Elizabeth Yeampierre, executive director of Uprose, a grassroots environmental justice group, said that the study released Monday was “not surprising, but it is alarming”.

“We often feel that the way that decisions are made is very dated and really uses front-line communities as part of their rhetoric but not by honoring and respecting the solutions our communities are pushing,” she said.

Yeampierre used the example of Hurricane Katrina, in which New Orleans’ Black population fell as many residents couldn’t afford to move back to ruined neighborhoods, of how not to manage the threat of flooding and its aftermath.