This story was originally published by CalMatters. The system that California uses to screen neighborhoods at risk of environmental harm is highly subjective and flawed, resulting in communities potentially missing out on billions of dollars in funding, according to new research. The study, by researchers who began the project at Stanford University, investigated a tool that the California Environmental Protection Agency developed in 2013 as the nation’s “first comprehensive statewide environmental health screening tool” to identify communities disproportionately burdened by pollution. Communities that are designated “disadvantaged” by the system, called CalEnviroScreen, can qualify for significant government and private funding. The tool has been used to designate vast swaths of the Central Valley, communities around the ports of Long Beach and Los Angeles, and neighborhoods in the Bay Area cities of Richmond and Oakland, among others. The researchers found that the screening tool uses a small number of health problems that could bias which communities are designated. About 16 percent of Census tracts in the state could be ranked differently with alterations in EnviroScreen’s model, according to the study. The system raises equity issues because it biases in favor of certain groups over others and has the potential of pitting groups against each other for funding in what is essentially a winner-take-all, or loser-take-all, system, according to the research. For instance, “we found the existing model to potentially underrepresent foreign-born populations,” the researchers noted.
Community groups and environmental justice advocates have said for years that the tool overlooks communities that should be designated as disadvantaged. At stake is a large amount of funding — about $2.08 billion over just a recent, four-year period, the researchers reported. The findings come as scientists are increasingly demonstrating that algorithms can be as biased as the humans who create them and that many disproportionately harm marginalized populations. “The big takeaway is that if you asked ten different experts in California to come up with their own screening algorithm to determine which neighborhoods are ‘disadvantaged,’ you would probably get 10 very different algorithms,” said lead author Benjamin Huynh, who was a doctoral student at Stanford and is now a researcher at Johns Hopkins University. “These things can come across as very technical, but when you look at the numbers and you see the billions of dollars flowing … these very seemingly technical details actually matter a lot.”
Amy Gilson, a spokesperson for CalEPA’s environmental health office, said the study’s recommendations are being reviewed. Any potential changes to CalEnviroScreen must “go through a robust scientific evaluation” as well as “extensive public process,” she said. “CalEnviroScreen’s methods are transparent to allow for these types of outside evaluations, and we welcome discussion on the merits of different approaches,” Gilson said in an emailed statement to CalMatters.
