Environmental Justice

The U.S. Department of Energy's environmental justice activities include the following areas: Orders, and Compliance Assistance.

Orders

Orders are directives outside of laws and regulations that establish requirements for environmental protection and energy use.

Executive Orders

• Executive Order 12898: Federal Actions to Address Environmental Justice in Minority Populations and Low-Income Populations
   
  Executive Order (E.O.) 12898 directs each Federal Agency to "make achieving environmental justice part of its mission by identifying and addressing, as appropriate, disproportionately high and adverse human health or environmental effects of its programs, policies, and activities on minority populations and low-income populations," including tribal populations.

Compliance Assistance

Information Notices, Information Briefs, Safety Bulletins, and Guides published by DOE; guides and tools published by other agencies.

DOE Policy & Guidance Documents

• Environmental Justice Strategy
• Executive Order 12898, Federal Actions to Address Environmental Justice in Minority and Low-Income Populations
• Environmental Justice Five-Year Implementation Plan
• Environmental Justice Five-Year Implementation Plan – Second Annual Progress Report
• Memorandum of Understanding on Environmental Justice Executive Order 12898

Additional Guidance Documents

• Environmental Justice: Guidance Under the National Environmental Policy Act issued by the Council on Environmental Quality

Compliance Tools

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) assembled the following web-based geographic information systems (GIS) mapping tools that can assist NEPA practitioners in defining, delineating, and profiling communities with environmental justice concerns.

• EJView includes data from multiple factors that may affect human and environmental health within a community or region, including: demographic, health, environmental, and facility-level data.
• NEPAssist facilitates the environmental review process and project planning in relation to environmental considerations. The application draws environmental data dynamically from EPA regions' GIS databases and provides immediate screening of environmental assessment indicators for a user-defined area of interest.
• Health Landscape allows users to create simple displays of health data concerning neighborhoods communities, states or any other area of interest.
• Health Professional Shortage Areas (HPSA) by State and County from the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) defines HPSAs as having shortages of primary medical care, dental or mental health providers. HPSAs may be geographic (a county or service area), demographic (low income population), or institutional (comprehensive health center, federally qualified health center or other public facility).
• EPA's Local Emergency Planning Committee (LEPC) Database provides over 3,000 listings, by location, of LEPCs that work to understand chemical hazards in the community, develop emergency plans in case of an accidental release, and look for ways to prevent chemical accidents.

Training

• Environmental Justice: DOE Federal employees can access the one-hour training course through the Online Learning Center (OLC) directly from Employee Self Service (ESS) without a separate username and password.