The Climate Solutions Now Act (CSNA) (2022) is a state law with provisions to reduce negative environmental impacts on overburdened and underserved communities.

• Overburdened communities are defined as any census tract for which three or more of the 13 environmental health indicators are above the 75th percentile.

• Underserved communities are defined as any census tract where the most recent census survey shows:

  • At least 25% of the residents qualify as low-income; or

  • At least 15% of the residents have limited English proficiency

  • At least 50% of the residents are non-white; or

1. Downloaded latest data from Federal EPA here: https://www.epa.gov/ejscreen/download-ejscreen-data (Note: Used sate-level to compare census tracts to other census tracts in the state and not national) so used the ‘Geodatabase (State Level)’. The GDB downloaded is “EJSCREEN_StatePct_With_AS_CNMI_GU_VI”

2. Ran definition query for census tract in Maryland which had > 0 population (STATE_NAME is equal to MARYLAND and ACSTOTPOP > 0) | Result 1,460 Census Tracts (Maryland Census Tracts w/ Population)

3. Isolated the tract that qualify as Underserved:

   1. At least 25% low income (FIELD: LOWINCPCT) or,

   2. At least 15% Limited English (FIELD: LINGISOPCT) or,

   3. At least 50% Non-white (FIELD: PEOPCOLORPCT)

      1. > This resulted in of the 849 tracts (These are the Underserved)

4. From these, need to identify Overburdened tracts from these Underserved tracts (3 or more of the 13 environmental health indicators are above 75th percentile)

   1. Ran original query of one of the 13 burdens (using OR) is > 75 percentile

   2. Resulted in 712 Tracts (Underserved_WithAtLeastOneEnvBurden)

5. Created 13 new fields for each 1 of the corresponding 13 burdens above for “Thresholds”

6. Ran script to return “1” if threshold for given burden is above 75 and 0 if not

   1. (sample script for Ozone Threshold):

7. Created a new field, “Threshold Sum” and ran query to sum all of the 13 burdens:

   1. sum([!ThrshHold_PM!,!ThrshHold_Ozone!,!ThrshHold_NO2!,!ThrshHold_DieselPM!,!ThrshHold_ToxicR!,!ThrshHold_TrafficPV!,!ThrshHold_LeadP!,!ThrshHold_SuperfundP!,!ThrshHold_RMP_FacP!,!ThrshHold_HazardWP!,!ThrshHold_UST_LUST!,!ThrshHold_WWDischarge!,!ThrshHold_DrinkingWNCMP!])

8. Created a final field, “Overburdened?” and ran if statement to see if the tract was overburdened.

445 Tracts in Maryland