E.O. 13985 EQUITY ACTION PLAN: U.S. ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY
Civil rights in this context refers to EPA’s responsibility to enforce several civil rights laws that prohibit discrimination on the basis of
race, color, or national origin (including on the basis of limited-English prociency); sex; disability; age; and retaliation by applicants
for and recipients of federal nancial assistance from EPA. See Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, Title IX of the Education
Amendments of 1972, Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, and the Age Discrimination Act of 1975. EPA is also responsible
for enforcing Section 13 of the Federal Water Pollution Control Act Amendments of 1972, which prohibits discrimination based on sex
under programs or activities receiving nancial assistance under the Clean Water Act.
2
E.O. 13985 EQUITY ACTION PLAN:
U.S. ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY
APRIL 2022
Executive Summary
Under the leadership of Administrator Michael S. Regan, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)
has committed to making equity, environmental justice, and civil rights
1
a centerpiece of the agency’s
mission. EPA’s strategic plan for FY2022-2026—nalized in February 2022—includes “Take Decisive
Action to Advance Environmental Justice and Civil Rights” as Strategic Goal 2 and outlines the following
key objectives:
• Objective 2.1: Promote Environmental Justice and Civil Rights at the Federal, Tribal,
State, and Local Levels
• Objective 2.2: Embed Environmental Justice and Civil Rights into EPA’s Programs,
Policies, and Activities
• Objective 2.3: Strengthen Civil Rights Enforcement in Communities with Environmental
Justice Concerns
EPA discussed Strategic Goal 2 and its underlying objectives with the National Environmental Justice
Advisory Council (NEJAC) at public meetings on November 10, 2021, and January 5, 2022, where NEJAC
members and other members of the public provided EPA with advice on how to achieve these objectives
and hold the agency accountable. EPA ocials heard that the agency needs to act quickly and decisively
on key priorities and provide clear lines of accountability. To drive short term action by the end of
FY2023, EPA also established the following Agency Priority Goal in its strategic plan:
Deliver tools and metrics for EPA and its Tribal, state, local, and community partners
to advance environmental justice and external civil rights compliance. By September
30, 2023, EPA will develop and implement a cumulative impacts framework, issue
guidance on external civil rights compliance, establish a set of indicators to track EPA’s
performance in eliminating disparities in environmental and public health conditions, and
train sta and partners on how to use these resources.
Executive Order (EO) 13985 directs the EPA and other federal agencies to assess whether underserved
communities and their members face systemic barriers in accessing benets and opportunities available
pursuant to EPA’s policies and programs. E.O. 13985 then directs agencies to develop equity action plans
to overcome these barriers. EPA’s Equity Action Plan aligns with its FY2022-2026 Strategic Plan and will
support accountable and transparent implementation of Strategic Goal 2, the Agency Priority Goal, and
cross-cutting strategies related to ensuring workplace equity and science-based decision-making. EPA
has identied six priority actions as the core of its E.O. 13985 Equity Action Plan:
1
E.O. 13985 EQUITY ACTION PLAN: U.S. ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY
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E.O. 13985 EQUITY ACTION PLAN: U.S. ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY
See, e.g., Morello-Frosch et.al., “Understanding the cumulative impacts of inequalities in environmental health: implications for policy,”
Health Affairs, May 2011, 30(5):879-87; Steve Lerner, Sacrice Zones: The Front Lines of Toxic Chemical Exposure in the United
States, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2010.
Priority Action #1: Develop a comprehensive framework for considering cumulative
impacts in relevant EPA decisions and operationalize that framework in EPA’s programs
and activities.
Priority Action #2: Build the capacity of underserved communities to provide their
experience to EPA and implement community-led projects.
Priority Action #3: Develop EPA’s internal capacity to engage underserved communities
and implement clear and accountable processes to act based on communities’ input.
Priority Action #4: Strengthen EPA’s external civil rights compliance program and ensure
that civil rights compliance is an agency-wide responsibility.
Priority Action #5: Integrate community science into EPA’s research and program
implementation.
Priority Action #6: Make EPA’s procurement and contracting more equitable.
EPA’s Equity Action Plan is not inclusive of all actions the agency intends to take on equity, environmental
justice, and civil rights in the coming years. Rather, these six priority actions form a critical foundation
on which to build meaningful engagement with underserved communities; achieve more equitable and
just outcomes, including pollution reductions in communities with environmental justice concerns; and
deliver other tangible benets to underserved communities, consistent with applicable legal authorities.
EPA’s Six Priority Actions
E.O. 13985 directed all federal agencies to embed equity into their programs and activities to ensure the
“consistent and systematic fair, just, and impartial treatment of all individuals.” Given EPA’s mission to
protect human health and the environment, the agency’s pursuit of equity must include environmental
justice (EJ). EPA has dened environmental justice as “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.”
2
In practice,
this means everyone enjoys the same degree of protection from environmental and health hazards
and equal access to the benets of environmental resources and the decision-making process. To
achieve the “same degree of protection” and “equal access,” EPA also must consider individuals living
in communities overburdened by pollution who may be even more vulnerable or marginalized, such
as persons with disabilities or limited English prociency (LEP). Scientic research consistently and
increasingly demonstrates that the disproportionate levels of pollution experienced by communities
with environmental justice concerns result in adverse health outcome disparities directly associated with
these exposures.
3
EPA has identied six cross-cutting priority actions that are essential to implementing the agency’s
FY2022-2026 Strategic Plan and achieving equity and environmental justice across all agency programs,
processes, and policies. These six priority actions do not represent all of EPA’s planned work on equity,
environmental justice, and civil rights. As shown in Appendix 1, EPA has released several additional plans
and strategies to advance equity, environmental justice, and civil rights as part of its core programmatic
work.
2 See https://www.epa.gov/environmentaljustice.
3
E.O. 13985 EQUITY ACTION PLAN: U.S. ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY
4
Notably, successful implementation of all six of these priority actions depend on meaningful
engagement. Members of the White House Environmental Justice Advisory Council (WHEJAC) have
dened “meaningful participation” as a process wherein “potentially aected populations have an
opportunity to participate in decisions that will aect their health or environment,that the population’s
contributionscan inuence the agency’s decisions, that the viewpoints of all participants involved
will be considered in the decision-making process, and that the agency will seek out and facilitate the
involvement of the population potentially aected, including consultation with Tribal and indigenous
communities and byproviding culturally appropriate information, access for people with disabilities, and
language access for persons with Limited English Prociency (LEP), considering issue of access raised
by location, transportation, and other factors aecting participation, and by making available technical
assistance to build community-based capacity for participating.”
4
EPA will strive to achieve this vision
for meaningful engagement with communities and fulll the unique Tribal consultation commitments
laid out in President Biden’s Memorandum on Tribal Consultation and Strengthening Nation-to-Nation
Relationships.
5
Priority Action #1:
Develop a comprehensive framework for considering cumulative impacts
in relevant EPA decisions and operationalize that framework in EPA’s
programs and activities.
Barriers to Equitable Outcomes
For decades, EPA, state environmental regulators, and local zoning ocials have made decisions that
contributed to the disproportionate pollution burden on people of color and underserved communities
across the country, such as decisions to site and permit new industrial facilities in ways that concentrate
them within these communities.
6
Communities overburdened by pollution often raise concerns about
the cumulative impacts of these individual environmental management decisions on public health and
quality of life. EPA recognizes that the eect of cumulative impacts is best understood and addressed
in individual situations to appropriately address public health risk. EPA is now developing a consistent
and comprehensive framework for assessing and considering cumulative impacts on populations and
communities in its decision-making. Such a framework needs to incorporate the vulnerabilities and
susceptibilities related to the accumulation of multiple environmental and social stressors, such as
persistent poverty and noise pollution, that lead to adverse health and quality of life outcomes.
Without this framework, EPA programs and the agency’s many governmental partners at the federal,
Tribal, state, territorial, and local levels may continue to make decisions that aect community health
and well-being without considering and addressing the full context of cumulative impacts, including
exposures through multiple pathways and from multiple sources. Developing a clear and consistent
4 WHEJAC, Final Recommendations: Justice40 Climate and Economic Justice Screening Tool & Executive Order 12898 Revisions, May
2021, at https://www.epa.gov/sites/default/les/2021-05/documents/whiteh2.pdf.
