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Policy and Legislation

A Victory for Environmental Justice

In Brief: Environmental justice advocates won an important victory when the Hastings amendment was adopted into the House Interior and EPA appropriations bill.

People in all communities across this nation deserve to have healthy air to breathe, safe water to drink, and clean land. But all across our country, communities of color and low-income neighborhoods face disproportionately high levels of air and water pollution and exposure to toxic waste and other health hazards. Though this unfair situation has been well documented, it persists in part because federal environmental laws are not always fairly implemented or enforced.  

 

An Important Victory for Environmental Justice

 

In May of 2006, environmental justice advocates won an important victory, responding to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's continued failure to integrate the environmental justice concerns of minority and low-income communities into the agency's programs. These communities often experience disproportionately high exposures from toxic waste, dirty air, polluted water, and other health hazards when federal environmental laws are not equitably implemented or enforced.

 

Rep. Alcee Hastings (D-FL) offered an amendment to the Interior-EPA Appropriations bill, preventing the agency from spending any of its funds in any way that conflicts with a 1994 Executive Order (No. 12898) on environmental justice, or that delays its implementation. The Hastings amendment was specifically meant to address EPA's recent attempt to reinterpret the Order on environmental justice to say that it does not require EPA to identify the minority and low-income communities most at-risk for higher than average pollution burdens. The amendment was accepted into the text of the bill, and was passed without a vote. The entire appropriations bill passed late on May 18, 2006.

  • Located in the Interior-EPA Appropriations bill (H.R. 5386), the Hastings Amendment reads:

General Provisions, Environmental Protection Agency

SEC. 201. None of the funds made available by this Act may be used in contravention of, or to delay the implementation of, Executive Order No. 12898 of February 11, 1994 (59 Fed. Reg. 7629; relating to Federal actions to address environmental justice in minority populations and low-income populations).

SEC. 202. None of the funds made available in this Act may be used in contravention of 15 U.S.C. 2682(c)(3) or to delay the implementation of that section.

 

The amendment will now be considered in the Senate when the appropriations bill moves to that chamber. Because the Senate failed to finish most of the appropriation bills by the time the 109th Congress adjourned in December, this issue will have to be considered when the new Congress convenes in 2007. Earthjustice will continue to work to support this important proposal in the 110th Congress. The same amendment also passed the House and Senate in 2005, and was signed into law by the President on August 2, 2005 (because it is an amendment to the Interior-EPA Appropriations bill, the scope of the amendment lasts for only one fiscal year).

 

Background

 

All people across the nation deserve to breathe healthy air, drink clean water, and live in uncontaminated neighborhoods. Yet many agencies, academics, and community groups have documented that:

  • Minority and low-income neighborhoods are more likely than more affluent, predominately white communities to have environmental health hazards in their midst, including landfills, petrochemical plants, waste incinerators, and contaminated sites.
  • Minority and low-income communities often lack the political clout and necessary resources to ensure that environmental laws are meaningfully implemented and enforced in their communities or to avoid the siting of undesirable facilities (e.g., incinerators, landfills) near their homes.
  • Minority and low-income populations are doubly vulnerable to health hazards associated with environmental exposures, because these groups are more likely to lack both access to health care as well as information on the hazards associated with the pollutants they are exposed to in their communities.

Work to address this unfair, discriminatory situation is known as environmental justice.

The Executive Order

In 1994, President Clinton issued an order entitled Federal Actions to Address Environmental Justice in Minority Populations and Low-Income Populations (Executive Order 12898). The order requires each federal agency "to make achieving environmental justice part of its mission by identifying and addressing, as appropriate, disproportionately high and adverse human health or environmental effects of its programs, policies, and activities on minority populations and low-income populations." This reinforced the promise of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibits discrimination on the basis of race, religion, or national origin in programs receiving federal funds and added protections for low-income communities in this endeavor for environmental justice.

The Executive Order – which is still in full effect today – contains numerous, specific actions that EPA and other federal agencies must undertake to achieve the goal of environmental equity in federally funded programs. For example, the Executive Order directs federal agencies to develop agency-wide environmental justice strategies that "identify and address disproportionately high and adverse human health or environmental effects of its programs, policies, or activities on minority populations and low-income populations" and says that federal agencies "shall provide minority populations and low-income populations the opportunity to comment on the development and design of research strategies undertaken pursuant to this order."

