focus on one or a few things. Consider:– Multiple environmental factors?• Built environment in addition to contaminants– “Positive” factors (green space)?– Susceptibility (children)? – Non-environmental factors?• Vulnerability of communities or populations?
18For selected factors• Search for data sources– May need to consider some surrogates• Consider how to represent data– Indicators, measures, metrics– Existing resources• Environmental protection • Community health impact assessment• Chronic disease
19Assessment approaches• Area-based “screening” assessment– Go through to identify areas of concern– Could be based on scope identified – Could be based on available tools• Pastor et al. tool for ARB• US EPA EJ SEAT• Context based assessment
20Consider inequality?• Do you want to quantify differences among groups– Race/ethnicity, income or socio economic status• Does this matter in addition to magnitude of burden?
21How to aggregate• Quantitative methods– US EPA cumulative risk assessment for pesticides • Adaptation of risk methods – ARB hot spots program - additive• Devise new quantitative methods– Research needed on this
22Qualitative approaches•Enough is enough– Like non-attainment for air quality– Allows targeting of remedies without too much process– Seems to work for air districts with regard to targeting resources
23•Scoring– Percentile based (compare to overall distribution)• Probably most generally applicable– Benchmark based (compare to value with known significance)• Can apply to many things if you are creative about benchmarks– Scoring (high medium low)•Trends•Others
24From California County Asthma Hospitalization Chart Book
25
26
27Benchmark Based Scoring for Index (single pollutant only)
28Kyle et al. 1999.Benchmark metrics for combined pollutants
29“High medium low” scoring
30Percentage of children in the US who are overweight.Source: Forum on Child and Family Health Statistics. Indicators of Children's Health and Well-being. Trends
31What to do differently?• Target resources• Limit new stressors• Enhance positive factors• Remediate existing burden•Enforce laws• Develop new standards• Etc.
32Conclusion• Many environmental factors – Not all separate or independent• Defensible but not perfect assessment approaches• How to apply to actions• Supports sustainable community
33Amy D. Kyle <adkyle@berkeley.edu>http://envirohealth.berkeley.edu/Thanks!
34AD Kyle et al. 2006. Environmental Health Perspectives 114(3)Combine analysis and deliberation