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The Biden administration on Saturday announced the formation of a new office within the Environmental Protection Agency that will focus on environmental justice.
A press release from the White House said the new office, known as the Office of Environmental Justice and External Civil Rights, “will dedicate more than 200 EPA staff in EPA headquarters and across 10 regions towards solving environmental challenges in communities that have been underserved for far too long.”
The office will be responsible for distributing $3 billion of the more than $60 billion authorized for environmental justice as part of the recently passed Inflation Reduction Act, according to the release.
EPA Administrator Michael Regan, the first Black man to serve in the role, announced the creation of the office in a news conference in his home state of North Carolina, which has been touted as the birthplace of the modern American environmental justice movement.
In a video announcement posted to Twitter on Saturday, Regan said the office will direct billions of dollars toward solving “some of the most vexing” pollution issues that have plagued marginalized communities — largely nonwhite ones — for years. Those issues have come into focus lately, which I discussed earlier this month in a ReidOut Blog post about infrastructure issues effectively poisoning several Black communities’ water supply.
In an Associated Press interview pegged to Saturday’s announcement, Regan noted how transformational the funds could be for communities that have been left without.
“In the past, many of our communities have had to compete for very small grants because EPA’s pot of money was extremely small,” Regan said. “We’re going from tens of thousands of dollars to developing and designing a program that will distribute billions. But we’re also going to be sure that this money goes to those who need it the most and those who’ve never had a seat at the table.”
Regan is correct that previous administrations’ environmental agencies didn’t have the same amount of funds Democrats have secured for the EPA now. But it’s equally true that government agencies — including the EPA — have deliberately forced poor and nonwhite people to live in communities that are at risk of life-shortening pollution.
I acknowledged this last September when I encouraged the Biden administration to lean heavily into environmental justice if the president wished to be seen as a true champion of marginalized groups. At the time, I cited the administration's vow to “deliver at least 40 percent of the overall benefits from Federal investments in climate and clean energy to disadvantaged communities” as an encouraging sign that it was prioritizing social justice in its environmental practices.
The new EPA office is yet another promising sign.
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