FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
July 29, 2026
Contact: Ashley Sullivan, 917-837-1183, Ashley.Sullivan@weact.org
WASHINGTON – “Hello, thank you for the opportunity to testify. My name is Yosef Robele, Federal Policy Manager with WE ACT for Environmental Justice, overseeing energy and transportation issues. We are an environmental justice non-profit that has fought and continues to fight for environmental justice at the local, state and federal levels. Additionally, we convene the Environmental Justice Leadership Forum, a national coalition of 42 environmental justice organizations across 25 states and the District of Columbia. Together, we advance climate justice and impact policy to ensure the health and well-being of communities of color and low-income communities throughout the U.S.
I am speaking here today to represent my organization’s concerns with the proposed rule in the Minor New Source Review Program. This rule is the latest in a series of deregulatory actions by the EPA to eliminate important environmental safeguards in order to fast track polluting facilities. This time the EPA has targeted one of the most critical pillars of effective oversight and governance, Public Participation.
The Minor sources regulated under this program include polluting facilities like, landfills, incinerators, power plants, and chemical plants that have long burdened environmental justice communities with health issues and other economic burdens. WE ACT and Environmental Justice groups across the country have long advocated for effective and inclusive public participation processes to ensure communities’ wellbeing is considered properly in decision making processes.
Effective and inclusive public participation processes necessitate transparency, language access, and sufficient opportunities for communities to provide feedback among many other components. In particular early and intentional public notice is imperative to effective public participation because for many communities public notice is the only avenue for them to learn about what is taking place in their backyards. Public participation along with adequate public notice in the Minor NSR program plays an important role in managing air quality in part due to providing communities an avenue in which to be watchdogs to raise the alarm when their local and state agencies fall short of safeguarding their air quality. Without this environment justice communities are left vulnerable to further disproportionate siting of polluting facilities in our already overburdened communities as policymakers and industry will continue to treat our communities as sacrifice zones.
Unfortunately we’ve seen repeatedly in this administration efforts to worsen public participation processes in their attempts to limit transparency and public input. Let us be clear that these attempts to eliminate public scrutiny from decision making processes is fundamentally antidemocratic. While the EPA may try to make claims to the contrary, public participation is not an optional checkmark in fulfilling the clean air act but instead is a critical and necessary activity.”
Watch this testimony here at the 5:20:50 mark.
# # #
WE ACT for Environmental Justice is a Northern Manhattan-based, membership-driven organization whose mission is to build healthy communities by ensuring that people of color and/or low-income residents are meaningfully included in the development of sound and fair environmental health and protection policies and practices. WE ACT has offices in New York and Washington, D.C. Visit us at weact.org and follow us on Facebook, Bluesky, and Instagram.