Remarks for the National Environmental Justice Advisory Council (NEJAC) Meeting, As Prepared for Delivery
Michael Regan
Washington, DC
Thank you, Matt. It’s great to be here and Happy New Year to everyone.
It was important to meet with you at the start of the New Year, so I appreciate the invitation to join you.
I’d like to thank Deputy Administrator McCabe and so many others from my leadership team for speaking to you on my behalf while I was traveling during the last NEJAC meeting.
I’d also like to thank all of you for your service. I recognize that you serve on this committee in a voluntary capacity and that you have other pressing professional and personal commitments.
We are deeply grateful for your dedication, leadership, and honesty.
You’ve never let up when it comes to fighting for equity and justice – and I promise you that neither will I and neither will this EPA.
As I told my team last month, we’re going to keep the pedal to the metal in 2022. People have been suffering for a long time, and they are counting on us to get this right. We have a responsibility to get this right, so we need to get moving right out of the gate.
We laid a strong foundation in 2021, and I’m proud of the progress we are making, especially given how much agency rebuilding we needed to do.
Shortly after I was sworn in last year, I directed my leadership team to embed environmental justice into every aspect of our work – from our regulatory, to permitting, to enforcement activities. I asked my team to go further and faster than we’d gone before, which I recognize is immensely challenging in a bureaucracy.
“Faster” isn’t typically in the federal government’s vocabulary. But we aren’t starting from scratch – EPA has the incredible benefit of building on nearly 30 years of EJ engagement, recommendations, and guidance from NEJAC, and we also have the political will...
President Biden made clear from day one that advancing racial justice and equity requires a “whole-of-government” approach – and EPA, in many ways, is at the heart of that mission.
You have my word that there is no higher priority for me than ensuring that all people in this country have clean air to breathe, clean water to drink, and the opportunity to live a healthy life. Our work to advance equity and justice will continue to be a central driver in everything that we do.
That’s why this past November, we launched the “Journey to Justice” Tour, because rebuilding trust is essential to making progress… and rebuilding trust requires that we actually show up ... see up close the injustices that people have endured for generations, hear directly from frontline communities, and commit to working together with urgency to fix these historic wrongs.
I had the privilege of meeting with historically marginalized communities in Jackson, Mississippi, in Mossville, New Orleans, St. James Parish, and St. John the Baptist Parish, Louisiana, as well as Houston, Texas.
Every single stop along this journey was driven by the community. We relied on the local communities to set the agenda, invite participants, and determine the focus of our time together – that made all the difference.
Being on the ground, seeing it for myself, talking with community members – it’s just startling that we got to this point.
I learned a great deal from these communities. And I committed to doing better, leveraging our enforcement, working with Congress to get the toughest laws in place that are adequate and protective, and doing so in concert with community members who’ve been fighting for their health and safety for decades.
There needs to be a sense of urgency around a solution for how we move forward, and that’s what I want to put in motion. My team here at headquarters and across regions 4 and 6 have remained in touch with the community leaders in the weeks after the tour to ensure that the challenges they raised are being addressed either through our efforts or those of our partners at the state and local levels.
And in the next few weeks, we’ll be rolling out a list of actions that EPA will be taking in DIRECT response to what I saw and heard on the ground.
So, 2021 was a critical year because it set the tone and laid the groundwork for where EPA is now headed.
As you know, last year, thanks to the Biden Administration’s leadership, EPA received $100 million in American Rescue Plan funding. We’ve started putting $50 million toward projects to support the priority needs of overburdened communities. And in December, we launched a $20 million grant program from our air office to fund air quality monitoring projects in communities across the United States.
One of the consistent things I heard while on the Gulf Coast was the need for more monitoring at all levels for all sorts of different pollutants. That’s why we’ve already allocated funding through the American Rescue Plan for this need – to make sure that more official monitors provide transparent, real-time information and to put resources directly into the hands of communities and their partners to do the monitoring on their own.
It is important to note that in 2021, we pushed out more funding through our EJ grant programs in one year than EPA was able to make possible over the entire previous decade.
I see these grants as incubators for community-driven solutions – solutions that we must lift up and replicate as we look to vastly larger resources in the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law and future spending bills.
And shortly before the holiday break, we made a couple of important announcements that have major EJ implications.
