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EPA Environmental Justice

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Per the EPA: Environmental Justice is the fair treatment and meaningful involvement of all people regardless of race, color, national origin, or income with respect to the development, implementation, and enforcement of environmental laws, regulations, and policies. EPA has this goal for all communities and persons across this Nation. It will be achieved when everyone enjoys the same degree of protection from environmental and health hazards and equal access to the decision-making process to have a healthy environment in which to live, learn, and work.
History of Environmental Justice in the United States
Prior to the 1980’s, most environmental protest were isolated to the affected community, citing unwanted land use. One of the first protest …show more content…

Others argue that minority and low-income residents have moved into the communities after installation of toxic waste landfills, because land is cheap.
In 1991, the First National People of Color Environmental Leadership Summit, brought representatives from hundreds of poor, low-income, minority communities across the nation to Washington DC. The summit focused national attention on the issue of targeting these neighborhoods for hazardous waste treatment, storage, and disposal facilities. One of the outcomes of the summit the consensus document, the Principles of Environmental Justice. The summit and resulting document laid out a process for maintaining communication, and expanding the environmental justice movement as a collaborative effort.
In 1992, President George Bush Sr. called for EPA Administrator William Reilly, to establish an Environmental Equity Working Group, and to collaborate with community leaders to seek solutions to issues brought forward by the environmental justice activities around the …show more content…

The order directed federal agencies to:
• Make achieving environmental justice part of its mission to the greatest extent practicable and permitted by law, by identifying and addressing, as appropriate high and adverse human health of environmental effects of its programs, policies and activities on minority, low-income and tribal communities.
• Develop an environmental justice strategy that lists programs, policies, planning and public participation processes, enforcement and/or rulemakings related to human health or the environment that should be revised to (1) promote enforcement of all health and environmental statutes in areas with minority populations and low-income populations; (2) ensure greater public participation; (3) improve research and data collection relating to the health of and environment of minority populations and low-income populations; and (4) identify differential patterns of consumption of natural resources among minority

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