Environmental Justice
Federal Facilities Environmental Restoration Dialogue Committee (FFERDC)
Key Environmental Justice Links:
National Environmental Justice Advisory Council (NEJAC)
Environmental justice is the fair treatment and meaningful involvement of all people regardless of race, color, national origin or income with respect to the development, implementation and enforcement of environmental laws, regulations and policies. EPA has this goal for all communities and persons across this nation. It will be achieved when everyone enjoys the same degree of protection from environmental and health hazards and equal access to the decision-making process to have a healthy environment in which to live, learn and work.
National Environmental Justice Advisory Council
EPA chartered the National Environmental Justice Advisory
Council (NEJAC) on September 30, 1993, as a federal advisory committee that provides independent advice, consultation and recommendations
to the EPA Administrator on matters related to environmental justice.
Federal Facilities Working Group
EPA tasked NEJAC to identify key issues of concern to environmental justice communities, including tribes, regarding activities at federal facilities, and formulate a set of national policy recommendations to address those concerns. In 2000, NEJAC formed the Federal Facilities Working Group (PDF) (3 pp, 34K, About PDF), which consisted of 11 ethnically and geographically diverse members representing tribal, state and local governments; private industry; community groups; academia; and non-governmental organizations.
Emphasizing the national scope of their effort and the need for inter-agency participation, a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) (PDF) (3 pp, 481K, About PDF) was co-signed in December 2000 between the Department of Interior (DOI), Department of Defense (DoD), Department of Energy (DOE), and EPA's Office of Solid Waste and Emergency Response (OSWER). Each agency agreed to support the NEJAC Federal Facilities Working Group's efforts.
Environmental Justice and Federal Facilities Report
The report, Environmental Justice
and Federal Facilities: Recommendations for Improving Federal Facility
Efforts with Environmental Justice Communities (PDF) (94 pp, 1.4MB, About PDF), provides recommendations to EPA and other federal agencies
on how to improve communication, cultural sensitivity, health services,
lack of resources and stakeholder influence in the decision-making
processes at federal facilities in communities striving to reach
environmental justice.
Transmittal Memo for OSWER Response to the National Environmental Justice Advisory Council (NEJAC) Report on Federal Facilities (PDF) (2 pp, 70K, About PDF) and headquarters and regional responses to the recommendations (PDF) (25 pp, 857K, About PDF) made by NEJAC in its report on Environmental Justice and Federal Facilities dated October 2004.