We know that more than 1 in 4 Black and Hispanic Americans live within 3 miles of a Superfund site, and thousands of these contaminated sites exist nationally. Thanks to the infrastructure law, EPA is investing $1 billion to initiate cleanup and clear the backlog of 49 previously unfunded Superfund sites. We’re also going to accelerate cleanup at dozens of other sites across the country.
And listen to this … 60 percent of the sites receiving funding for new cleanup projects are in historically underserved communities.
I want to thank you for the years of guidance you’ve provided to the Office of Land and Emergency Management. It allowed for Assistant Administrator Waterhouse and his program to get a jump start on issuing a thoughtful EJ plan … and has helped to inform how we are approaching our larger Agency-wide planning efforts.
Earlier today, OLEM released its draft EJ Action Plan, which follows through on both the ongoing work with NEJAC and agency-wide efforts to strengthen compliance, embed environmental justice considerations throughout EPA’s activities, and improve community engagement.
My hope is that the Action Plan will enable stronger and faster progress in addressing contaminated land across the country.
Last month, I also had the privilege of joining Vice President Harris to roll out the Administration’s actions on lead in drinking water. The President and Vice President have made replacing lead pipes a central part of the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law.
At the event, EPA announced three things in particular:
- Water utilities will be required to develop lead service line inventories – because to remove lead pipes from the ground, we must know where they are.
- EPA will develop a new proposed rule that will strengthen the Lead and Copper Rule.
- We also announced $2.9 billion in Bipartisan Infrastructure Law funding for states, Tribes, and territories to remove lead service lines. This allocation is the first of five annual allotments that will provide $15 billion in dedicated funding for lead service lines replacements.
We’re going to work closely with our federal partners, state co-regulators, and communities to identify their needs and provide them with critical resources, including the creation of technical assistance hubs in regions with large concentrations of lead service lines.
Another priority area is ethylene oxide. I’ve spoken to community members, and I’ve heard their concerns. As I reported in my response to NEJAC’s 100-day letter in the fall, EPA has committed to a timeline for new rulemakings for several critical source categories, and we are working to get those done.
In that letter, I also told you about plans with ethylene oxide and the Toxics Release Inventory. Last month, EPA expanded the scope of TRI reporting requirements to include certain facilities that are not currently reporting on EtO releases. Companies that use the largest amounts of EtO in this industry sector will be required to publicly report their releases of this chemical and shed light on potential exposures from this use.
This will help inform EPA’s future actions and empower communities to act at the local level. It’s an important part of our ongoing efforts to increase publicly available information on EtO releases and other waste management activities.
And listen, I recognize that impacts to communities continue to happen while organizations like ours are developing effective strategies and making the necessary organizational changes to protect all people … so we also made it clear that this EPA will not hesitate to use its authority to hold polluters accountable:
In the U.S. Virgin Islands, I ordered the Limetree Bay Refinery to cease its operations due to repeated incidents that polluted the air and sickened members of the community.
In South Carolina, we issued an emergency order requiring the New-Indy paper mill to monitor and reduce hydrogen sulfide air pollution from its facility. Just last week, we reached a settlement that ensures surrounding communities will be protected from unlawful pollution from this facility through mandatory long-term improvements.
And in Chicago, we voiced our concerns about a proposal for a car-shredding operation in the Southeast Side. Mayor Lightfoot promptly suspended the city’s permit until a thorough environmental justice analysis is completed.
And on the personnel side, I’m happy to report that we now have Regional Administrators in eight of our 10 regions. Their leadership is going to be critical to advancing our mission on environmental justice – from building collaborative relationships with communities, to engaging our Tribal partners in a nation-to-nation capacity, to working closely with states and other levels of government.
And we have proven leaders that have track records like Earthea Nance and Lisa Garcia among others who are accomplished as well.
I know NEJAC is already planning its meetings for 2022. I’m hopeful that you will have plenty of time to engage with these new regional leaders in addition to your ongoing engagement with headquarters leadership.
So, what’s next for 2022 you might ask? We recognize we’re just getting started… and we have a long way to go, especially when it comes to carrying out the work of the Justice40 initiative.
