Hill Heat

As the Commission continues to advance its consideration of environmental justice and equity concerns in its infrastructure permitting proceedings, this panel will discuss how the Commission can better integrate and advance environmental justice and equity principles in its decision-making. The panel may include a discussion of the following questions:

1. What should the Commission prioritize as it more fully integrates environmental justice and equity considerations into its infrastructure permitting proceedings?
2. What lessons can the Commission learn from other federal and state agencies and tribes to better avoid and minimize negative environmental, health, and socioeconomic impacts to historically overburdened communities?
3. How can the Commission better integrate environmental justice and equity considerations into its efforts to enhance the safety and reliability of the infrastructure it authorizes?

During this panel, Commissioners will engage with members and representatives of overburdened communities impacted by FERC-jurisdictional infrastructure about the environmental justice challenges they face. The panel may include a discussion of the following questions:

Location-Specific Impacts:

1. Please describe your community and any environmental injustices you may have experienced, either directly or indirectly.
2. When assessing the impacts of FERC-jurisdictional infrastructure projects, what topics or areas of concern should the Commission more fully address or emphasize during our infrastructure permitting proceedings?
3. How can the Commission best facilitate engagement between local communities and industry during the earliest stages of the project planning process to avoid or reduce negative impacts, develop local community benefits, and implement community input with respect to other areas of concern?
4. What are ways the Commission can strengthen its analysis of local impacts without placing an undue burden of producing additional information on environmental justice communities?

Meaningful Engagement:

1. How can the Commission and industry better assure that stakeholders’ input in infrastructure application proceedings was received, reviewed, and addressed in environmental review documents and the Commission’s decisions?
2. In many cases, the Commission requires infrastructure applicants, certificate holders, or licensees to develop plans to protect public safety (such as Emergency Response Plans for liquified natural gas facilities). What steps should the Commission and industry take to provide opportunities for public participation targeted at ensuring community needs are evaluated during the development, implementation, and modification of such plans?
3. In addition to project-specific engagement, how else should the Commission work with local communities to improve the Commission’s infrastructure permitting processes and help connect communities to resources that support community participation in our proceedings?

Panelists:

Lunch will not be provided.

This panel will discuss how infrastructure applicants, the Commission, and its staff can better identify, avoid, and minimize adverse impacts on environmental justice communities. The panel may include a discussion of the following questions:

Cumulative Impacts:

1. What lessons can the Commission learn from other federal and state agencies, environmental justice communities, industry, and subject matter experts on how to better identify, minimize, and avoid cumulative impacts in environmental justice communities particularly with respect to human health and climate change?
2. How can the Commission best consider factors that increase the intensity of cumulative impacts on environmental justice communities?

Identifying, Minimizing, and Avoiding Impacts:

1. How can the Commission better assess and characterize direct and indirect impacts as well as past, current, and future cumulative impacts and the vulnerability or resiliency of a community?
2. What guidance can the Commission provide to infrastructure project developers to help avoid or reduce negative impacts from new infrastructure development in environmental justice communities that are already overburdened? What indicators and thresholds should the Commission use to appropriately and accurately identify such communities early in the project development process?
3. How can Commission staff make better use of local, state, and region-specific impact information and community knowledge when conducting an impact assessment and developing methods to avoid and minimize potential impacts?

Panelists: