Mayor-elect Brandon Johnson will have to address decades of environmentally racist policies that have encouraged the dirtiest industries to leave gentrified neighborhoods and set up shop in vulnerable communities of color.

He’s inheriting a legacy that has created sacrifice zones mainly in communities of color resulting from the city’s broken zoning and land use laws.

These policies have even sparked a federal civil rights investigation from the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) and could put hundreds of millions of dollars of funding in jeopardy. The federal investigation found that the city has been violating residents’ civil rights by relocating polluting facilities from white communities into Black and Latinx areas.

The solution that the Johnson administration will have to implement must include strong protections from industry and all of the sources of pollution that have accumulated mostly in communities of color. 

It’s also important to recognize that although people of color are often hit the first and hardest by pollution, these problems are not just harming the people living close to industrial facilities. Air pollution is not static, it travels far beyond its source.