The Environmental Protection Agency is promising a new wave of crackdowns on polluters in low-income and tribal communities, as it looks to become something more akin to a community activist over the next four years, according to a new strategic plan issued Thursday.
The EPA’s four-year Environmental Justice 2020 strategic plan would increase its role as the principal federal arbiter of environmental equality for minorities and low-income people across all agencies, its regulations and in its enforcement and compliance actions targeting polluters.
The EPA has “made tremendous progress over the past eight years” by integrating “environmental justice into every EPA program. And we strengthened our partnerships across the federal family,” EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy said in a blog post.
“This progress is important, but we still have a lot of work to do,” she said.
Environmental Justice 2020 lists actions that seek to make addressing environmental concerns “facing minority and low-income communities,” which are often the most affected by pollution, more prominent, according to the agency.
For polluters and industry: watch out. It means the EPA will be using more enforcement personnel and resources to monitor and potentially wield punitive actions against polluters in those communities.
A priority under the new four-year plan will be to “address pollution and public health burdens caused by violations of environmental laws in the nation’s most overburdened communities, strengthen the role of environmental justice in EPA’s compliance and enforcement work, and enhance work with our regulatory partners in overburdened communities.”
That means directing more EPA enforcement resources to the “most overburdened communities.” The city of Flint, Mich., would be an example. The eastern Michigan city has been dealing with lead-contaminated water for more than a year. The EPA was criticized for knowing about the problem months in advance, but doing nothing to warn the low-income residents of Flint about the health crisis.
It appears the agency wants to change that image of a passive observer, by becoming an active enforcer of environmental law. But it’s not clear how it will address its own shortcomings.
The plan also alludes to the Gold King Mine disaster that an EPA contractor caused last year by spilling 3 million gallons of toxic wastewater from an abandoned Colorado mine that polluted the waterways of three states. The agency has been criticized by local communities for not communicating with them soon enough after the spill to warn them about the potential harm. The Navajo Indian Tribe, a group that would be a priority under the new plan, is suing the agency for compensation for the damage it caused.
Under its enforcement priorities, the EPA will work to “strengthen communication” among communities to “empower communities with information about pollution and violations that affect them.”
It said the Region 8 office that handled the Gold King disaster response will take the lead on enforcement and compliance, with the enforcement office in Washington.
It also plans to work more closely with federal, state, tribal and local governments “to pursue vigorous enforcement for violations in overburdened communities.” It is not clear, however, how that would pertain to violations such as the spill in which the agency was at fault.
Most likely, the enforcement agenda will pertain to private industry such as mining companies.
Republican lawmakers have criticized Attorney General Loretta Lynch for not taking action to pursue a criminal case against the EPA over the spill. In the series of oversight hearings that followed the spill, the GOP accused McCarthy of upholding a double standard for how it treats violations by private companies and how it treats itself when it is the violator.