5 The White House, Memorandum on Tribal Consultation and Strengthening Nation-to-Nation Relationships, January 26, 2021, https://
www.whitehouse.gov/brieng-room/presidential-actions/2021/01/26/memorandum-on-tribal-consultation-and-strengthening-nation-to-
nation-relationships/.
6 See, for example, Bullard, Mohai, Saha, and Wright, 2008. “Toxic wastes and race at twenty: Why race still matters after all of these
years.” Environ Law 38: 371-411.
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ability to apply cumulative impacts throughout the environmental and public health regulatory
endeavor is a necessary precondition for fully achieving EPA’s mission to protect the human health and
the environment, including all communities and individuals at all life stages.
7
Information from many sources suggests that addressing cumulative impacts is foundational to
achieving EPA’s mission and realizing environmental justice, including:
• Numerous studies have shown a greater burden of environmental exposures, environmentally
linked disease, and adverse impacts on health and well-being experienced by people of color and
underserved communities.
8
• Given the concentration of polluting facilities in communities with environmental justice concerns,
and the ways in which non-chemical stressors can compound the eects of pollution, communities,
EJ leaders, the NEJAC, and scientists have identied cumulative impacts as a central concern and
issue for EPA to address.
9
• EPA hosted a series of listening sessions and research planning workshops in fall 2021, during
which Tribal, state, and local government agencies, academic experts, and community leaders
shared with EPA their perspectives on research and policy needs related to cumulative impacts.
• EJ community mapping tools, including EPA’s EJSCREEN and various state tools such as California’s
CalEnviroScreen and Washington State’s Environmental Health Disparities Map, have documented
where multiple social and environmental stressors are concentrated and oer models for
considering the relative impact of chemical and non-chemical stressors in decision-making to
improve protection of human health.
10
• Exposures and impacts across all life stages, which can manifest over long periods of time and
across generations, are an essential consideration for cumulative impacts assessment and
amelioration.
11
Planned Actions to Overcome the Barriers
EPA will develop a comprehensive framework for considering cumulative impacts in relevant EPA
decisions and operationalize that framework in EPA’s policies, programs, and activities, including
permit conditions, mitigation, and potential denial of permits. This framework will employ quantitative
and qualitative analysis of multiple, cumulative, and disproportionate impacts. It will go beyond
characterizing problems to identifying solutions. It will identify ways to account for vulnerability and
susceptibility in multiple regulatory contexts. Finally, it will develop and employ t-for-purpose decision
tools. EPA will:
• Identify and promote uses of cumulative impacts analysis for multiple decision contexts, such as
permitting, compliance monitoring and enforcement, cleanups, and rulemaking.
7 The Executive Order on Children’s Health (EO 13045) directs federal agencies to “make it a high priority to identify and assess
environmental health risks and safety risks that may disproportionately affect children” and “ensure that its policies, programs, activities,
and standards address disproportionate risks to children that result from environmental health risks or safety risks.”
8 See supra note 3.
9 See, e.g., NEJAC recommendations to EPA about cumulative impacts, https://www.epa.gov/sites/default/les/2015-02/documents/nejac-
cum-risk-rpt-122104.pdf (2004); NEJAC recommendations on permitting, https://www.epa.gov/sites/default/les/2015-02/documents/
ej-in-permitting-report-2011.pdf (2011) and https://www.epa.gov/sites/default/les/2015-02/documents/2013-ej-in-permitting.pdf
(2013); WHEJAC recommendations focusing on cumulative impacts, https://www.epa.gov/sites/default/les/2021-05/documents/
whiteh2.pdf (2021)
10 See, e.g., EJSCREEN, https://www.epa.gov/ejscreen; Konisky, et.al., Mapping for Environmental Justice: An Analysis of State Level
Tools, https://eri.iu.edu/documents/ej-mapping-tools-report.pdf (2021)
11 See supra note 3.
E.O. 13985 EQUITY ACTION PLAN: U.S. ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY
6
• Summarize current strategies, available data, and promising practices to account for cumulative
impacts in analytical and decision-making contexts such as permitting, compliance monitoring and
enforcement, cleanup, and rulemaking, including existing approaches at the state, Tribal, and local
levels. Such a summary will provide a comprehensive understanding of progress to date among
practitioners on which to build.
• Conduct a critical review of existing methods and data for accounting for vulnerabilities and
susceptibilities associated with cumulative (total) burden from multiple stressors. This review will
identify opportunities within the various decision contexts to address cumulative impacts and
appropriate information to support such decisions.
• Develop recommendations on strategies to account for and address vulnerabilities and
susceptibilities from co-exposure to multiple stressors within EPA decision-making, including the
permitting, compliance monitoring and enforcement, cleanup, and rulemaking contexts. These
recommendations will form the basis for policy guidance.
• Produce one or more policy guidance documents on the application of the framework, associated
tools, and data. These policy guidance documents will be critical to operationalizing the cumulative
impacts framework and integrating it within environmental decision-making.
• Enhance EJSCREEN to assign cumulative impacts index score(s) to areas facing disproportionate
environmental burdens.
• The Oce of Research and Development (ORD) will work with program and regional oces to
expand its portfolio of cumulative impacts research a focus on supporting immediate and short-
term decision needs on top of longer-term needs. ORD is pursuing “solutions-oriented research with
a bias for action.”
• Ensure meaningful community/stakeholder engagement throughout the process and communicate
how the agency is using new tools to inform decision-making.
EPA prioritized this action because communities, EJ leaders, and EPA sta have identied addressing
cumulative impacts as critical to achieving equitable and just outcomes across EPA programs in
permitting, compliance monitoring and enforcement, cleanup, rulemaking, and other contexts.
Quantifying such impacts and operationalizing them in decision-making is a shared priority of both
the EJ movement and EPA. EPA also is committed to the continual development of the science on
disproportionate impacts. Science substantiates the importance of this issue and will continue to
underpin decision-making throughout the environmental regulatory endeavor to protect public health
for all communities.
Tracking Our Progress
Over the short and mid-term (2-4 years), EPA’s initial focus will be on developing a framework, modeling
promising practices, and producing guidance that will operationalize this framework. This foundational
work will enable other specic outcomes and Long-Term Performance Goals (LTPGs) in EPA’s FY2022-2026
Strategic Plan. EPA will:
• Form a team of EPA sta with appropriate legal and technical expertise and experience in
implementing cumulative impacts analysis and policy to address cumulative impacts (3 months).
• Develop a draft framework to fully understand the decision contexts for considering cumulative
and disproportionate impacts, legal and technical considerations, and appropriate information for
supporting policy relevant decisions (1 year).
E.O. 13985 EQUITY ACTION PLAN: U.S. ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY
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E.O. 13985 EQUITY ACTION PLAN: U.S. ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY
• Pilot case studies on considering cumulative impacts and document promising practices (minimum
of one pilot per year).
• Develop and begin to apply guidance on cumulative impact analyses by EPA programs that
operationalizes the framework (2 years).
In its FY2022-2026 Strategic Plan, EPA establishes an Agency Priority Goal that commits to developing
and implementing a cumulative impacts framework by the end of FY2023.
In the long-term (5-8 years out), EPA will seek to achieve the following:
• Build cumulative impacts analyses into more decisions at the federal, state, and local levels,
including permitting decisions made by delegated authorities.
• Continue to rene analytical techniques, based on best available science, for assessing the
cumulative (total) burden from multiple stressors and their sensitivity to interventions.
• Increase the body of data and knowledge about how vulnerabilities and susceptibilities from
co-exposures to multiple stressors across time and space inuence the relationships between
exposure, health, and well-being. This includes both negative features that require prevention or
mitigation as well as positive features that promote health, resilience, and sustainability.
• Provide advanced guidance based upon lessons learned on the integration of cumulative impacts
analysis for decision-making in major EPA programs.
• Develop systems to track and quantify pollution reduction and other benets in communities from
integration of cumulative impacts into the agency’s decision-making.
• Over the long-term, EPA will use outcome-based metrics to demonstrate progress, including
quantiable pollution reduction benets in communities that result from decisions that factor in
cumulative impacts.
