EPA to Emphasize Environmental Justice Issues

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) publicly committed to emphasizing environmental justice issues at a recent meeting of the agency's National Environmental Justice Advisory Council (NEJAC). EPA officials, including Administrator Lisa Jackson, described to the council ways in which the agency intends to reflect environmental justice concerns in the future as EPA formulates rules and emphasizes enforcement.

NEJAC consists of community, academic, industry, environmental, state, local, and indigenous peoples groups and advises the agency on environmental justice concerns across policy areas. The council was created by EPA in 1993 in response to evidence showing that minority and poor communities bore a disproportionate burden of exposure to pollution from industrial and municipal operations compared to the general public. NEJAC held its most recent public meeting July 21-23 in Arlington, VA.

According to its website, EPA defines environmental justice as "the fair treatment and meaningful involvement of all people regardless of race, color, national origin, culture, education, or income with respect to the development, implementation, and enforcement of environmental laws, regulations, and policies. Fair Treatment [sic] means that no group of people, including racial, ethnic, or socioeconomic groups, should bear a disproportionate share of the negative environmental consequences resulting from industrial, municipal, and commercial operations or the execution of federal, state, local, and tribal environmental programs and policies."

On July 21, in her speech before NEJAC, Jackson promised that environmental justice issues would be a focus for the agency in all its activities. She said:

In the years ahead, I want to see a full-scale revitalization of what we do and how we think about environmental justice. This is not an issue we can afford to relegate to the margins. It has to be part of our thinking in every decision we make. And not just at EPA. We need the nonprofit sector. We need the academic sector. And we need the private sector. It’s absolutely essential that we have a wide range of voices raising these issues.

In a July 22 BNA article (subscription), other EPA officials explained to NEJAC how the agency would shift the focus toward greater consideration of environmental justice issues. For example, Charles Lee, the head of EPA's Office of Environmental Justice, said that his office would spend the next five years developing agency-wide outcomes and means of achieving them as part of defining what success means at EPA.

In a July 23 article, BNA reported that other officials explained how the agency is already moving to incorporate environmental justice considerations into its programs. Acting deputy director of the Environmental Assistance Division within the Office of Prevention, Pesticides, and Toxic Substances, Mike Burns, noted that the agency is reviewing its internal rulemaking process to bring environmental justice considerations into the process at every stage, not just at the end or ignoring them. Burns noted the review should be complete by the summer of 2010.

Cynthia Giles, the assistant administrator for enforcement, told NEJAC that her office was taking steps to increase the transparency of its actions and more actively disseminate information to local communities so that the public has important information for its advocacy efforts, according to BNA.

Most federal agencies responsible for public health, safety, and environmental issues are expected to comply with Executive Order 12898, Federal Actions to Address Environmental Justice in Minority Populations and Low-Income Populations. This Clinton-era order requires agencies to develop environmental justice strategies and to collect and disseminate information on the health effects on various subpopulations.

As the EPA officials indicated, environmental justice issues have not been an important part of agency actions in recent years. Nor have environmental justice concerns been prominently considered in other agencies, according to an April 20 Government Accountability Office (GAO) report on federal rulemaking. GAO concluded that among the 139 major rules it evaluated between January 2006 and May 2008 for the report, fewer than five percent of the rules triggered environmental justice reviews. (Not all of the rules GAO addressed were public health or environmental rules.)

Perhaps the clearest indication that EPA will emphasize environmental justice is the decision by the agency to reconsider a rule redefining hazardous wastes so that the wastes would be exempt from regulation under federal law. According to BNA, Mathy Stanislaus, EPA's assistant administrator for solid waste, told NEJAC that the agency would accept comments on revisions to the rule finalized in October 2008. EPA had not properly considered the risks to poor and minority populations when it issued the final rule. The rule is open for public comment until Aug. 13.

EPA agreed to reconsider the rule after Earthjustice petitioned the agency to amend the rule that "stripped federal oversight of recyclers who handle 1.5 million tons of hazardous waste generated by steel, chemical and pharmaceutical companies each year," according to an Earthjustice press statement. Part of the petition for reconsideration was based on EPA's inadequate consideration of environmental justice issues. Earthjustice has mapped hazardous waste recycling facilities identified by EPA to be sources of contamination; many are located in poor and minority communities.

The decision to reconsider the rule has exposed some divisions among industry, while environmental groups have supported the decision and are pushing for revisions, according to a July 1 BNA article. Many manufacturers supported the 2008 rule and argued that the uncertainty EPA's reconsideration causes can hurt the chances of states adopting the rule. The states have implementation responsibility under the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act. The association representing the hazardous waste industry, however, cited flaws in the 2008 rule that could lead to unequal implementation and supported EPA's decision at a June 30 public hearing, according to BNA.

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