The Trump administration has scrapped a Biden-era screening tool to track pollution in underserved communities, but some researchers and advocates are working to keep the underlying data alive.
Staff at the Environmental Policy Innovation Center, the Environmental Data and Governance Initiative, and other organizations are building a publicly accessible database based on data from the Climate and Environmental Justice Screening Tool. The screening tool was housed at the White House Council on Environmental Quality under the Biden administration and aimed to help direct federal funding to communities facing high levels of pollution.
The Trump administration removed the tool from CEQ’s website as part of its push to “terminate” government actions on environmental justice. The term refers to efforts to better protect minority and low-income communities from environmental waste sites and heavy industry, which have often been cited in those communities.
First launched in 2022, the CEQ tool was groundbreaking because it included both environmental data — like water quality — and economic data — like unemployment levels — for communities across the U.S., said Jessica Mahr, director of technology at the Environmental Policy Innovation Center.