Ensuring Accountability
EPA will identify a senior leader to spearhead this eort in the Oce of Environmental Justice and/
or the Immediate Oce of the Administrator. This senior leader will brief other senior EPA leadership
on a quarterly basis on progress. The agency also is accountable internally and to Congress and the
public through reporting on the goals and objectives contained within the FY2022-2026 Strategic Plan.
In addition, EPA will report on progress to the NEJAC, Science Advisory Board, National Tribal Caucus,
Children’s Health Protection Advisory Committee, and other regular public engagement forums.
E.O. 13985 EQUITY ACTION PLAN: U.S. ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY
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Priority Action #2:
Build the capacity of underserved communities to provide their experience
to EPA and implement community-led projects.
Barriers to Equitable Outcomes
Communities with environmental justice concerns and other underserved communities are often on
the frontlines of the outcomes of environmental policymaking. Yet these underserved communities—by
virtue of being systematically denied a full opportunity to participate in aspects of economic, social,
and civic life
12
—can face multiple resource and capacity challenges to engaging with EPA or accessing
its programs. These communities often have experienced decades of chronic underinvestment in
infrastructure. They may lack technological, nancial, and/or human capital-related capacity to engage
in decisional processes, prepare competitive proposals, or manage federal awards. EPA and other federal
partners may fail to coordinate their funding and assistance programs, thereby transferring the burden
of coordinating complementary programs to the community. These barriers most aect communities
that are smaller; are economically or otherwise disadvantaged; have limited English prociency
or disabilities that prevent full access to meetings and information; and/or lack access to digital
infrastructure.
Community members have clearly and consistently raised these concerns across a range of EPA
engagement forums, including regular EJ national community engagement calls, public testimony
during NEJAC meetings, and formal NEJAC recommendations to the agency.
13
They also have pointed out underrepresentation of aected communities in rulemaking and permitting
public comment periods and reported limited success in competing for nancial assistance. EPA must
provide robust support to help communities overcome these challenges and ensure their ability
to meaningfully engage with EPA and other government agencies, participate in decision-making
processes, and benet from federal funding opportunities and investments.
Planned Actions to Overcome the Barriers
EPA has prioritized the following actions as those that will produce the greatest possible benet in the
near- to mid-term to build the capacity of communities to engage with EPA and manage community-led
projects to reduce pollution and improve outcomes on the ground.
Build the technological, nancial, and human capital-related capacity of underserved
communities.
Consistent with the agency’s FY2022-2026 Strategic Plan and dependent on congressional
appropriations, EPA will:
• Provide more capacity-building grants and technical assistance to more communities.
• Oer more grant trainings to help underserved and under-resourced communities apply for
12 E.O. 13985 denes “underserved community” using this language.
13 See, e.g., NEJAC’s model guidelines for public participation, which discuss the barriers to effective community engagement. Available
at https://www.epa.gov/sites/default/les/2015-02/documents/recommendations-model-guide-pp-2013.pdf.
E.O. 13985 EQUITY ACTION PLAN: U.S. ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY
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E.O. 13985 EQUITY ACTION PLAN: U.S. ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY
specic competitive grant opportunities.
• Work with EPA’s Oce of Grants and Debarment to develop submission exibilities to help
applicants from underserved communities apply for competitive grant opportunities. These
exibilities may include allowing applicants to submit applications through the mail (rather than
online) and other submission options.
• Establish capacity-building centers across the country to deliver support and resources to build
the base of underserved communities. This support, which is wholly contingent on congressional
appropriations, would focus on community-based organizations; minority serving institutions,
including HBCUs; and local, Tribal, or territorial governments in rural areas.
Enhance EPA’s engagement with disadvantaged and underserved communities with an eye
toward building their capacity.
• Develop an EPA public engagement guide that uses a consistent set of denitions for “community,”
“community-based organization,”“underserved community,”“disadvantaged community,” and other
terms crucial to approaching and tracking the agency’s work in a consistent manner.
• Ensure all EPA public meetings, stakeholder meetings, and external-facing materials provide
crucial information in a non-technical, actionable manner and are accessible for communities with
disabilities and LEP.
• Develop paid fellowships, internships, and clerkships at EPA to oer individuals—including
representatives from disadvantaged communities and potentially leveraging relationships with
minority-serving institutions and HBCUs—the opportunity to work inside EPA and build a deeper
understanding of how the agency operates.
• Implement a community centered approach to protecting health and the environment that
focuses on coordination and collaboration across both the implementation of EPA programs
and the deployment of EPA relationships with other federal agencies and state, Tribal, and local
governmental partners.
Ensure EPA’s investments in infrastructure and pollution remediation benet disadvantaged and
underserved communities.
• Implement the Biden Administration’s Justice40 initiative to ensure that disadvantaged
communities receive at least 40% of the benets of EPA’s investments in clean energy, pollution
cleanup, and infrastructure programs. Justice40’s initial pilot includes six EPA programs. The three
pilot water programs represent more than 30% of the agency’s budget: The Clean Water SRF, the
Drinking Water SRF, and the Reducing Lead in Drinking Water grant program under the WIIN Act.
• Ensure that funds appropriated to EPA through the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, signed
into law on November 15, 2021, exceed the goals of the Justice40 initiative.
• Ensure early, ongoing, and meaningful community and partner engagement on Justice40
implementation. EPA will deploy a centralized agency-wide platform for partner and stakeholder
engagement, organized by the Oce of Environmental Justice, and a more targeted outreach
approach for the Justice40 pilot and covered programs tailored to their unique legal, regulatory,
and programmatic considerations.
E.O. 13985 EQUITY ACTION PLAN: U.S. ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY
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Tracking Our Progress
In the near- to mid-term, EPA will track its progress at least quarterly through 2026, consistent with the
LTPGs in the FY2022-2026 Strategic Plan and other outcome-based metrics, such as:
• EPA programs often request feedback and comment from the public, such as during a rulemaking
public comment period. EPA has set an LTPG to increase the percentage of programs that provide
capacity building resources to communities with EJ concerns to ensure they can meaningfully
engage and provide useful feedback to the agency.
• EPA relies on the input, knowledge, and eorts of community leaders and community-based
organizations to craft our engagement activities and receive meaningful feedback for consideration
during policy processes, such as rulemakings. EPA has set an LTPG to ensure that all EPA programs
that make use of such support provide adequate nancial remuneration to those leaders and
organizations.
• EPA will measure the percentage of EPA programs that work in and with communities with
environmental justice concerns in ways that are community-driven, coordinated, collaborative, and
support equitable and resilient community development.
• EPA awards EJ grants to build the capacity of community-based organizations to eectively
advocate for governments to respond in ways that address community concerns. EPA has set an
LTPG to increase the percentage of such community grants that result in a governmental response
related to the objectives of the grants.
• EPA will measure the percentage of EPA infrastructure investments that benet disadvantaged
communities, consistent with Justice40, and the number of new grantees that receive funding.
In the long term, the agency expects to see more durable community capacity built across an expanding
universe of communities through more concerted and informed agency eorts. Expanding capacity in
communities should result in an increasing number of communities successfully applying for technical
assistance and project-specic grants, including but not exclusive to EPA’s EJ grants.
Ensuring Accountability
This proposed action aligns with EPA’s FY2022-2026 Strategic Plan Goal 2, Objective 2.1. The agency is
accountable internally and to Congress and the public through reporting on the goals and objectives
contained within the strategic plan. EPA also will report on progress to the NEJAC, National Tribal Caucus,
and other regular public engagement forums.
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E.O. 13985 EQUITY ACTION PLAN: U.S. ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY
Priority Action #3:
Develop EPA’s internal capacity to engage underserved communities
and implement clear and accountable processes to act based on
communities’ input.
Barriers to Equitable Outcomes
EPA’s budget, internal processes, and culture can slow or impede meaningful engagement with
underserved communities. Fundamentally, EPA lacks adequate stang to support the wide variety
and volume of external-facing stakeholder engagement demands, including the important task of
disseminating stakeholder feedback to the right agency sta to create responsive actions. Some EPA sta
also may lack awareness of, or appreciation for, non-traditional stakeholder communities (e.g., informal
EJ or community groups, faith groups, civil rights organizations) and the extra time and care required
to authentically engage. The NEJAC raised several of these barriers—inadequate stang, language and
cultural dierences, a lack of cultural competency among those trying to cultivate relationships, and a
lack of trust between community members, regulatory agencies, and industry—in a 2013 report to EPA
on model community engagement.
