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Council Member Alexa Avilés' remarks on indirect source rule and air quality monitoring
0:08:26
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4 min
Council Member Alexa Avilés expresses support for the proposed indirect source rule and air quality monitoring legislation. She emphasizes the importance of these measures in addressing environmental justice issues in communities affected by last-mile distribution facilities and their associated truck traffic.
- Avilés highlights the potential of the indirect source rule to improve air quality and community health by requiring logistics center operators to choose from mitigation options.
- She stresses the need for more nuanced air quality monitoring data in environmental justice communities to inform future regulatory measures.
- Avilés acknowledges the historical pattern of environmental burdens being pushed onto poor, Black, and Brown communities, and sees these proposed measures as a step towards addressing these inequities.
Alexa Avilés
0:08:26
Thank you so much, Chair.
0:08:28
And thank you for holding this important hearing today.
0:08:33
And thank you to all the advocates who have come out to help us think through how to best craft the indirect source rule that is being considered here today, and everyone who is participating in this important hearing.
0:08:48
As many of you may know in the room, you've heard me say before, the communities that I represent have suffered from an inundation of last mile e distribution facilities, all generating an enormous amount of truck traffic, all within a very small geographic zone.
0:09:05
For years, I've sought to bring regulation to this industry so that we might improve health outcomes for our environmental justice community, but not only for those community members, but also for the workers that support these facilities.
0:09:21
But in that search, we have been met with many jurisdictional challenges.
0:09:27
I can't express to you how delighted I am to be here today finally to be able to discuss a viable policy model for local municipalities like ours, which has been successfully tested out in California.
0:09:42
Through the indirect source rule, we will be able to ask a logistics center operator to choose from a menu of mitigation options that will help us improve quality, air quality, and thereby community health.
0:09:55
While what we are discussing here today is only a broad framework, I look forward to the development of a more robust version of this legislation in the coming months, having been formulated by all of our comments and testimony here today.
0:10:12
So I just want to thank again everyone for being part of this process to get us to this particular moment.
0:10:21
Something that is important about this indirect source rule policy is really it is a moment where I can tell my community we are actually looking at mitigation efforts.
0:10:35
And we have tried all manners of ways to figure out how to bring some relief to a community that not only is dealing with a proliferation of these distribution facilities, but that has a long history of hosting many environmental burden facilities that other communities would not want.
0:10:58
And because they are well resourced and wealthier, they often were able to push off those facilities into poor black and brown communities.
0:11:06
So it is just really important that we are finally getting potentially a tool that will ask operators, this is not about a moratorium, but it's asking operators to claim responsibility for what they are doing and to do better, and to do that all throughout their operations.
0:11:27
Not just plant one tree and walk away, but to really claim what is happening with fullness so we can have an honest conversation about implications both in our economy and our health and wellness.
0:11:39
And so finally, I also wanna mention Intra one zero seven.
0:11:43
While I know this legislation had a hearing in the past and the administration has expressed concerns around resource constraints, I look forward to hearing from the administration today what a more workable solution might be for us to attain to attain the air quality monitoring we need in environmental justice community.
0:12:02
Residents and policymakers need to have access to more nuanced data than what is currently available so that we can better understand the future of the regulatory measures that might be necessary for us to continue to improve community health.
0:12:18
And so, again, a lot of gratitude here because it takes enormous amount of work.
0:12:23
Thank you to the administration for their efforts and to my colleagues and to all of you for participating.
0:12:30
It's a critical issue.
0:12:32
All New Yorkers deserve clean air, and that's what we're fighting for.
0:12:37
Thank you, chair.