The Climate Commitment Act defines an overburdened community as
a geographic area where people are exposed to environmental pollutants or contaminants through multiple pathways, which may result in significant adverse health outcomes or effects.
Since January 2022, Ecology has been conducting public outreach and technical analysis to create a process to identify communities that meet this definition and are highly impacted by air pollution.
We are identifying boundaries that are best aligned with the relevant environmental, health, and socioeconomic data we use. Boundaries may be informed by census boundaries (such as tract or block groups), city/town boundaries, and neighborhood districts/planning areas. We would like your feedback on our draft factors for determining boundaries, and we will share our work and decisions at every stage of boundary determination.
We will determine the appropriate air monitoring instruments after we have identified overburdened communities and the key criteria air pollutants that affect them. We will consider factors such as monitoring objectives, range of expected concentrations, and distance to existing air monitoring sites when we choose the instrument and location.