![Mayors in front of room speaking on panel](/sites/g/files/omnuum10826/files/styles/hwp_21_9__1920x825/public/2026-10/CDHI%20Mayor%20Panel%202.jpg?itok=lcZfelS8) # Exclusive: Environmental Equity Starts at the Hyperlocal Level Episode 103 October 28, 2026 [ Betsy Gardner ](/people/betsy-gardner) Recorded live at the Harvard Kennedy School, this exclusive episode features Mayor Van Johnson and Mayor Shawyn Patterson-Howard, who spoke at our recent Data to Action capstone convening. They shared how they're solving environmental health crises their cities don't technically control — using convening power, community storytelling, and data. Hear how they've built networks and told resident stories, getting state governors and federal agencies to listen and leading to public health improvements. **In this episode, you'll learn:** - How mayors without direct authority can still move federal and state policy when local data tells the story - How air quality monitors and water infrastructure studies transformed anecdotes into evidence - When to step back and let the community tell their own stories, and why that can be more powerful than any policy speech - Why all mayors should address environmental justice and how it relates to other policy areas like housing and violence Embed *Listen here, or wherever you get your podcasts. The following is a transcript of the conversation.* **Betsy Gardner:** Hi, and welcome to the Data Smart City Pod. This is Betsy Gardner, senior editor at Data-Smart City Solutions at the Bloomberg Center for Cities at Harvard University and producer of this podcast. We have a really special episode for you today. This is a panel discussion, recorded live with our usual host, Professor Stephen Goldsmith, and Mayor Shawyn Patterson-Howard of Mount Vernon, NY and Mayor Van Johnson of Savannah, GA. They were recently at the Harvard Kennedy School for our Data to Action capstone convening, as part of our Community Data Health Initiative. This event brought together mayors, city staff, environmental health experts and leaders in public health to discuss how they can use data, emerging technology, and analytics to improve health outcomes for residents. We're excited to be able to share this moment from the convening; you might hear some background noise during the panel, but we hope you enjoy this exclusive content. Thanks for listening. **Stephen Goldsmith:** Welcome, or welcome back. I'm Steve Goldsmith, for those of you who haven't met me. So, several years ago, we reached out to Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The question we were asking then is, well, there are a lot of global issues, but how about folks in your community at the very hyper-local level? What could a mayor do to make a difference for the opportunities of individuals who are negatively affected by their air quality, or heat, or other environmental conditions? What would those actions be? So, Robert Wood Johnson Foundation funded a project to look at that. So, our little part of this is, what can we learn about the effect of environmental conditions on public health and about which the mayor can make a difference? We have terrific set of partners in this grant, Environmental Defense Fund, Meharry, and the African American Mayors Association. So, what I thought we would do is just have a conversation about regional and hyper-local issues. This is a conversation today about, what can a mayor do? Mayor Johnson, first, just which one or two initiatives are you most proud of that you've done in this area? **Mayor Van R. Johnson II:** Well, first of all, I think that the most important thing is recognize they're all connected. For us, air quality is extremely important. Savannah is a city that has an amazing tree canopy and all these wonderful things, but also a heavily industry. We have the third-busiest port in the country. We have businesses like International Paper and Gulfstream, which makes jet airplanes that I can't afford. Hyundai, which now makes electric vehicles. So, you have to be able to create ways of looking at the air quality and how that helps. We have individuals in our city who have lived in really structural racism. I'll call it for what it is. Have lived in industrial areas that were next to residential neighborhoods. And you can see where those individuals, as they got older, had bronchial issues, asthma, old folks with breathing machines and on oxygen. And there is a direct correlation between where they live in our city and the morbidities that they face as they get older. So, I think air quality, for us, was a major, major part of this. **Stephen Goldsmith:** What can you do? Do you warn folks? Do you intervene? What can you...because you don't control all that port area. **Mayor Van R. Johnson II:** No. First of all, you call the thing a thing. You call it out, and you then convene individuals. Mayors have amazing convening power to bring folks to the table. We have what they call this bully pulpit, that if we keep talking about it, things start to move. Even the federal government, all the sudden they'll start saying, "Oh, well, let's look at this a little bit more." And then beyond drawing attention to it, now how do we move from here to not only document that which we see, but to be able to create better outcomes? How can the city bring its resources to bear? How can we convene other partners to bring their resources to bear? How do we engage other people to be able to create some synergy to be able to get to some outcomes that are more favorable than what we've experienced? **Stephen Goldsmith:** Really interesting