A new approach for environmental justice impact assessment

President Clinton's Executive Order 12898 calls for examination of disproportionately high and adverse impacts to minority and low-income communities. In addition to demographic mapping, environmental justice analyses should also include quantitative impact assessment to show presence or absence of disproportionate impacts. This study demonstrates use of a geographic information system (GIS) and a computer model. For this demonstration, a safety analysis report and a computer code were used to develop impact assessment data from a hypothetical facility accident producing a radiological airborne plume. The computer code modeled the plume, plotted dose contours, and provided latitude and longitude coordinates for transfer to the GIS. The GIS integrated and mapped the impact and demographic data toprovide a graphical representation of the plume with respect to the population. Impacts were then analyzed. The GIS was used to estimate the total dose to the exposed population under the plume, the dose to the low-income population under the plume, and the dose to the minority population under the plume. Impacts among the population groups were compared to determine whether a dispropotionate share of the impacts were borne by minority or low-income populations