Laypeople Documenting Illegal Commercial Idling in New York City: Enforcing Air Pollution Laws and Procedural Environmental Justice

Abstract

The development, implementation, and enforcement of regulations to address environmental burdens are key to achieving environmental justice (EJ). The participation of all people, particularly those experiencing environmental harms, in cocreating environmental regulations is termed procedural EJ. To date, scant attention has been paid to the involvement of laypeople in environmental enforcement, thereby potentially impeding realization of procedural EJ. I turn to New York City (NYC) to examine how laypeople are included in air pollution enforcement. In NYC, as elsewhere, air pollution is a major public health and EJ issue. To enforce the city’s Air Code, the Citizens Air Complaint Program (CACP) permits laypeople to report commercial vehicles for idling in excess of the legal limit. Lay complainants receive one-quarter of each paid fine. The number of idling summonses initiated by laypeople increased from 9,070 reports in 2019 to 124,330 in 2024. The CACP’s involvement of laypeople in environmental enforcement of air pollution is laudable and should be replicated. However, several important barriers exist that prevent broader participation in the program, thereby directly inhibiting the realization of procedural EJ. I highlight four dimensions of the CACP—bureaucracy and transparency, technical, digital literacy, and temporal—that limit its ability to realize air pollution producer accountability.