point. So, you're saying you're not restrained by your actual authority, right? You're using your voice and your convening authority to call attention -- **Mayor Van R. Johnson II:** My big mouth. Yes, sir. **Audience:** \[laughter\] **Stephen Goldsmith:** I didn't say that… **Mayor Van R. Johnson II:** Yeah, I said it, I said it \[laughter\] **Stephen Goldsmith:** How about you, Mayor Patterson-Howard? Just what environmental initiative that affects health is most of your attention? **Mayor Shawyn Patterson-Howard:** So, you asked for two, and I guess the first one that came to mind, really, was our water infrastructure in our city. From lead service to storm water to wastewater, our systems were broke. Mount Vernon borders the Bronx. We are in Westchester County, one of the richest counties in the country, but we're the poorest community in what they call The Golden Apple, and our health statistics and outcomes rival those of Harlem and the South Bronx. So, when you're dealing with a hundred-year-old water infrastructure system, vitrified clay, you have a consent decree by the EPA and the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation, and you're being fined for thousands of dollars a day, which can add up to, easily, millions by the end of the year, I didn't come in thinking it about environment. I thought about public safety, public health, education, crime, not the environment, but environment became my biggest focus really, really quickly, and so dealing with that water infrastructure. And in the midst of dealing with the water infrastructure, because we had broken sewer lines, what we also discovered in the midst of that is our air quality was affected. Our air quality was affected because of all of the methane gas that was escaping in our sewer system. And then the fact that Mount Vernon is four square miles, we have about 20 different bus lines. We are a transportation hub. We're the first transit-oriented community designed in the country. We sit between Wall Street and the banking industry in Connecticut. So, we have three Metro North lines, two train rails, 20 bus lines, and we have five arterial highways and parkways and throughways right around Mount Vernon. So, our air quality was impacted. And we partnered, in 2022, with New York State DEC and Aclima, and they did a air quality study using the cars and the monitors on the cars to travel all throughout our city 24 hours a day, seven days a week, and in all different neighborhoods and all different seasons. Because you can talk about a thing, but until you can prove it, it's not real. So, we knew our asthma and COPD and things were really high, but this allowed us to be able to demonstrate why. **Stephen Goldsmith:** I have a follow-up question. I want to go back to the structural racism comment for a second. **Mayor Shawyn Patterson-Howard:** Absolutely. **Stephen Goldsmith:** So, you're in a very wealthy county- **Mayor Shawyn Patterson-Howard:** Yes. **Stephen Goldsmith:** ... but your kids are getting their brains poisoned with lead because there's not enough money to mitigate. So, how do you make that a claim to your state or your county? What do you do about this? I mean, it's an urgent situation. It's a very expensive situation. It's folks with the least amount of money whose pipes are generally the oldest. So, how are you handling this structural racism issue? **Mayor Shawyn Patterson-Howard:** Like Mayor Johnson, we have to use our bully pulpits, and you have to be unapologetic and unafraid, unbossed and unbought when you have these conversations. I was told by the EPA, "We're going to fine you," the DEC, "We're going to fine you." And I said, "Well, it's great that you can fine us, but you could provide us with technical assistance. You could provide us with funding to fix the issue." And they was, "Well, that's going to just be too much." So, we went out and we partnered with some environmentalists out of Alabama, and we called for a press conference. And I brought my state Senate chair and majority leader down to our community, and we stood under a 10-by-10 tent at a sewer bypass pump, and it smelled horrible. And this national Forbes-winning environmentalist said, "I always bring my daughter to New York." And she said, "I didn't realize that 25 minutes north of Broadway, that black people couldn't flush their toilets, and they were going to die from methane gas." Well, that woke some people up. And not only did she bring herself, but she brought environmental agencies with her, and she was the co-chair of the White House Environmental Justice Commission. And that resulted in our governor, Kathy Hochul, giving us $150 million to begin to address the water infrastructure issues in our city, and then another $10 million grant for water infrastructure. And while we were talking about storm water and sewer, we said, "Well, we need to do lead service tracking." So, they gave us a few million dollars to begin that process. So, we said, "There's a way to go from bankrupting our city to helping our city rise," and they took that on with glee. **Stephen Goldsmith:** That's a good story. Many centuries ago, I was a mayor of Indianapolis. Here's how I though about this problem. So, folks with wealth a hundred years ago lived in the city. They dumped their waste in the ground, and they built combined sewer overflows. Then they moved to the suburbs and so that the folks who were then left, who had less money, had to pay for the problems that they created before they moved to the suburbs. So, the whole equity of fining you for that seems odd. Mayor Johnson, let's