14
In addition, legal and policy deadlines often drive the pace of action at EPA. With tight budgets and even
tighter timelines, EPA sta may feel pressure to prioritize scientic research, legal review, and economic
analysis over deep outreach and engagement. Agency processes do not necessarily accommodate the
timeline needed for robust engagement and may not oer accountability to ensure it occurs and that
resulting decisions are transparently responsive to the received feedback. Narrow reading of authorizing
legislation that EPA uses to limit the scope of topics, analysis, and engagement also may impede
meaningful stakeholder engagement.
Planned Actions to Overcome the Barriers
To address these barriers, EPA must increase its internal capacity—measured as FTEs, training, resources,
and expertise—to engage with underserved communities in a way that is meaningful and accessible
and works to overcome the communities’ barriers to participation. But EPA cannot stop at engagement.
EPA must build the processes and internal infrastructure to be able to translate the learnings from
community engagement into actions to address stakeholder concerns.
Changing the way EPA conducts its core work to be more responsive to community input will require
a multi-year eort and a sustained commitment from EPA leadership. EPA can take several actions in
the short-term to assemble the necessary building blocks—new FTEs, new internal processes, new
accountability mechanisms—for durable success.
Strengthen EPA’s capacity and ability to engage meaningfully with stakeholders in underserved
communities.
EPA’s eorts to improve its capacity to engage with underserved communities must begin immediately
but will continue over the short- and long-term. EPA will:
See, for example, NEJAC’s model guidelines for public participation, which discuss the barriers to effective community engagement.
Available at https://www.epa.gov/sites/default/les/2015-02/documents/recommendations-model-guide-pp-2013.pdf.
14
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12
• Increase the number of outreach sta in EPA’s regional oces, assuming adequate congressional
appropriations, with a focus on supporting community driven solutions.
• Strengthen EPA’s language assistance and other services to improve access for people with LEP or
disabilities by developing and implementing access plans for each program and region, providing
EPA-wide training on access, and putting in place a disability access contract to ensure accessibility
in public engagement.
• Implement a comprehensive and program-tailored training program on equity, environmental
justice, and civil rights for all relevant EPA sta, as directed by the Agency Priority Goal for the rst
two years in EPA’s FY2022-2026 Strategic Plan.
• Improve internal EPA processes to weave equity, environmental justice, and civil rights into the
fabric of the agency’s day-to-day work and provide multiple lines of accountability.
• Launch a new National Program Oce, the Oce of Environmental Justice and External Civil Rights
Compliance, contingent on the outcome of FY2022 appropriations decisions.
• Require EPA’s programs and regions to develop implementation plans, consistent with national
program guidance, for achieving the objective of Goal 2 in EPA’s FY2022-2026 Strategic Plan.
• Where relevant, ensure EPA rulemakings account for and respond to environmental justice
concerns and consider disproportionate pollution impacts in underserved communities.
• Integrate equity, environmental justice, and civil rights benchmarks into the annual performance
plans and reviews for relevant EPA sta, after thorough and transparent discussions with EPA’s
senior career leadership and employee unions, as relevant.
• Include commitments to address disproportionate pollution impacts in all written agreements (e.g.,
grant work plans) between EPA and states and Tribes implementing their delegated authorities.
• Establish a set of indicators to track EPA’s performance in eliminating disparities in environmental
and public health conditions, as directed by the Agency Priority Goal for the rst two years in EPA’s
FY2022-2026 Strategic Plan.
• Investigate opportunities and consider establishing partnerships with organizations such as the
Government Alliance on Race and Equity (GARE) to integrate the regular use of tools, such as equity
assessments, to assess the impact of EPA’s programs, policies, and activities on underserved and
disadvantaged communities.
Tracking Our Progress
In the short- and medium-term, EPA will focus on output-related measures to mark important
milestones, such as creation of the new National Program Oce of Environmental Justice and External
Civil Rights Compliance; deployment of more outreach and engagement sta in EPA’s regions, consistent
with appropriations; delivery of trainings to EPA sta; and integration of equity-minded metrics in
sta performance plans and national program guidance. These proposed actions respond to Goal
2, Objectives 2.1 and 2.2 in EPA’s FY2022-2026 Strategic Plan and align with the following LTPGs for
completion by September 30, 2026:
• Increasing the percentage of all signicant EPA actions with EJ implications that clearly
demonstrate how the action is responsive to EJ concerns and addresses disproportionate impacts.
These actions will include signicant EPA rulemakings.
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• Ensuring EPA programs with direct implementation authority take at least 100 signicant actions
that will result in measurable improvements in Indian country.
• Ensuring all EPA programs and regions identify and implement opportunities to integrate civil
rights compliance in their planning, guidance, policy directives, monitoring, and review activities.
• Ensuring all EPA programs and regional oces have in place and implement program- and region-
specic language assistance plans to ensure that every EPA community outreach and engagement
activity considers the needs of community members with LEP and that they secure the language
services necessary to provide individuals with LEP meaningful access to EPA programs and
activities.
• Ensuring all EPA programs and regional oces have in place and implement program-specic
disability access plans to ensure every EPA community outreach and engagement activity
considers the needs of persons with disabilities and provides persons with disabilities reasonable
accommodations and appropriate auxiliary aids and services where necessary so they may
eectively participate in EPA programs and activities.
As noted above, EPA’s FY2022-2026 Strategic Plan establishes an Agency Priority Goal to establish
a set of indicators to track EPA’s performance in eliminating disparities in environmental and public
health conditions. These indicators—such as blood lead levels and asthma prevalence in low-income
communities—will help measure EPA’s long-term success in delivering on promises to imbed equity,
environmental justice, and civil rights into its work.
Ensuring Accountability
This proposed action aligns with EPA’s FY2022-2026 Strategic Plan Goal 2, Objectives 2.1 and 2.2.
The agency is accountable internally and to Congress and the public through reporting on the goals
and objectives contained within the strategic plan. EPA also will report on progress to the NEJAC,
National Tribal Caucus, and other regular public engagement forums. Individual EPA employees may
be held accountable to metrics related to equity, environmental justice, and civil rights in their annual
performance plans.
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Initiate proactive pre-award and post-award civil rights compliance activities, including armative
compliance reviews to address the impacts of potentially discriminatory activities on overburdened
communities.
14
Priority Action #4:
Strengthen EPA’s external civil rights compliance program and ensure that
civil rights compliance is an agency-wide responsibility.
Barriers to Equitable Outcomes
EPA has not fully used its civil rights implementation and enforcement authority to vigorously enforce
federal civil rights laws. Federal law authorizes EPA and federal agencies generally to enact rules,
regulations, or orders to achieve the laws’ objectives. Specically, EPA’s nondiscrimination regulation
prohibits recipients of EPA nancial assistance from taking actions in their programs or activities that are
intentionally discriminatory and/or have a discriminatory eect. Robust enforcement of civil rights law
provides the strongest tool to address disparities on the basis of race, color, national origin (including
LEP), and disability.
EPA’s External Civil Rights Compliance Oce (ECRCO) has been consistently underfunded across
administrations. As a result, ECRCO has relied primarily on a reactive rather than proactive approach
to civil rights enforcement. ECRCO also is not fully and meaningfully engaging with internal (all EPA
program and regional oces) and external (states, overburdened communities, and advocates)
stakeholders. Moreover, EPA has not integrated civil rights compliance throughout its programs and
activities and has not elevated it as a strategic goal. Over time, the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights
15
and
NEJAC
16
have repeatedly voiced concerns about EPA’s external civil rights program and made several
recommendations for how to improve outcomes.
The classications protected by federal civil rights laws encompass many of the underserved
and overburdened communities that have been exposed to a disproportionate level of harmful
environmental, quality of life, and health impacts from pollution sources. An eective civil rights
compliance program creates accountability to ensure that the actions, policies, and practices of
recipients of federal funds advance equity rather than exacerbate these disparities.
Planned Actions to Overcome the Barriers
To strengthen civil rights compliance and enforcement, EPA’s external civil rights program will shift from
being primarily reactive, responding only to complaints, to proactively initiating compliance activities.
