Environmental justice moving up EPA agenda

We've reported on the Environmental Protection Agency's move to regulate disposal of coal ash. That initiative isn't the only one the agency is taking to protect communities across the country, many of them rural. As environmental justice becomes an increasingly important issue for the agency, "Administration officials are looking at hazardous waste storage, toxic air emissions and an array of other contaminants to try to determine whether low-income and minority communities are disproportionately exposed to them," Juliet Eilperin of The Washington Post reports.

"I really think of this [environmental justice] as the biggest chunk of unfinished business when you think about the environmental landscape," EPA Administrator Lisa P. Jackson told the Post. "In addition to looking at coal-ash storage, EPA officials are reevaluating how the government defines solid waste and measures short-term exposure to smog-forming pollutants," Eilperin writes. "They have forced a variety of emitters, including container-glass plants, cement plants and oil refineries, to install pollution controls in poor areas struggling with bad air quality."

EPA has revived an interagency environmental justice task force that had been dormant for a dozen years, issued a formal guidance to regional offices instructing them to seek the input of disadvantaged groups when making decisions and drafted a plan to integrate the concept of environmental justice into the agency's everyday decision-making, Eilperin writes. The agency has faced complaints from industry groups who feel the new focus comes at the expense of business operations. Jackson called those complaints "nonsense," telling Eilperin, "Find me the person who says, 'I'll take the pollution if you give me the job.'" (Read more) "I think she could find some folks in Central Appalachia who have that attitude toward mountaintop-removal coal mining," said Al Cross, director of the Institute for Rural Journalism and Community Issues.