talk about the air quality monitors for a second. You both are using those. Would you explain to folks here how you're using those and what you're doing with the data? **Mayor Van R. Johnson II:** Well, I think it goes right back to our vision statement that Savannah will be safe and environmentally healthy, and the last two words is that, for all. So, we know that the very basis of where people are is the air that they breathe. I mean, regardless of who you are, if you're not breathing healthy air, your outcomes are going to be affected by that. So, we started air quality monitoring, particularly with community-based organizations, with CBOs, in our West Savannah neighborhoods, which are those that I talked about before, which were closer to those industrial spaces, International Paper and the ports, block companies and those things, to be able to really address it. I think it's an issue of just being able to say, "Hey, we hear you, and now we're going to quantify the experience that you have told us that you've had." For years, people, "We've had these issues. We have a way of seeing it, but we don't have a way of quantifying it." So, in this way, we're saying, "We hear you. We're measuring it, and what you can measure that you're able to be able to address." So, we've started that project not too long ago, but it creates an opportunity for us to now quantify what people have been experiencing, and then be able to act on what they've been experiencing, which we now can measure. **Stephen Goldsmith:** Listening to both of you, it sounds like you're effective because of the folks you convene, but also because of the story you tell, crime, poverty, housing. How do you tell the story about environment? What's the narrative you use to gather support around the issues we're talking about today? **Mayor Van R. Johnson II:** First of all, narrative and storytelling, I think, is very important and being able to not do it in statistics, but do it in terms of people. Ultimately, Savannah is about a hundred square miles. People come in very pristine areas. They really love and enjoy it, but the reality is, if we have young people, they're not able to grow up to be their best potential. People understand that. Everybody has children. Everybody wants their children to be where they are. Everybody knows that healthcare is really, really important. So, in our mission statement, vision statement I just referred to, we have ingrained environmentally healthy. So, for a government, bake that into the culture of our organization so that everybody, not just the sustainability area, we're talking about environment. So, it becomes a part of, really, everything that we do. **Stephen Goldsmith:** So, Mayor, what's your narrative about why the work you're doing is important? **Mayor Shawyn Patterson-Howard:** It couldn't be my narrative. It became the community's narrative. So, we found those who were most impacted, and they became our influencers. So, Ms. McNeil told the story of sewage and raw sewage backing up into her house to the point that her grandchildren called her house the poop house, and how that was impacting her. And Ms. Young's told the story about how every time it rained, that the Hutchinson River overflowed, and it was backing up into her house, and how she had mold growing up to the first floor and overtaking her property. And we understand that our homes, especially in communities of color that we fought really, really hard and many of us were first-generation homeowners or maybe second-generation, that's your biggest asset, and how your biggest asset was being destroyed by flooding, or you have the families who are impacted by lead tell those stories. Because it couldn't be me always. You become the Charlie Brown, "Wah, wah, wah." So, we convened, and I was almost sanctioned by the EPA because they told me to stop talking about the Consent Decree. So, if I couldn't talk about it, I let the community talk about it. And then when the community talked about it, it gave me a shelter, and I partnered with other organizations. So, the BBC came and they did documentaries. We had sewer divers and Paramount-NBC come, and they started telling the story. And the governor said, "I heard this story about Mount Vernon struggling, and I said I had to do something. And they told me the price tag, and I said, 'Whoa.' And what they needed was my entire budget for the year for the state, but Mount Vernon had been disproportionately impacted." You give them that space. Sometimes you have to decrease and allow those who can help you to increase. I'm a minister, so I let my- **Stephen Goldsmith:** ... I never would've guessed \[laughter\] **Mayor Shawyn Patterson-Howard:** I let my residents be the Levites. They let out the band, and they blew the trumpets. You have to know when to blow the trumpet and know when to play the harp. Sometimes you scream and you yell, and sometimes you quietly strum and let other people lead that. And that's what we had to do. And when you understand, like we said, telling the story is important, but then you have to have the data to back it up. And oftentimes, our communities don't have historical data. So, we had to get to a place where we were collecting the data, and that's why the air monitors were important. That's why the covers in the manholes were important to show how the flooding was coming up, because data equaled dollars. Data allowed us to make the critical decisions that the community was able to buy into. And then the multidisciplinary teams within the city helped to bake it in to live beyond our terms, and