Community representatives rearmed these priorities during EPA’s rst ever public listening session
about external civil rights compliance on October 27, 2021. With those community perspectives as a
guide, and with sucient appropriations, EPA will:
•
15 U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, Not in My Backyard: Executive Order 12,898 and Title VI as Tools for Achieving Environmental
Justice U.S. Commission on Civil Rights (October 2003); Environmental Justice: Examining the Environmental Protection Agency’s
Compliance and Enforcement of Title VI and Executive Order 12898 (September 2016); Are Rights a Reality? Evaluating Federal Civil
Rights Enforcement (November 2019).
16 See, e.g., the NEJAC’s letter to EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt (July 31, 2017), regarding Title VI of the Civil Rights Act. Available at
https://www.epa.gov/sites/default/les/2018-01/documents/nejac-title-vi-letter-8-1-17-nal.pdf. NEJAC has been raising concerns about
Title VI enforcement for decades.
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• Develop and implement clear and strong civil rights guidance and corresponding training and
technical assistance to increase recipients’ compliance with civil rights laws, including in the
permitting context.
• Conduct timely and eective civil rights complaint investigations and resolutions, including
investigations and informal resolution agreements that eectively address adverse disparate
impacts.Enhance communication and engagement with environmentally overburdened
communities to meaningfully inform EPA’s civil rights work and to empower and increase their
participation in critical decision-making.
• Increase transparency by armatively providing information to the public.
• Strengthen federal interagency collaboration and coordination on complaints, compliance reviews,
and policy guidance to enforce federal civil rights laws.
Furthermore, as civil rights vigilance is an EPA-wide responsibility, EPA will undertake the following
agency-wide actions:
• Engage all EPA program and regional oces in civil rights compliance activities to identify whether
recipient programs and activities are consistent with civil rights laws.
• Communicate requirements and expectations to EPA sta through education, training, outreach,
and technical assistance to enhance civil rights enforcement awareness and strengthen intra-
agency collaboration.
• Include applicable civil rights requirements in EPA non-civil rights guidance, program strategic
planning, environmental policy directives, rulemakings, enforcement, and siting and permitting
decisions by EPA recipients.
Tracking Our Progress
EPA will initially focus on output-focused metrics in the short and mid-term, such as:
• Completion, distribution, and implementation of clear guidance on compliance with Title VI and
other civil rights requirements.
• Number of civil rights post-award armative compliance reviews initiated annually.
• Number of civil rights audits initiated annually to ensure compliance with procedural requirements.
• Percentage of state recipients of EPA nancial assistance that have foundational civil rights
programs in place.
• Number of information sharing sessions and outreach and technical assistance events with
overburdened and underserved communities, community groups, and other partners on civil
rights and environmental justice issues.
• Number of opportunities identied and implemented by program and regional oces to achieve
civil rights compliance in their planning, guidance, policy directives, monitoring, and review
activities.
In the long-term, EPA will seek to develop outcome-based metrics, including systems to track and
quantify the pollution reduction benets in communities that result from integration of civil rights and
environmental justice into the agency’s decision-making.
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Ensuring Accountability
EPA will hold itself accountable to this action through its direct alignment with agency-wide long-term
and annual performance goals and objectives in Goal 2 of EPA’s FY2022-2026 Strategic Plan. The agency
is accountable internally and to Congress and the public through reporting on the goals and objectives
contained within the strategic plan. In addition, EPA made several commitments to the Oce of the
Inspector General in response to its audit titled Improved EPA Oversight of Funding Recipients’ Title VI
Programs Could Prevent Discrimination.
17
EPA also will report on progress to the NEJAC and hold listening
sessions with stakeholders.
Priority Action #5:
Integrate community science into EPA’s research and program
implementation.
Barriers to Equitable Outcomes
“Community science” is dened as research and science conducted by the community and/or a
third party on its own behalf to inform decision-making. In contrast to traditional initiatives led by
government agencies or research scientists, community-led projects are often characterized by use
of local and traditional ecological knowledge (TEK) and/or locally generated and validated data.
Communities collect this information to address environmental, public health, social, and economic
justice issues important for environmental self-determination. Community science can generate t-for-
purpose data to inform a range of decisions associated with improved environmental management,
including resource allocation, screening and fence-line monitoring, network expansion, inclusion of local
conditions in environmental mapping tools and other analyses, and alerts and regulatory protection.
Communities may face multiple barriers when attempting to conduct community science. They may
have insucient nancial and human resources, and government funding for community science
projects is limited and competitive. Communities also may lack expertise or access to expertise in
relevant science disciplines and policy contexts; have diering expectations regarding what constitutes
sucient information quality for decision-making; lack trust in scientists and government agencies;
and need more actionable information on how data can inuence government decisions and how
and in what form the data should be delivered. Tribes engaging in community science activities may
have unique concerns about sharing sacred cultural and TEK with government agencies that may be
compelled to disclose it publicly.
18
At the same time, EPA and other agencies at all levels of government have historically struggled to
use data collected by community scientists. Government agencies may have unfamiliarity with or bias
against using community-led science and TEK rather than traditional peer-reviewed science; insucient
clarity on what types and quality of data can be used in dierent situations (e.g., screening level data vs.
regulatory data); inadequate processes and procedures for data management and inclusion in decision-
making; and insucient sta resources and training.
17 See https://www.epa.gov/system/les/documents/2021-10/_epaoig_20-e-0333_agency_response2.pdf.
18 See, e.g., Kari Hedin, Cynthia Naha and Demi Gary, Tribal Citizen Science: Investigating Current Activities and Future Aspirations,
February 26, 2021, https://itec.cherokee.org/media/tknc42l1/tribal-citizen-science_white-paper_february-26-2021.pdf.
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See, for example, EJSCREEN, EnviroAtlas, UST (Underground Storage Tank) Finder, Cleanups in my Community, Toxics Release
Inventory, How’s My Waterway, Bloomwatch, EPA Sanitary Survey App for Fresh and Marine Waters, etc.
These barriers and opportunities have been described in reports by the National Advisory Council for
Environmental Policy and Technology,
19
the WHEJAC,
20
the NEJAC,
21
and the Biden Administration’s
November 2021 Memorandum on Indigenous Traditional Ecological Knowledge and Federal Decision
Making.
22
In addition, EPA’s Board of Scientic Counselors Executive Committee met on July 6, 2021,
to consult with stakeholders about incorporating equity and environmental justice in research and
community science. Discussion at that meeting re-armed these barriers.
23
Planned Actions to Overcome the Barriers
EPA’s vision is that community science is equitably supported, viewed, and used as an asset in the range
of decisions associated with environmental management by local, state, and federal programs.
24
To
achieve this, EPA will advance actions to overcome barriers to broad engagement in community science,
along with policies and procedures that will help the agency overcome barriers to using these data in
decisions.
Build capacity for community science and access to community data
EPA will take several actions to address resource and technical barriers to community science:
• Fund community science grants: EPA will fund community science initiatives through grant programs
in support of environmental justice and equity priorities, including through American Rescue
Plan appropriations. EPA will award funds to support community and local eorts to monitor
environmental quality and to promote partnerships between communities and government
agencies.
• Expand the availability of data and tools: EPA will continue to expand the availability of data and
capacity for community environmental monitoring. This will include free, publicly accessible
tools
25
to provide community scientists with environmental and demographic data, mapping
tools, tutorials, and information to characterize, map, and develop plans to address environmental
conditions in their communities.
• Increase sta support and training for community science: EPA will assign sta to serve in community
science liaison positions to support community science activities, including work in Tribal
communities, and provide outreach and on-line training materials.
• Conduct research to create new community science tools and demonstration projects: EPA, working
with communities, states, and Tribes, will improve methods for community science to address
19 National Advisory Council for Environmental Policy and Technology, Environmental Protection Belongs to the Public: A Vision for
Citizen Science at EPA (2016), available at https://www.epa.gov/sites/default/les/2020-04/documents/nacept_cs_report_nal_508.pdf;
Information to Action—Strengthening EPA Citizen Science Partnerships for Environmental Protection (2018), available at https://www.
epa.gov/sites/default/les/2020-04/documents/nacept_2018_citizen_science_publication_eng_nal_v3_508.pdf.
