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Senate committee hears hours of testimony on bill to add cumulative environmental‑justice review to SEPA
Summary
Supporters say SB 5380 would force permitting to account for cumulative pollution burdens in overburdened communities; opponents and industry warn it would add delay and uncertainty to SEPA reviews and permitting for ports and industrial projects.
The Senate Environment, Energy & Technology Committee heard hours of oral testimony on Senate Bill 5,380, a proposal to add cumulative environmental‑justice analysis to the State Environmental Policy Act permitting process.
Sponsor Sen. Liz Lovelitt said the bill would require lead agencies to prepare an environmental justice impact statement — an EJIS — for certain potentially impactful projects in census tracts identified as pollution‑burdened, and to post that analysis publicly before a SEPA threshold determination or public hearing. "When you have that next to a freeway and another factory and an airport and all of these other cumulative factors, you make it so that people are... having negative impacts on health outcomes for these communities," Lovelitt said.
Proponents including Jamie Strobel, director of Climate Action and Resilience at The Nature Conservancy in Washington, and health and faith groups…
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