Our Impact

The Center for the Urban Environment (CUE) began with an emphasis on providing policy advice to New Jersey’s urban mayors but changed its emphasis and became an important Center that works on environmental justice public policy. CUE currently works with communities Of Color, low-income communities and organizations that work with and within these communities. This work sphere also includes engaging governmental agencies that are attempting to address environmental justice.

The Center's impacts have included: 

1) helping environmental justice organizations to develop public policy from an environmental justice perspective;  

2) helping environmental justice organizations to survive and thrive by building their capacity;and 

3) helping EJ communities to fight unwanted and harmful local land uses. 

CUE is recognized as a leader in environmental justice policy and provides insight on environmental justice policy to governmental agencies such as the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection, the New Jersey Board of Public Utilities, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the Council on Environmental Quality.

NJEJA and CUE have become known on a national, state and local level for environmental justice policy development. The three areas for which CUE is best known are local air pollution, climate change mitigation policy from an EJ perspective and cumulative impacts. These areas, and several others, are explored below.

Fine PM air pollution (also known as PM2.5) has been estimated to cause tens of thousands of premature deaths each year in the United States and exacerbates or causes a variety of illnesses such as cardiovascular disease, pulmonary disorders and cancer. This deadly pollutant is an EJ issue because concentrations tend to be highest in urban areas and for that reason fine PM is almost certainly causing deaths and illness at disproportionately high rates among people Of Color and low-income residents of New Jersey. This alarming collection of facts is why CUE has made fine PM one of its priority substantive EJ issues. 

CUE has undertaken a number of activities with NJEJA and others in an effort to affect state and national policy in a manner that will result in decreased fine PM concentrations in urban areas. Among them are: 1) working with NJEJA to develop a fine and diesel PM reduction policy platform; 2) helping to conduct PM monitoring projects that involved high school students from Camden, Trenton and Newark; 3) working with the Coalition for Healthy Ports to reduce air pollution connected to the ports in Northern New Jersey, including helping to develop an air pollution platform and submitting written comments to the U.S. Coast Guard on the raising of the Bayonne Bridge; 5) helping NJEJA and other groups to develop a proposed executive order that would require privately-owned, publicly contracted, diesel-powered vehicles to be retrofitted with a pollution control device. A variation of this proposed order was eventually issued by the state; 6) helping NJEJA and allies to develop a cumulative impacts statewide policy and model municipal ordinance that would result in PM reductions (see below); 7) helping to shape New Jersey’s statewide cumulative impacts law (see below);  8) playing a significant role in developing EJ climate change mitigation policy and energy production policies that would reduce fine PM emissions and concentrations (see below); 9) preparing and submitting written comments on various activities including: applications for air pollution permits for power plants, incinerators and sewage plants; New Jersey energy master plan proposals; New Jersey’s community solar proposal; New Jersey’s energy efficiency proposal; New Jersey fine PM state implementation plan proposals; New Jersey’s fine PM redesignation proposal; and EPA proposals related to the Clean Power Plant; 10) helping to write three letters from New Jersey and EJ groups around the country that opposed the Transportation and Climate Initiative; 11) helping the New Jersey EJ community to organize a Transportation and Climate Initiative sponsored meeting in Newark.

NJEJA and CUE are nationally recognized for developing policy on, and emphasizing the idea of, ensuring that climate change mitigation policy not only fights climate change but also helps to reduce the disproportionate amount of pollution that is often found in environmental justice communities (i.e., communities Of Color and low-income communities). CUE has been a central participant in the creation of a “mandatory emissions reduction in environmental justice communities” policy that calls for power plants located in or near environmental justice communities to be required to reduce their emissions if they are subject to a climate change mitigation policy. CUE’s director  has also played an important role in arguing that carbon trading is not the best climate change mitigation policy for environmental justice communities. There are a number of documents that CUE has produced in this area, including comments on a proposed operating rule for the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, a carbon trading system New Jersey has joined; comments on the Clean Power Plan, the proposed climate change rule issued by EPA; a short position paper for NJEJA; and a law review article focused on the idea of mandatory emissions reductions.

NJEJA, CUE and allies have been leaders in developing cumulative impacts policy nationally, locally and on a state level. The issue of cumulative impacts focuses on how the nation’s legal and regulatory system attempts to address multiple pollutants emitted by multiple sources of pollution in a neighborhood. This problem is at the core of the disproportionate pollution burden that is often inflicted upon environmental justice communities, and is therefore, at the heart of environmental justice. CUE has been important and influential in developing language for laws that address cumulative impacts. On the state level, CUE worked with NJEJA and other allies to create a policy that integrates consideration of cumulative impacts into the pollution permitting process. This policy was presented to both the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection and EPA, and eventually heavily influenced federal EJ legislation (see below). On the municipal level, CUE helped NJEJA and the New Jersey EJ community to develop a model municipal ordinance that was customized to, and subsequently adopted by, the city of Newark in 2016.

CUE has also assisted NJEJA to conduct a significant amount of public education around the issue of cumulative impacts. For example, in order to educate community residents and city officials about cumulative impacts and the model ordinance CUE helped NJEJA conduct free EJ and cumulative impacts workshops in Trenton and Newark in 2011. In 2012, NJEJA, CUE and allies  conducted a series of three EJ and cumulative impacts workshops in Newark, Trenton and Camden on behalf of, and for audiences that were associated with, Sustainable Jersey. NJEJA and CUE also helped to organize a cumulative impacts town hall held in November 2019 at the American Public Health Association’s annual convention in Philadelphia. CUE’s director also spoke at the town hall. 

NJEJA and CUE; along with their allies the Ironbound Community Corporation, Clean Water Action and the Tishman Design and Environmental Center at the New School, also played major roles in helping to develop landmark cumulative impacts legislation that was adopted by New Jersey in late August 2020. The statewide cumulative impacts policy that CUE played a role in creating also heavily influenced the EJ Act of 2017, 2019 and 2020 that was submitted to Congress by Senator Cory Booker’s office.

CUE has also interacted with the EPA on several occasions on this issue. In 2013, CUE’s director was asked to be part of an expert panel to advise EPA on cumulative impacts. CUE and the Environmental Research Foundation also submitted comments to EPA on cumulative impacts in response to the agency’s request for “information and citations on methods for cumulative assessment.” More recently, in 2021, CUE’s director, along with professor Ana Baptista of the New School, made presentations to EPA’s Office of Research and Development on cumulative impacts.

As New Jersey moves increasingly toward developing energy policy to address energy efficiency and renewable energy, it has also increasingly turned to the state’s environmental justice community and CUE for ideas to ensure that environmental justice residential communities benefit from, and are not harmed by, these policies.
CUE is working with the environmental justice advocacy community on both a state and national level to develop energy policy from an environmental justice perspective. CUE wrote and submitted comments on energy efficiency, community solar, New Jersey’s energy master plan and electric charging infrastructure to the New Jersey Board of Public utilities on behalf of NJEJA.

Other issue areas in which CUE has been influential include convening and participating in discussions on the development of environmental justice legal strategies, connecting the environmental justice community to the legal community; helping to develop ideas  that address how scientists interact with environmental justice residential communities and environmental justice advocates, ensuring both types of environmental justice communities have access to scientists; developing environmental justice climate change resiliency policy; and writing and submitting, on behalf of NJEJA, several sets of comments on proposed changes to National Environmental Policy regulations 

On multiple occasions CUE’s director has given presentations to multiple audiences on how scientists should interact with the EJ advocacy community and EJ residential communities. For several years, CUE also convened meetings of the nationally based EJ and Science Initiative, which had as a primary goal connecting the EJ community to the scientific community. The Initiative also developed and released a national letter on carbon capture and sequestration that was signed both by EJ advocates and scientists.

For multiple years CUE also convened meetings of the regionally based Northeast EJ Attorneys group. This group both connected the EJ community to attorneys and explored novel EJ legal strategies.

CUE’s director has authored and co-authored a report and a textbook chapter, respectively, on environmental justice and climate change resiliency. In addition, he also co-authored the human health chapter of the 2014 National Climate Assessment.

By acting as a fiscal agent, and also providing office space, the Watson institute and CUE  played an important organizational structural role for NJEJA early in its existence. CUE continues to provide significant policy support for NJEJA, as well as administrative support and leadership, since CUE’s director serves as Board Chair for the organization. He also serves in the leadership of several environmental justice organizations on the national level.

• New Jersey Environmental Justice Alliance 
• Center for Earth, Energy and Democracy (Minneapolis)
• Clean Water Action, State Environmental Organization (New Jersey)
• Coalition for Healthy Ports (Regional) 
• Coming Clean (National)
• Deep South Center for Environmental Justice (New Orleans)
• Eastern Environmental Law Center (Newark)
• Environmental Justice Health Alliance (National)
• Environmental Justice Leadership Forum, (National)
• Earthjustice (National)
• Equitable and Just National Climate Platform (National)
• GreenFaith (New Jersey)
• The Harambee House (Savannah, Georgia)
• Ironbound Community Corporation (Newark)
• Just Transition Alliance (San Diego)
• Little Village Environmental Justice Organization (Chicago)
• Los Jardines (Albuquerque)
• Michigan Environmental Justice Coalition
• Midwest Environmental Justice Network
• Moving Forward Network (National)
• Natural Resources Defense Council (National)
• Sierra Club (National)
• Tishman Environment and Design Center, New School (NYC)
• Union of Concerned Scientists (National)
• WEACT For Environmental Justice (Harlem)
• Vermont Law School Environmental Justice Law Clinic