March 14, 2023
Dear Valued Representatives from the Environmental and Environmental Justice Community,
Since day one, ARCHES has been committed to a just and equitable hydrogen energy transition for all, with positive benefits for everyone, especially California’s most disadvantaged. We’ve made a commitment to prioritize projects that directly benefit California’s most vulnerable communities and ensure real community involvement at all levels and genuine economic opportunity for all.
In that spirit, since April 2022, we’ve held multiple in-person and virtual meetings and have invited community and environmental justice leaders to participate and collaborate with ARCHES.
Many of you have attended these meetings, and for that we are extremely grateful for your time, energy and thoughtful feedback as we collectively work to decarbonize California. Hearing from a diverse and widespread intersection of frontline community voices has been invaluable both in informing ARCHES commitments to community, energy and environmental equity and justice, and in shaping the ARCHES governance plan, project vetting criteria, project selection process, community benefits plan and other key elements. Our outreach efforts will continue to evolve as ARCHES grows.
As you know, based on our successful concept paper, ARCHES has been encouraged to submit a full proposal to the U.S. Department of Energy. We look forward to submitting California’s unified formal application on April 7.
In concert with our commitment to frontline communities and ensuring that all ARCHES projects are positioned to provide tangible long-term benefits to surrounding communities, we have added additional resources to support these commitments.
To that end, Joy Langford of Joy Langford & Associates, will be joining the ARCHES team as our Community Outreach Specialist. Joy is a proven and experienced community engagement expert who, effective immediately, will be spearheading ARCHES’ community outreach efforts. Joy is uniquely qualified for this role, with nearly 20 years of experience as a public-private partnership liaison helping organizations implement environmental and corporate responsibility initiatives. She currently serves as the Director of Water for Water Replenishment District, Division 1 that encompasses some of the most underserved communities in Los Angeles such as Compton, Inglewood, Carson and South Los Angeles. In that role, Joy’s primary goal is to provide safe, clean and affordable driving water to those communities. Prior to running her own company, she served as the Senior Environmental Policy Advisor and Economist for Autumn Burke of the Assembly. Joy has been on the advisory board for the Air Quality Management District (AQMD), and currently sits on the boards of Young Professionals in Energy (YPE) (Los Angeles and Orange County chapters).
Joy will lead our regularly scheduled stakeholder meetings starting March 17th and we encourage you to please join us for these open forums as we work together to build California’s clean hydrogen economy. For more information on how to join these meetings, please email info@archesh21stg.wpengine.com.
Please help us welcome Joy to the ARCHES community outreach Team. We look forward to continuing collaborating and empowering California’s communities together.
Sincerely,