then the multisectoral partnerships within the community and doing that critical collective impact work. When the work becomes the work of the community and not just your administration, people take ownership. So, the community engagement piece is so critically important because you never have enough resources to do it on your own. **Stephen Goldsmith:** I can see where it might be easier to say yes to you than no \[laughter\]. Let me ask, any other comments on heat? **Mayor Van R. Johnson II:** Well, I think for us, I mean, Savannah, it's beautiful, but it gets downright disrespectfully hot in the summertime. Now, it is not really necessarily the heat as much as the humidity. The concern is this, is that, again, when you talk about equity, everybody doesn't have the access to cool air. And my grandmama used to have a fan, and that was just circulating hot air. So, getting people out, making sure they're safe has been big to us. We've also started using splash pads for kids. Pools, there are huge liability issues, but we found with splash pads, I mean, relatively cheaper to engage, but yet people can walk by and walk in them and it cools them off, and they love it. And really making sure that we're creating... Those days when we know that it's going to happen, make sure people are informed about what to do, how to do, where to go, engaging those partners that are involved. Again, we have those cooling centers, as well, where we're feeding people. **Stephen Goldsmith:** What policies do you have for your city workers on really hot days? **Mayor Shawyn Patterson-Howard:** So, for sanitation, sanitation usually would begin somewhere between 7:00 and 8:00. We're beginning sanitation at like 5:00 in the morning. Because by 11:00, it can easily be 90 degrees, and so we want them to be finished and done by then. So, that's how we're working with our sanitation workers. Our water workers, who are outside digging and going underground and in deep holes, we are shifting their hours of which they work. Of course, with police and fire, you're speaking to them, making sure that they're coming in more. We tell the residents who are fans of them, if you see them, give them water. It's okay, you can give the officer a water. And we're doing all of those other things, but definitely with our city staff, trying to make sure that they're working an earlier day because as the heat gets going, by 12:00, 1:00 it's…you can't do the work. **Mayor Van R. Johnson II:** For us, at one point, we were bringing in the horses at 85 degrees. Now, you have people out working, but they'll bring in horses... "Yeah, but, the horses cannot be out working. It's just too hot for them." Savannah is a tree city. We have 85,000 trees. When you talk about equity, in the areas that were the poorest, the most impacted, they had less trees. So, A, how do you create ways to create more trees there because now they're impacted by heat. But then, also, in our policies that when you are building and constructing, and the trees involved, that either you're replanting trees or you're contributing to a tree fund to help us to put trees back there. Because again, back in those days when the structural things were going on, they just knocked down trees indiscriminately, putting concrete. And we know that because concrete draws heat, and so we know, in some neighborhoods that are impacted, their temperature is five to 10 degrees more than they are in their areas with more parks and more trees. So, for us, again, this is an opportunity to restore that which had been taken away. **Mayor Shawyn Patterson-Howard:** One thing that's not there, and it's something that we really leaned into in our community, is extreme heat dealing with mental health and violence and community violence. I say, when the weather's hot, the streets get hotter, and I'm talking about the violence. And people are outside. Kids are out of school. People are hot. They're bothered. Not everyone has air condition, so they're outside hanging. So, we wanted to make sure that we did park activations. We didn't get to splash pads as early as we wanted to, but now, as we're redesigning our parks and we have a comprehensive plan for our parks, we're going to be putting in splash pads. But opening up the fire hydrants, having the sprinkler caps open, the dogs, the adults, the kids could run in them, making sure that they had areas to go. And what we saw is we have not experienced a summer-related homicide in, now, almost five years. **Stephen Goldsmith:** Wow. **Mayor Shawyn Patterson-Howard:** Right? **Audience:** \[applause\] **Mayor Shawyn Patterson-Howard:** And that was major for us because when you're bothered and you're upset, and so the park activations, the summer concert series, the summer movie nights, giving people place and space to come together for community cohesion was really important. When people aren't busy and they're hot, the mental health and the anger is ridiculous, and so you deal with the community violence. So, I want us as communities not to just think about the physical health and people having heat strokes and heart attacks and premature babies, but think of the mental health impacts of ensuring that your green spaces are activated and that you're using them and for programming, and that your parks and playgrounds become infrastructure for mental, social and public safety. **Stephen Goldsmith:** Mayor Johnson, you're nationally quite active. Do the national organizations...are they helping the mayors here? **Mayor Van R. Johnson II:** Well, first of all, the African American Mayors Association is here, right? So, we have black mayors. Y'all show some love for the mayors. 