20 WHEJAC, Final Recommendations: Justice40 Climate and Economic Justice Screening Tool & Executive Order 12898 Revisions, May
2021, at https://www.epa.gov/sites/default/les/2021-05/documents/whiteh2.pdf.
21 NEJAC, Recommendations for Integrating Environmental Justice into the EPA’s Research Enterprise (2014), https://www.epa.gov/sites/
production/les/2015-02/documents/nejac-research-recommendations-2014.pdf; Ensuring risk reduction in communities with multiple
stressors: environmental justice and cumulative risks/impacts (2004), https://www.epa.gov/sites/default/les/2015-02/documents/nejac-
cum-risk-rpt-122104.pdf.
22 Executive Ofce of the President, Memorandum on Indigenous Traditional Ecological Knowledge and Federal Decision Making,
November 15, 2021, https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2021/11/111521-OSTP-CEQ-ITEK-Memo.pdf. This
memorandum recognizes TEK as “one of the many important bodies of knowledge that contributes to the scientic, technical, social, and
economic advancements of the United States and to our collective understanding of the natural world.”
23 BOSC July 2021 Executive Committee Meeting, https://www.epa.gov/bosc/bosc-july-2021-executive-committee-meeting.
24 See “Citizen Science at EPA: Engaging the Public in Environmental Protection,” at https://arcg.is/C8mKe.
25
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environmental concerns of underserved communities and will support research projects that
demonstrate air, water, and soil pollution monitoring and other data generation using community
science to inform environmental management.
Issue policies and guidance documents to support the use of community science
EPA will issue several policies and guidance documents by the third quarter of 2022 to address
institutional barriers to the use of community science, including:
• EPA Vision and Strategy for Community/Citizen Science, which will outline EPA principles for
supporting community science and identifying opportunities to incorporate in EPA actions.
• Multi-Stakeholder Plan for Improved Data Flow to Decision Makers, which will advance community
science data infrastructure and ow from data-producers to data-users, based on the results of the
November 2021 EPA/state/Tribal workshop on data management.
• EPA Policy Guidelines for Conducting Community/Citizen Science, which will include guidance on
project development and quality assurance and an internal checklist to help EPA sta comply
with legal and administrative requirements when supporting community science projects, such as
ethical issues that arise in projects, data ownership, and privacy.
• Inclusion of community science data management in the E-Enterprise Leadership Council Digital
Strategy, where the E-Enterprise Leadership Council (EELC) will continue to advance strategies using
the data quality handbook, data management standards, and community science networks to
expand the use of community science in local, state, Tribal, and federal government environmental
decisions. The EELC includes senior EPA, state, and Tribal leaders.
• EPA will be participating with the Interagency Working Group on Traditional Ecological Knowledge
to develop guidance on TEK.
Tracking Our Progress
In the short-term, EPA will measure its success based on the following outputs:
• Public release of the EPA Strategy and Vision, Data Management Plan, and EPA Internal Policy
Guidelines by the third quarter of calendar year 2022.
• Percentage and/or number of EPA community grant funds that support science to address
environmental justice and equity concerns, including Tribal community science projects.
The long-term objective is that EPA’s support for community science policies, methods, and data
will expand the capacity of communities and local, state, Tribal, and federal governments to share in
embracing community science as a valued and routine asset in environmental management.
Ensuring Accountability
These proposed actions align with EPA’s FY2022-2026 Strategic Plan Goal 2, Objective 2.1 and Cross-
Agency Strategy 1 (“Ensure Scientic Integrity and Science-Based Decision Making”). EPA is accountable
internally and to Congress and the public through reporting on the goals and objectives contained
within the agency strategic plan and within the Oce of Research and Development’s Strategic Research
Action Plans. EPA also will report on progress through its advisory committees, including the Board of
Scientic Counselors, the NEJAC, and the National Tribal Caucus, and through other public engagement
forums.
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Priority Action #6:
Make EPA’s procurement and contracting more equitable
Barriers to Equitable Outcomes
EPA has a history of engagement with small and socioeconomically disadvantaged businesses and
Minority-Serving Institutions (MSI), including Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs).
Because of this engagement, the agency is well-aware of several common barriers to procurement
equity. These include:
• Underserved/underrepresented businesses may lack access to EPA programmatic decisionmakers,
limiting their opportunity to demonstrate their business capabilities.
• Potential contractors from underserved/underrepresented communities may face unreasonable
or unnecessary requirements for vendor past performance. Requiring extensive past performance
and/or narrowly considering qualifying past performance may limit the ability of small and
socioeconomically disadvantaged businesses and MSIs to compete against large businesses
with more extensive federal contracting experience. While these businesses and MSIs may have
innovative approaches, subcontractor experience, and experience with contracting in state,
local, and private arenas, the evaluation process often places a greater “value” on federal prime
contracting experience.
• EPA program oces may prefer incumbent vendors because of familiarity and a desire for
continuity.
• Federal procurement regulations and processes are cumbersome. Small, disadvantaged, and
underrepresented businesses may lack the resources to successfully navigate the process. Contract
requirements can be ambiguous and are often task-based instead of performance-based, stiing
competition and innovation. The scope and size of acquisitions also can have a chilling eect
on small and disadvantaged business participation. Contracting ocials may assume that these
businesses lack capacity to deliver results at the same level as larger businesses. In truth, many have
the capacity to perform the work but may need support to compete for the work in the federal
arena.
Several existing policies can perpetuate these barriers. Members of the underserved and
underrepresented business community, for example, told EPA that the Federal Acquisition Regulation
(FAR) is cumbersome, unclear, and dicult and costly to navigate. Also, some of the rules in the FAR
that are intended to level the playing eld for underserved and underrepresented businesses are not
consistently implemented, and none of the rules include MSIs or LGBTQ+ owned small businesses.
EPA’s internal acquisition guidance implements the FAR at the agency and therefore reects the same
concerns. In addition, federal category management policies that require and favor the creation and
use of large multiple award contracts (that are often consolidations of smaller requirements) can have
an adverse impact on underserved and underrepresented businesses that may not have the capacity to
compete for larger contracts.
The populations most aected by these barriers include small businesses, including socioeconomically
disadvantaged small businesses; MSIs and HBCUs; and LGBTQ+-owned businesses. During the
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summer of 2021, EPA conducted two listening sessions with stakeholders from the underserved and
underrepresented business community to receive feedback on the barriers they have experienced
in accessing federal procurement opportunities and their ideas for eliminating those barriers. These
listening sessions conrmed the barriers cited above.
Planned Actions to Overcome the Barriers
EPA has identied several actions to overcome these common barriers. EPA will:
• Challenge EPA program oces and regions (including senior leadership) to conduct and participate
in agency outreach events to provide the underserved and underrepresented business community
with access to EPA decision makers.
• Develop and implement policies and procedures to promote the utilization of underserved and
underrepresented businesses and level the playing eld between incumbent contractors and new
rms, such as using “anonymous” technical evaluations; expanding the use of oral presentations;
broadening the scope of qualifying past performance; and revamping category management
policies.
• Facilitate programmatic acquisition forecasting, acquisition planning, and requirements
development to eliminate ambiguity and increase opportunities for underserved and
underrepresented businesses.
• Provide technical assistance to facilitate productive navigation of the federal contracting process
internally and externally.
EPA has prioritized these actions due to their ease of implementation, measurability, and direct impact
on barrier reduction.
Tracking Our Progress
EPA will track progress by establishing measures for the following factors/areas:
• Increased performance against EPA’s socioeconomic small business goals. In the FY2022-2026
Strategic Plan, EPA established an LTPG (through 2026) of awarding 4% of EPA contract spending to
small businesses located in Historically Underutilized Business Zones (HUBZones) compared with
the FY2018-FY2020 average annual baseline of 2.2%.
• Increased diversication of EPA’s vendor base by tracking its contracts with “new entrants”
(vendors that have never had a prime contract with EPA), socioeconomic small businesses,
and MSIs. In FY2022, EPA will develop a mechanism to capture data associated with this measure
and establish a baseline. In FY2023, EPA will implement annual targets for diversication of its
vendor base for FY2023-2027. This will measure the agency’s progress in addressing the past
performance and incumbency barriers identied above.
