Environmental Justice Block Groups 2021 was created from Connecticut block group boundary data located in the Census Bureau's 2019 TIGER/Line Shapefiles. The poverty data used to determine which block groups qualified as EJ communities (see CT State statute 22a-20a) was based on the Census Bureau's 2019 ACS 5-year estimate- Table C17002. This poverty data was joined with the block group boundaries in ArcMap. Block groups in which the percent of the population below 200% of the federal poverty level was greater than or equal to 30.0 were selected and the resulting selection was exported as a new shapefile. The block groups were then clipped so that only those block groups outside of distressed municipalities were displayed. Maintenance – This layer will be updated annually and will coincide with the annual distressed municipalities update (around August/September). The latest ACS 5-year estimate data should be used to update this layer.
Environmental Justice Distressed Municipalities 2021 was created from Connecticut town boundary data located in the Census Bureau's 2019 TIGER/Line Shapefiles (County Subdivisions). From this shapefile, "select by attribute" was used to select the distressed municipalities by town name (note: the list of 2021 distressed municipalities was provided by the CT Department of Economic and Community Development). The selection was then exported a new shapefile. The “Union” tool was used to unite the new shapefile with tribal lands (American Indian Area Geography) boundary data from the 2019 TIGER/Line files. In the resulting layer, the tribal lands were deleted so only the distressed municipalities remained. Maintenance – This layer will be updated annually when the DECD produces its new list of distressed municipalities (around August/September).