In the years since the Executive Order was issued, numerous studies have concluded that these commitments have not been fulfilled and significant action is still needed to meaningfully engage federal agencies in general – and EPA in particular – in effective actions to end this form of unequal treatment under the law.

The most recent critique is from the EPA's Office of Inspector General (OIG). In a March 2004 report, the OIG wrote that the agency "has not fully implemented Executive Order 12898 nor consistently integrated environmental justice into its day-to-day operations. EPA has not identified minority and low-income [populations] . . . and has neither defined nor developed criteria for determining [who is] disproportionately impacted. Moreover, in 2001, the Agency restated its commitment to environmental justice in a manner that does not emphasize minority and low-income populations, the intent of the Executive Order."

The Draft Strategic Plan

On June 22, 2005, EPA announced that it was taking public comment on the agency's draft "Environmental Justice Strategic Plan." This draft plan, which is supposed to include EPA's environmental justice priorities, is seriously flawed in several major respects. Most glaring is the fact that EPA is trying to redefine the concept of environmental justice to ignore the needs and concerns of the communities of color and low-income populations that EPA and it's plan are supposed to help and protect.

In direct contrast to the Executive Order, the draft Strategic Plan makes no mention of ensuring that minority and low-income communities are not disproportionately burdened by exposure to pollution, which is critical to the goal of ensuring the fair treatment of all people. While it is correct, as EPA notes in the draft Strategic Plan, that a goal of environmental justice is to ensure that everyone, regardless of race, culture, or income, enjoys equal protection from environmental hazards and equal access to decision-making, the well-documented problem of environmental racism and discrimination that led to calls for environmental justice from communities across the country. That problem is unequal treatment under federal environmental programs – not the unequal treatment of "everyone" but specifically of low-income and minority populations.

In addition, EPA is only allowing a short public comment period for this plan that will guide the agency's environmental justice work for the next 5 years. First, EPA took comments for about 20 days; after widespread criticism, the agency reopened the public comment period, but only for 18 more days – without any plan for holding public hearings or soliciting comments from the most affected minority or low-income communities. This contradicts a fundamental principle of environmental justice, which requires the involvement and input of affected communities in the development of environmental policy.

Disproportionate Impacts

Today, there continue to be many places across our country where minority and low-income neighborhoods face disproportionately high levels of air and water pollution and exposure to toxic waste and other health hazards because federal environmental laws often are not fairly enforced. For example, a December 2005 Associated Press analysis of federal government data shows that black Americans are 79 percent more likely than whites to live in neighborhoods where industrial pollution is suspected of posing the greatest health danger, and residents in neighborhoods with the highest pollution scores also tend to be poorer, less educated, and more often unemployed than residents of less-polluted neighborhoods.

 

This new data substantiates other recent as well as older studies documenting similar statistics over the last three decades, showing that minority and low-income neighborhoods are more likely than more affluent, predominately white communities to have environmental health hazards in their midst, including landfills, petrochemical plants, waste incinerators, and contaminated sites.

 

In the years since Executive Order 12898 was issued, EPA (and other federal agencies) have adopted commitments to environmental justice, yet numerous studies have concluded that significant action is still needed for EPA to integrate equity concerns into their operations to end this form of injustice. For example:

  • The EPA Inspector General concluded in the Office of Inspector General Report of March 2004 that EPA “has not fully implemented Executive Order 12898 nor consistently integrated environmental justice into its day-to-day operations. EPA has not identified minority and low-income [populations] . . . and has neither defined nor developed criteria for determining [who is] disproportionately impacted. Learn more about EPA's Environmental Justice Plan here.
  • A 2001 report of the National Academy of Public Administration found “EPA does not now have a routine process for identifying high-risk communities and giving them priority attention to prevent pollution and reduce existing public health hazards.”
  • In 2002, the Interim National Black Environmental and Economic Justice Coordinating Committee, an organization representing over 100 communities in 30 states (now known as the National Black Environmental Justice Network), declared a “State of Emergency” concerning the nation’s efforts to deal with environmental racism and enforce equal protection laws in environmental programs. 

More Environmental Justice Resources: