In 2023, the Minnesota Legislature passed the Frontline Communities Protection Act (FCPA), a law with significant equity and justice impacts that will give some communities stronger regulatory protections against pollution. The Minnesota Pollution Control Agency (MPCA) is collecting feedback about the cumulative impacts of air pollution, and it’s critical they be as proactive, transparent, and accommodating as possible. You have until October 6, 2023, to submit your comment! You can use Fresh Energy’s easy commenting form below or check out MPCA’s website with additional ways to plug in.
Cumulative impacts can be a bit of a mouthful to say and understand—what does it mean? You can read our blog post all about it, but if you’re short on time, here’s the idea: when an entity proposes a new polluting facility in a community, the MPCA will now consider how much pollution the community already faces. If it’s already burdened with a lot of pollution, it might not make sense to issue a permit to build another polluting facility.
Fresh Energy is a member of the Frontline Communities Protection Coalition working to ensure the MPCA creates an equitable, transparent process for the cumulative impacts law.
We need your help! For marginalized communities to have real power in regulatory decisions in their communities, we need this process to reflect the ideals of the cumulative impacts law. Achieving equity is as much about the process as it is about the outcome, and it must be deliberately built within a process for equitable outcomes to be achieved.
Minnesotans need to submit a comment to the MPCA and urge them to create a transparent, accessible process for public engagement opportunities for the cumulative impacts law.