California Communities Environmental Health Screening.

Existing law requires the Secretary for Environmental Protection to convene a Working Group on Environmental Justice to assist the secretary in developing an agencywide strategy for identifying and addressing gaps in existing programs, policies, or activities of the agency's boards, departments, and offices that may impede the achievement of environmental justice. Existing law requires the California Environmental Protection Agency to identify disadvantaged communities as part of a 3-year investment plan developed by the Department of Finance for the moneys collected by the State Air Resources Board resulting from a market-based compliance mechanism. This bill would require the Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment, in the next update of the California Communities Environmental Health Screening tool, developed by the agency and the office to implement the above requirements, or not later than January 1, 2017, to report to the Legislature on specified data necessary for updating the indicators in the tool for communities in the California-Mexico border region, including barriers to accessing that data and studies and plans for obtaining that data. The bill would require the office, when such data of sufficient quality are available, to include that data in the next update of the tool.