500 mayors, I'm the immediate past president and Mayor Patterson was a president two presidents before me. So, I think we're locked in. We're engaged. We recognize in the cities we represent, the environment is extremely important. I'll be the president of the National League of Cities in about a month and a half. That's 19,000 cities, towns, \[applause\]. No, don't clap yet. Don't clap yet. That's a lot to bite \[laughter\], but it really creates opportunities for synergy if we're talking about the same types of things, and really being able to not only provide mentoring, but also consultation for mayors and cities that are dealing with the same types of issues. The greatest part about it is that when you have mayors collaborating, you also have their teams collaborating. When you have teams collaborating, you have cities collaborating and communities collaborating. And that turns into federal policy. It turns into state policy. It turns into opportunities to be able to move the needle beyond where we are. So I don't take the opportunity lightly. Position is really an opportunity to really push an agenda unlike what we have done before. **Mayor Shawyn Patterson-Howard:** And that's where multilateralism comes in, because you're not just talking about local. You're talking regional, state, national, and international. I am a Champion Mayor, which is one of 60 in the world for OECD, which is the organization for economic and community development. It's not something we pay attention to as much here, but that also gives us an international voice. And as leaders of color, what we know are the challenges. We now have to go and join those organizations. So, America All In, ICLI, US Climate Mayors, working with the Environmental Defense Fund, we have to go to those tables. We can't always wait for them to come to us. And when you go to those tables, then you're able to get their buy-in and work with them to shift some of their attention to really looking at environmental justice. You can't have environmental justice conversations without those who are most impacted by environmental justice sitting around the table. **Mayor Van R. Johnson II:** So, doing all of that while making sure Ms. Sadie's trash got picked up. **Mayor Shawyn Patterson-Howard:** That's right. **Stephen Goldsmith:** Inspire us about when you're successful five years from now, what things will look like on this subject in your city. **Mayor Van R. Johnson II:** Five years from now, I will be somewhere else doing something else, but yet, in Savannah, there will be less children with asthma, more people with access. You can look at people who, at one point, you could draw distinctions between them, and either there is no distinction or the distinction is much less. That things that we take for granted such as clean air, clean water, access to cool facilities, is not something for the rich and famous or those that have a certain area code, but it's something that everyone has. And I think, as you understand, that's just what you do. Really, as mayors, we plant seeds. We plant seeds, and we walk away from them. So, I would hope to come back and find a budding forest from the work that I've been able to not only do, but the work I've been empowered to do. **Stephen Goldsmith:** Very nicely said. Last word? **Mayor Shawyn Patterson-Howard:** So, the city of Mount Vernon is undergoing its first comprehensive plan and rezoning of the entire city since 1968, the year I was born. And we are utilizing this process to integrate public health and economic development into this whole transformation of our city, and of course looking at it with environmental justice. So, I am looking to see a community whose health outcomes and economic outcomes are better because we have really developed opportunity and set the landscape for a green and blue economy. People are often afraid of changing the industries in their community because of the economic base, but the economic base never ever pays for the health impacts that our communities are dealing with. We have to make sure that we are challenging our county departments of health and our state departments of health to disaggregate the data. If you can't get it from them, go to the hospitals and your federally qualified health centers and say, "I need admission data based on zip codes.” Again, data equals dollars, and it helps you make decisions. **Stephen Goldsmith:** Great response. Thank you so much. **Mayor Shawyn Patterson-Howard:** Thanks so much. **Mayor Van R. Johnson II:** Thank you. ## About the Author ### Betsy Gardner ![Headshot of Betsy Gardner](/sites/g/files/omnuum10826/files/styles/hwp_1_1__100x100_scale/public/2025-05/Betsy%20Headshot%20resize.jpg?itok=k2OsSp1g) Betsy Gardner is the editor of Data-Smart City Solutions and the producer of the Data-Smart City Pod. Prior to this, Betsy worked in a variety of roles in higher education, focusing on deconstructing racial and gender inequality through research, writing, and facilitation. She also researched government spending and transparency at the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy. Betsy holds a master’s degree in Urban and Regional Policy from Northeastern University, a bachelor’s degree in Art History from Boston University, and a graduate certificate in Digital Storytelling from the Harvard Extension School. See also:- [ Environment ](/topics/environment) - [ Equity ](/topics/equity) - [ Public Health ](/topics/public-health) Share on:- [ Facebook ](#) - [ Twitter ](#) - [ Linkedin ](#)