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Requirements of agencies with respect to
Environmental Justice
MEMORANDUM FOR THE CHIEFS OF STAFF
From: Carol H. Rasco
Kathleen
A. McGinty
Carol M. Browner
Date: July 25, 1995
As you are aware, the President has now
reviewed and approved the Report to the President on Executive Order
12898 (The Report). We are attaching a copy of the Report for your
convenience and as a reminder of the obligations that the Report creates
for your agency over the next several months in meeting the Administration's
commitment to environmental justice.
This memorandum is intended to serve as
an outline and schedule of those obligations, as well as of other significant
issues for our attention that may arise over the coming months.
Next steps by your agency on Environmental
Justice
As set forth in the Report, there remain
significant challenges to successful implementation of agency strategies
and achievement of the goals set forth in Executive Order 12898. Accordingly,
the Report outlines a set of "performance milestones that are
concrete, well-defined, and achievable within nine to twelve months." These
milestones are to be tailored to the three elements that we anticipate
from agencies for the second report to the President in early March
1996. These elements are described in the report as follows:
- a summary of the agency's success to
that point in implementing the Executive Order;
- a limited set of discrete, concrete
agency actions-- apart from outreach, data collection, and process
reforms--that have been completed and that will have concrete benefits
for affected communities;
- a limited set of discrete, concrete
agency actions--again, apart from outreach, data collection, and
process reforms--that are planned for the subsequent year.
The report makes clear that these requirements
are intended to "sustain and encourage the strength of the agency
effort exhibited thus far, while establishing an expectation that this
effort will achieve results that will have immediacy and importance
to the lives of communities that have had to bear more than their share
of environmental hazards."
In order to ensure timely and sustained
attention to these milestones as the time for the second report to
the President approached, we are asking your agency to provide the
following information to us according to the following deadlines:
- September 18, 1995: A concise interim
summary of progress in implementation of your agency's environmental
justice strategy, and a list of the discrete, concrete agency actions
that will be initiated or completed by March 1996, in satisfaction
of the requirements for the second report.
- December 11, 1995: An update of the
interim summary of strategy implementation progress, a report on
progress in implementing the agency actions outlined in the September
18 list, and a preliminary identification of the discrete and concrete
agency actions that are planned for the year following the second
report to the President.
- February 11, 1996: A concise agency
report presenting the information required by the Report to the President.
the second report to the President will be based on this information.
Agencies that have not fully developed
their list of planned actions are encouraged, wherever possible, to
make use of existing planning and analysis that has been done at the
community level in charting community development needs (e.g. local
planning and proposals developed for urban enterprise and empowerment
zones, brownfields initiatives, and other types of requests for federal
assistance).
Role of the interagency working group
The Report to the President explicitly
recognized the success of the interagency working group on environmental
justice (IWG) in coordinating the efforts and deploying the expertise
of various agencies to meet the challenge of the Executive Order. The
IWG will continue to serve an essential role in this effort, but the
role will be modified in several respects to reflect and respond to
the evolution of the Administration's effort over the past several
months.
The IWG's Subcommittee on Policy and Coordination
will continue to serve as an executive committee for the working group,
with continued responsibility in five major areas:
- Disseminating information on environmental
justice;
- Identifying opportunities for coordination
among agencies, as well as between federal agencies and state, tribal,
and local governments and between federal agencies and community
organizations;
- Identifying and analyzing legislative
proposals, such as the recent Clean Water Act amendments in the House
of Representatives, that threaten to undermine the goals of Executive
Order 12898;
- Assisting agencies in the implementation
of the Executive Order and their environmental justice strategies,
including review of external concerns over agency implementation
and preparation of recommendations to the relevant agencies at a
senior level; and
- Identifying federal, state, tribal,
local, and community environmental justice efforts that merit federal
endorsement or attention as models for achieving environmental justice.
Many of the IWG's individual task forces
were established to assist in the early implementation of the Executive
Order and will now be integrated into other IWG or agency efforts.
The continuing functions of the Outreach and Coordination Task Force
will be assumed by the Subcommittee on Policy and Coordination. The
Research and Health Task Force recommendations are now complete and
will be forwarded to the Department of Health and Human Services' Health
Policy Committee. The Native American Task Force's role will be added
to the Department of Interior's existing Native American Work Group.
Taskforces may be created or reconvened as the IWG deems necessary.
Federal encouragement of successful
state, regional, and local initiatives
Anticipated reductions in the resources
available to all federal agencies intensifies the need to build effective
partnerships with state, tribal, local and regional governments, industry,
and community groups in developing initiatives to address environmental
justice. Such partnerships will help us avoid any tendency toward "cookie-cutter" approaches
that may be unresponsive to community needs.
CEQ circulation of NEPA guidelines
The development and implementation of agency
environmental justice strategies has coincided with continuing efforts
by the Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ) to review and streamline
the process of environmental assessment and environmental impact analysis.
Based on what we have learned through these separate but related efforts,
CEQ will circulate a draft National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA)
guidance that integrates our goals on environmental justice into the
NEPA process. A draft of the guidance will be circulated to the IWG
on August 4, 1995. Comments will be due no later than August 11 so
that the guidance may be issued in final form by August 18, 1995. |
