By Beyond Pesticides Daily News Blog

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is
seeking public comment on an interim guidance document that requires
agency staff to incorporate environmental justice into the agency's
rulemaking process. The rulemaking guidance is a step toward meeting EPA
Administrator Lisa P. Jackson's priority to work for environmental
justice and protect the health and safety of communities that have been
disproportionally impacted by pollution.

EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson has been touring the
country talking about environmental justice, which involves paying
special attention to the vulnerabilities of low income or underserved
communities on the grounds that the areas have been exposed to a
combination of chemical, biological, social and other burdens that are
disproportionately higher than the burdens faced by the general
population. Under interim guidance announced Monday, EPA staff will
reach out to people in the affected communities early in the process,
building awareness and seeking feedback along the way.
"Historically, the low-income and minority communities
that carry the greatest environmental burdens haven't had a voice in
our policy development or rulemaking. We want to expand the conversation
to the places where EPA's work can make a real difference for health
and the economy," said EPA Administrator Lisa P. Jackson. "This plan is
part of my ongoing commitment to give all communities a seat at the
decision-making table. Making environmental justice a consideration in
our rulemaking changes both the perception and practice of how we work
with overburdened communities, and opens this conversation up to new
voices."
The document, Interim Guidance on Considering Environmental Justice During the Development of an Action,
seeks to advance environmental justice for low-income, people of color
and indigenous communities, and tribal governments that have been
historically underrepresented in the regulatory decision-making process.
The guide also outlines the multiple steps that every EPA program
office can take to incorporate the needs of overburdened neighborhoods
into the agency's decision making, scientific analysis, and rule
development. According to EPA, agency staff is to become familiar with
environmental justice concepts and the many ways they should inform
agency decision making. The guide directs EPA rule writers and decisions
makers to respond to three basic questions throughout the process:
1. How did your public participation process provide
transparency and meaningful participation for minority, low-income, and
indigenous populations, and tribes?
2. How did you identify and address existing and new
disproportionate environmental and public health impacts on minority,
low-income, and indigenous populations?
3. How did actions taken under #1 and #2 impact the outcome or final decision?
Environmental justice is based on the idea that some
people, specifically, people of color and low income people, suffer
significantly higher rates of environmentally induced problems than the
average. In the early 1980s, a landmark U.S. Government Accountability
Office (GAO) study found that three out of four landfills in the
Southeast were located in communities of color. A 1992 National Law Journal
study found that Superfund offenders paid 54 percent lower fines in
communities of color than in white communities. In 2005, under the Bush administration, EPA drafted a strategic plan on Environmental Justice that defined environmental justice as "the fair treatment and meaningful involvement of all people regardless of race, color, national origin, or income
with respect to development, implementation, and enforcement of
environmental laws, regulations, and policies." However, critics said
eliminating considerations of race and income made the program
meaningless. More than 70 legislators, including Sens. John Kerry
(D-Mass.) and Joe Lieberman (D-Conn.), sent a letter to EPA saying that
the draft plan "fails to address the real environmental-justice problems
facing our nation's most polluted communities" and lambasting the
dismissal of race as "a significant departure from existing
environmental-justice policies."
A 2006 report released by the Inspector General (IG), EPA Needs to Conduct Environmental Reviews of Its Programs, Policies and Activities,
found that senior management at EPA has not directed program and
regional offices to conduct environmental justice reviews as required by
the Environmental Justice Executive Order 12898. The report said, "Until these program and regional offices perform environmental justice
reviews, the Agency cannot determine whether its programs cause
disproportionately high and adverse human health or environmental
effects on minority and low-income populations."
Last year, farmworker unions, support groups, and
worker advocacy organizations asked Administrator Jackson to stop the
pesticide poisoning of farmworker communities
and uphold the Obama administration's commitment to environmental
justice, citing a long EPA history of "inhumane neglect of toxic
pesticide effects on farmworker community health." Farmworkers and their
families suffer injuries and illnesses at high rates. They suffer from
exposure to pesticides, nicotine poisoning during the tobacco harvest,
extreme temperatures and are constantly stooping, bending, and lifting,
while earning an average of $12,500 to $15,000 per year.
Beyond Pesticides has urged EPA and policy makers to
recognize that risk assessment calculations are inherently antithetical
to environmental justice principles because it calculates "acceptable"
risks across all population groups without identifying the
disproportionate effect that exposure has on people of color and low
income communities. In an article entitled "Race, Poverty and Pesticides," Jay Feldman, executive director of Beyond Pesticides, wrote:

There is an inherent assumption that if a pesticide
meets a highly questionable "acceptable" risk threshold, it has value or
benefit. This calculation ignores the disproportionate risk, for
example, to African American inner city children whose asthmatic
conditions are caused or triggered by the very pesticide products that
meet the health-based standard. The disproportionate impact of this and
other public health and environmental policies, contributing to
disproportionately high morbidity and mortality due to asthma, is borne
out by the statistics on asthma: 12.5 percent of children nationwide; 17
percent of children in New York City; and, 30 percent of children in
Harlem, New York City. According to the National Institute of Allergy
and Infectious Disease, National Institutes of Health, African Americans
are 4 to 6 times more likely than whites to die from asthma. Therefore,
any time our policies allow regulators to permit uses of pesticides
with known asthma effects, which is done daily, a disproportionate
impact is felt in the African American community. Among other policies,
this toxics policy contributes to a cycle of poverty, as asthma is the
leading cause of school absenteeism due to chronic illness.

TAKE ACTION: EPA is seeking public
feedback on how to best implement and improve the guide for agency staff
to further advance efforts toward environmental justice. Read the document and leave comments here.