• Increased engagement (including technical assistance) with socioeconomic small businesses
and MSIs by EPA’s program oces and contracting oces. In FY2022, EPA will baseline its
engagement activities with the populations most aected by this barrier. In FY2023, EPA will dene
and implement annual targets for engagement and technical assistance activities for program
oces, regions, and contracting oces, including participation by EPA decision-makers for FY2023-
2027.
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EPA will measure long-term success as institutionalizing these factors and the activities associated with
achieving them in the agency’s business culture.
Ensuring Accountability
These proposed actions align with Cross-Agency Strategy 3, “Advance EPA’s Organizational Excellence
and Workforce Equity,” in EPA’s FY2022-2026 Strategic Plan. This cross-agency strategy seeks to foster
a diverse, equitable, and inclusive workforce within an eective and mission-driven workplace. EPA is
accountable internally and to Congress and the public through reporting on the goals and objectives
contained within the strategic plan.
To further reinforce accountability for senior managers at the SES and GS levels, EPA intends to include
standards in their performance plans for hosting or participating in engagement opportunities for
underserved and underrepresented businesses. EPA will also host “Procurement Equity Forums” to
provide opportunities for engagement, listening, and business capability sharing and to provide the
underserved and underrepresented business community with updates on EPA’s procurement equity
progress. Finally, EPA will develop a “Procurement Equity Dashboard” to track our quarterly progress
against the three measures cited above.
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Summary of Early Accomplishments
(as of January 20, 2022)
Although EPA has identied these six priority actions as forward-looking objectives, the agency has
been working since the beginning of Administrator Regan’s tenure to advance equity, environmental
justice, and external civil rights compliance. Below we highlight some progress made under each of the
priority actions to date. In addition, Administrator Regan outlined EPA’s work on environmental justice
in response to specic questions from the NEJAC. The Administrator’s letter to the NEJAC, dated October
29, 2021, is available on EPA’s website.
26
In November 2021, Administrator Regan embarked on a “Journey to Justice” tour, traveling to
Mississippi, Louisiana, and Texas to spotlight longstanding environmental justice concerns in historically
marginalized communities and hear rsthand from residents dealing with the impacts of pollution.
Throughout the tour, the Administrator highlighted the benets of President Biden’s Bipartisan
Infrastructure Law and the Build Back Better agenda, focusing on historic investments in water
infrastructure, Superfund, Brownelds, and in air quality improvements that will lead to lasting public
health protections in communities that need them most.
Priority Action #1: Develop a comprehensive framework for considering cumulative
impacts in relevant EPA decisions and operationalize that framework in EPA’s
programs and activities.
• The framework will recognize that approaches to incorporating cumulative impacts into decision-
making will be t for purpose. Toward this end, the External Civil Rights Compliance Oce
has committed to issuing guidance on disparate impact analysis in FY2022, which will include
incorporation of cumulative impacts analysis under civil rights law.
• In 2021, EPA’s Oce of Research and Development (ORD) held state and Tribal listening sessions
on cumulative impacts assessment. These listening sessions served to conrm the importance of
cumulative impacts assessment to states, Tribes, and communities for addressing environmental
justice and to identify remaining challenges for incorporating vulnerabilities due to cumulative
impacts into environmental decision making. The listening sessions echoed the recommendations
from NEJAC, WHEJAC, and ORD’s Board of Scientic Counselors that EPA has begun to implement.
• EPA established a Community of Practice for integration of environmental justice and civil rights in
permitting.
Priority Action #2: Build the capacity of underserved communities to provide their
experience to EPA and implement community-led projects.
• During calendar year 2021, EPA awarded more environmental justice grant funding to community-
based organizations, Tribal and indigenous organizations, and other partners than it awarded
altogether in the preceding decade.
• EPA has prioritized signicant portions of American Rescue Plan Act funding to provide technical
assistance and capacity building opportunities directly to communities and their local partners,
such as additional Brownelds resources, funding for energy communities in Appalachia, and more
specic assistance programs focused on supporting community resilience to respond to climate
change issues such as wildres and extreme heat events.
See https://www.epa.gov/system/les/documents/2021-11/nejac-100-day-letter-nal-signed.pdf. 26
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• EPA has initiated the formation of regional NEJAC working groups for all ten of EPA’s regional
oces to ensure better long-term relationship building and feedback on priority eorts as EPA
implements its equity, environmental justice, and civil rights activities.
• EPA has initiated biweekly national EJ engagement calls to oer a regular venue for communities
and their partners to regularly receive information and updates on priority actions, particularly
eorts to implement Justice40, and to provide feedback directly to EPA leadership and sta. From
August 31-December 7, 2021, EPA hostedeightsuch callswith more than2,700participants.
• EPA is implementing three key water infrastructure programs as pilots for early action under
President Biden’s Justice40 Initiative. These programs represent more than 30% of the agency’s
budget: The Clean Water SRF, the Drinking Water SRF, and the Reducing Lead in Drinking Water
grant program under the WIIN Act.
• On December 17, 2021, EPA announced a $1 billion investment from the Bipartisan Infrastructure
Law to initiate cleanup and clear the backlog of 49 previously unfunded Superfund sites and
accelerate cleanup at dozens of other sites across the country.
Priority Action #3: Develop EPA’s internal capacity to engage underserved
communities and implement clear and accountable processes to act based on
communities’ input.
• For the rst time, EPA is including equity, environmental justice, and civil rights compliance as a
distinct and core goal of EPA’s multiyear strategic plan. No longer will the agency’s work to advance
justice and live up to its civil rights responsibilities be left outside of the EPA’s bedrock planning
documents.
• In 2021, EPA’s Oce of Enforcement and Compliance Assurance issued four memoranda directing
a renewed focus on environmental justice across EPA enforcement activities with a consistent
direction for enforcement sta to regularly engage with communities with environmental justice
concerns as a regular part of program implementation. (See Appendix for more detail)
• In December 2021, Deputy Administrator McCabe directed EPA’s National Program Managers
to integrate equity, environmental justice, and civil rights in their national program guidance
documents for 2022, in accordance with Goal 2 of the FY2022-2026 Strategic Plan.
• In January 2022, EPA’s Oce of Land and Emergency Management released a draft Environmental
Justice Action Plan for public comment that addresses how the oce will address land cleanup
issues in overburdened communities across several programs.
Priority Action #4: Strengthen EPA’s external civil rights compliance program and
ensure that civil rights compliance is an agency-wide responsibility.
• In March and June 2021, EPA issued two Preliminary Findings of Non-Compliance to recipient
agencies that did not have in place required nondiscrimination programs, such as procedural
safeguards and programs and policies to ensure meaningful access for persons with LEP and
persons with disabilities.
• On October 27, 2021, EPA held its rst ever public listening session on civil rights enforcement and
heard input from more than 200 stakeholders.
• On September 20, 2021, EPA sent a detailed response to the EPA Oce of Inspector General, which
had raised concerns about EPA’s implementation of Title VI in a 2020 report. In that response, EPA
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committed to several specic actions to strengthen this program at EPA. EPA’s response is available
in full on its website.
27
Priority Action #5: Integrate community science into EPA’s research and program
implementation.
• On October 2, 2021, EPA announced 47 members to the agency’s Science Advisory Board, including
members of the rst-ever Environmental Justice Science Committee.
• On July 6, 2021, EPA’s Oce of Research and Development (ORD) held a consultation with the
Board of Scientic Counselors (BOSC) and community stakeholders to discuss potential avenues
to further integrating community science into EPA’s 2023-2026 Strategic Research Action Plan
and to help ORD set its research and development agenda. Additionally, ORD held a series of
workshops with other oces within the agency and other key stakeholders to discuss ideas on how
to develop community science projects in the various national research programs. EPA is renewing
and structuring the BOSC, including creating a Social and Community Science Subcommittee to
provide advice on these priorities in research planning and implementation.
• In December 2021, EPA’s Oce of Air and Radiation launched a $20 million grant competition that
calls for proposals to conduct monitoring of pollutants of greatest concern in communities with
health outcome disparities. EPA’s objective in issuing these awards is to empower communities to
monitor their own air quality and promote monitoring partnerships between communities and
Tribal, state, and local governments.
Priority Action #6: Make EPA’s procurement and contracting more equitable.
• Based on the provisional federal procurement data for FY2021 that will be nalized over the next
few months:
• EPA awarded more than 44% or $679 million in contract dollars to small businesses, far exceeding
the agency’s negotiated goal of 37% and the government-wide goal of 23%. This goal achievement
represents an $86 million increase from last scal year.
• Also, for the rst time in the agency’s history, EPA exceeded all ve of the established statutory
socioeconomic goals, including the never before realized goal of 3% for small businesses located in
Historically Underutilized Business Zones (HUBZones).
• EPA awarded the highest percentage of dollars to 4 of the 5 small business categories in more than
a decade.
See https://www.epa.gov/system/les/documents/2021-10/_epaoig_20-e-0333_agency_response2.pdf. 27
E.O. 13985 EQUITY ACTION PLAN: U.S. ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY
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E.O. 13985 EQUITY ACTION PLAN: U.S. ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY
Appendix 1:
Additional EPA Plans and Strategies to Prioritize Equity, Environmental
Justice, and External Civil Rights Compliance in its Programs,
Policies, and Processes
In addition to the six priority actions detailed in this equity action plan, EPA has released several
additional plans and strategies to deliver equity and environmental justice in its programs, policies, and
processes. This is current as of January 20, 2022.
Environmental Enforcement and Compliance Directives
Consistent with the mandate in Executive Order 14008, Administrator Regan directed the Oce of
Enforcement and Compliance Assurance (OECA) to “strengthen enforcement of environmental violations
with disproportionate impact on underserved communities.” In response, OECA issued four directives:
• Strengthening Enforcement in Communities with Environmental Justice Concerns (April 30, 2021).
28
Regarding civil regulatory enforcement, this memo directs an increase in the number of facility
inspections in overburdened communities, enhancements to remedies, and an increase in
community engagement.
• Strengthening Environmental Justice through Criminal Enforcement (June 21, 2021).
29
This memo
directs better detection of environmental crimes in overburdened communities through eective
civil-criminal coordination on investigations and cases, improved assistance to crime victims, and
enhanced remedies sought in environmental crime cases.
• Strengthening Environmental Justice through Cleanup Enforcement Actions (July 1, 2021).
30
This memo
directs EPA’s cleanup enforcement sta to require responsible parties to take early and prompt
cleanup actions, press for more robust enforcement instruments, and increase cleanup oversight.
• Using All Appropriate Injunctive Relief Tools in Civil Enforcement Settlements (April 26, 2021).
31
This memo encourages use of the full array of policy and legal tools to ensure benets to aected
individuals and communities, including advanced monitoring, audits, electronic reporting, and posting
of compliance data.
Draft Strategy to Reduce Lead Exposures and Disparities in U.S. Communities
On October 28, 2021, EPA released the draft Strategy to Reduce Lead Exposures and Disparities in U.S.
Communities to lay out an all-of-EPA plan to strengthen public health protections and address legacy
lead contamination for communities with the greatest exposures.
32
EPA is seeking public comment
on this draft strategy through a public docket, hosting listening sessions, and targeting outreach to
communities that are disproportionately harmed by exposures to lead as well as other key stakeholder
28 Available at https://www.epa.gov/sites/default/les/2021-04/documents/strengtheningenforcementincommunitieswithejconcerns.pdf.
29 Available at https://www.epa.gov/system/les/documents/2021-07/strengtheningejthroughcriminal062121.pdf.
30 Available at https://www.epa.gov/system/les/documents/2021-07/strengtheningenvirjustice-cleanupenfaction070121.pdf.
31 Available at https://www.epa.gov/sites/default/les/2021-04/documents/
usingallappropriateinjunctiverelieftoolsincivilenforcementsettlement0426.pdf.
32 U.S. EPA, Strategy to Reduce Lead Exposures and Disparities in U.S. Communities, October 28, 2021, https://www.epa.gov/lead/draft-
strategy-reduce-lead-exposures-and-disparities-us-communities.
E.O. 13985 EQUITY ACTION PLAN: U.S. ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY
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groups, including Tribes, states, territories, local governments, non-governmental organizations, and
industry. To provide access for persons with LEP, EPA translated the draft strategy into 10 dierent
languages and posted them on EPA’s website.
PFAS Strategic Roadmap: EPA’s Commitments to Action 2021-2024
On October 18, 2021, EPA Administrator Regan released the agency’s PFAS Strategic Roadmap, which
lays out a whole-of-agency approach to addressing PFAS.
33
The roadmap sets timelines by which EPA
plans to take specic actions and commits to bolder new policies to safeguard public health, protect
the environment, and hold polluters accountable. EPA will strive to understand the challenges facing
individuals and communities grappling with PFAS contamination to understand their lived experiences
and determine the most eective interventions. As recommended by the NEJAC, EPA will meet with
aected communities in each EPA Region to hear how PFAS contamination aects their lives and
livelihoods. EPA will use the knowledge gained from these engagements to inform the implementation
of the actions described in the roadmap. The PFAS Strategic Roadmap is already available in Spanish and
is being translated into other languages to provide access for persons with LEP.
EPA Plan for Implementing the Policies and Directives of E.O. 13175:
Consultation and Coordination with Indian Tribal Governments
EPA is committed to honoring Tribal sovereignty and including Tribal voices in policy deliberations,
as called for in President Biden’s January 26, 2021, memorandum on Nation-to-Nation relationships
with American Indian and Alaska Native Tribal Nations. EPA has a long history of engagement and
consultation with Tribal governments. In 2011, it was among the rst federal agencies to issue a Tribal
consultation policy, and in the 10 years since the policy was issued EPA has conducted more than 680
Tribal consultations. Continued implementation of EPA’s Consultation Policy remains a top priority for
the agency as EPA strives to learn from its past consultations and ongoing engagements with federally
recognized Indian Tribes. This plan, which builds upon EPA’s existing policies and practices, identies
current and future actions the agency is taking to meet the directives of Executive Order 13175 and to
build on and strengthen its consultation policies and practices.
34
Oce of Water Action Plan: Strengthening the Nation-to-Nation Relationship with
Tribes to Secure a Sustainable Water Future
On October 14, 2021, EPA released an action plan to strengthen the agency’s partnership with Tribes and
Alaska Native Villages on water issues. The action plan focuses on promoting robust coordination and
meaningful consultation with Tribal nations; strengthening and expanding water governance in Indian
country; increasing infrastructure funding and capacity development; and honoring the federal trust
responsibility and protecting Tribal reserved rights related to water resources.
35
33 U.S. EPA, PFAS Strategic Roadmap: EPA’s Commitments to Action 2021-2024, October 2021, https://www.epa.gov/pfas/pfas-strategic-
roadmap-epas-commitments-action-2021-2024.
34 U.S. EPA, EPA Plan for Implementing the Policies and Directives of E.O. 13175: Consultation & Coordination with Indian Tribal
Governments, https://www.epa.gov/tribal/epa-plan-implementing-policies-and-directives-eo-13175-consultation-coordination-indian.
35 Ofce of Water, Strengthening the Nation-to-Nation Relationship with Tribes to Secure a Sustainable Water Future, October 2021,
https://www.epa.gov/system/les/documents/2021-10/2021-ow-tribal-action-plan_508_0.pdf.
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E.O. 13985 EQUITY ACTION PLAN: U.S. ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY
Oce of Land and Emergency Management Environmental Justice Action Plan
On January 5, 2022, EPA’s Oce of Land and Emergency Management (OLEM) released a draft
Environmental Justice Action Plan for public comment.
36
This draft plan covers projects and activities
intended to address land cleanup issues in overburdened communities across several programs,
including Superfund, Brownelds, Emergency Response, Solid Waste Management and Corrective
Action, and Underground Storage Tanks. The draft plan outlines strategies to enhance nearly two
dozen projects while addressing the need for stronger compliance, increased environmental justice
considerations in EPA regulations, and improved community engagement.
Ofce of Land and Emergency Management, Draft EJ Action Plan: Building Up Environmental Justice in EPA’s Land Protection and
Cleanup Programs, January 5, 2020, https://www.epa.gov/aboutepa/draft-environmental-justice-action-plan-epas-land-protection-and-
cleanup-programs.
36