Thus far, the majority of the resources EPA has received through the infrastructure law will go toward programs that were already part of the White House led Justice40 pilot. Our goal is not only to meet but to exceed – where needed - the goal of 40% of benefits flowing to disadvantaged communities.
As I already mentioned, our Superfund Program is spending 60% of their new infrastructure dollars in these communities because that’s where the need is – it’s also a great pace setter for our other programs at EPA and other federal agencies.
But I want to be clear, having served as a state Secretary for Environmental Quality in North Carolina, I realize that dictating where the money goes isn’t always easy. But I’m committed to working closely with our state regulatory partners and Governors across the country … on both sides of the aisle … to ensure that our resources find their way to those communities that urgently need them.
That’s why in December, I sent a letter to every governor of every state sharing detailed information about our goals for using the water infrastructure money provided through the infrastructure bill. I also committed to issuing guidance in the coming months that will have even greater detail to help ensure that these historic resources reach our most vulnerable communities.
This is Justice40 in action. We are working in real-time, pulling together all the strings from executive orders, American Rescue Plan funds, and the infrastructure law –to provide an example of the commitment to advancing equity and justice right now in this moment.
But we are still listening … and that won’t stop. We’ve held multiple national engagement calls to solicit more focused feedback about how to implement Justice40 across a wide range of EPA programs, and specifically, about the six EPA programs that are part of the pilot program. We’ll continue to host these opportunities and more in 2022.
We also have ideas on how to calculate the benefits of EPA’s Justice40 programs, including:
- Percent reduction of children’s asthma-related hospital visits
- Tons of different pollutants reduced
- Reductions in hospital visits and missed days of work or school
- Number of home health assessments completed and increased access to health providers
- Job trainings provided
- Technical assistance given to tribal drinking water systems and
- Numbers of deaths prevented
We still have a lot of work to do to figure out which of these measures will work and which will be most meaningful to hold us accountable to the communities we serve.
That’s another place where NEJAC comes in – to help us figure these questions out as we continue to push the implementation of Justice40.
And while measuring benefits is important, I’ve heard loud and clear that we also need to know where the actual dollars go. This is another commitment I will make to you – EPA will lead from the front to provide a transparent and meaningful way to see where the actual funds wind up … another area where we are counting on NEJAC’s support and guidance.
Getting this right is not going to be easy, and it’s going to take time. For many of you on the NEJAC and many in the EJ movement, Justice40 is a long fought for promise and a huge chance to change the way the government operates. I share those ambitions and hopes for Justice40’s promise and am committed to pushing Justice40 as far as we can take it.
You will see that our engagement with NEJAC over the past year on broader topics such as our draft strategic plan have helped to inform the prioritization and alignment of actions that we are taking in our draft Equity Action Plan. This includes alignment of the plan with elements of the draft multiyear strategic plan and with the implementation of Justice40.
I look forward to hearing more of your feedback on the draft strategic plan and its implementation. We are in the final stages of crafting that plan, and your feedback and deliberations have already made a difference, especially in terms of wanting to see decisive action and clear progress being made before 2026. I wholeheartedly agree with this idea, and we are working to make changes in line with this thinking.
Multiyear strategic plans are not typically the most exciting stuff, but I want to emphasize just how important – and unprecedented – it is to place equity and justice at the heart of our strategic plan. The commitments we make will drive action, will drive accountability, will drive resources, for years to come.
I also want to be clear that we are not waiting for these plans to drive our actions. I hope that some of the examples I just shared with you clearly demonstrate that I mean business about taking action right now and not missing the tremendous opportunity already in hand to advance equity and justice across the United States.
Over the coming months – when you see the final strategic plan, the equity action plan, our implementation of Justice40 and infrastructure resources, EPA’s first-ever national program guidance for EJ and external civil rights compliance, and actions on priority issues – you will clearly see NEJAC’s fingerprints across the board.
So in closing, let me be clear: everything we do – everything I do – at EPA will be rooted in the realities and demands and aspirations of the communities disproportionately impacted by environmental and public health threats.
This engagement is a crucial part of how we approach and think about these issues. It’s also a powerful form of accountability to hold us responsible for getting it right.
I know that you have an extensive agenda today, and I want to leave enough time for your questions, so I’ll end things there.
Thank you again for having me and for your time, energy, and efforts. Your advice and recommendations are essential, and I greatly appreciate them.