AEPA 190B12017 United States Environmental Protection Agency FY 2011-2015 EPA Strategic Plan Cross-Cutting Fundamental Strategy: Working for Environmental Justice and Children's Health Work to reduce and prevent harmful exposures and health risks to children and underserved, disproportionately impacted low-income, minority, and tribal communities, and support community efforts to build healthy, sustainable green neighborhoods. Advancing environmental justice and protecting children's health must be driving forces in our decisions across all EPA programs. The underlying principles for this commitment are reducing exposures for those at greatest risk and ensuring that environmental justice and children's health protection are integral to all Agency activities. Minority, low-income, and tribal/indigenous populations that are vulnerable to environmental pollution are at risk of having poor health outcomes. These vulnerabilities may arise because of higher exposures to pollution in places where they work, live, and play, and/or diminished abilities to withstand, cope with, or recover from exposure to environmental pollution.1 Children are often most sensitive to environmental stressors. Research has demonstrated that prenatal and early life exposures to environmental hazards can cause lifelong diseases, medical conditions, and disabilities.2 Environmental justice and children's health protection will be achieved when all Americans, regardless of age, race, economic status, or ethnicity, have access to clean water, clean air, and healthy communities. To accomplish this, EPA will use a variety of approaches, including regulation, enforcement, research, outreach, community-based programs, and partnerships to protect children and disproportionately impacted, overburdened populations from environmental and human health hazards. Our success in advancing environmental justice and children's health protection will result from fully incorporating these priorities into all of our activities across each of the strategic goals of the Agency. We anticipate that our leadership in advancing environmental justice and children's health protection will inspire and engage a broad spectrum of partners in the public and private sector to do the same. To achieve this goal, EPA will: 1. In our regulatory capacity, implement the nation's environmental laws using the best science and environmental monitoring data to address the potential for adverse health effects from environmental factors in disproportionately impacted, overburdened populations and vulnerable age groups. EPA programs will incorporate environmental justice and children's health considerations at each stage of the Agency's regulation development process and in implementation and enforcement of environmental regulations. 2. Develop and use environmental and public health indicators to measure improvements in environmental conditions and health in disproportionately impacted communities and among vulnerable age groups. 3. In our work on safe management of pesticides and industrial chemicals, take into account disproportionately impacted, overburdened populations and vulnerable age groups and encourage the use of "green chemistry" to spur the development of safer chemicals and production processes. 4. Apply best appropriate scientific methods to assess the potential for disproportionate exposures and health impacts resulting from environmental hazards on minority, low income and tribal populations, women of child-bearing age, infants, children, and adolescents to support EPA decision-making, and develop the tools to assess the risk from multiple stressors. FY 2013 Action Plan: Working for Environmental Justice and Children's Health 1 ------- 5. Fully engage communities in our work to protect human health and the environment. EPA will align multiple community-based programs to provide funding and technical assistance to communities to build capacity to address critical issues affecting children's health and disproportionately impacted, overburdened populations. 6. Work with other federal agencies to engage communities and coordinate funding and technical support for efforts to build healthy, sustainable, and green neighborhoods, and work with residents to promote equitable development. FY 2013 Action Plan: Working for Environmental Justice and Children's Health This Action Plan lists the specific actions that the EPA will carry out in FY 2013 to achieve the principles of the Strategy for Working for Environmental Justice and Children's Health described in the FY 2011- 2015 EPA Strategic Plan. Annual action plans will be developed for each year of the Plan. Interaction with States and Tribes 1. Take additional steps to communicate and work with the states in critical activities to enhance consideration of environmental justice and children's health. In addition to their roles as regulators states are also critical partners in non-regulatory activities that promote EJ and CH (Supports Principle 1). • In FY 2013, Regions will enhance communications about EJ and CH and will work together with their states through Continuing Environmental Programs (CEP) grant work plans or National Environmental Performance Partnership System (NEPPS) agreements to identify shared opportunities that can yield significant benefits for Environmental Justice and/or Children's Health, e.g., lead poisoning, asthma, air and water pollution from concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs), and multiple or cumulative exposures to air pollution. These communications will emphasize (1) improving environmental conditions and public health in minority, low-income, tribal, and other vulnerable communities, and/or (2) advancing children's health. By September 30, 2013, each Region will submit to the Office of Environmental Justice (OEJ) and Office of Children's Health Protection (OCHP) a brief narrative summary describing its EJ and CH communication efforts in working with states through CEP grant work plans or NEPPS agreements. Regulatory, Enforcement and Training Actions 2. Build on previous efforts to implement Action Development Process (ADP) Guidance for considering EJ and CH when developing regulations related to the protection of human health (Supports Principles 1 and 4). To supplement ADP training opportunities: • Develop a webinar-based training available to all EPA staff, but targeting regulation developers, to enhance understanding of children's environmental health and its application within EPA's regulatory process by September 2013. • Establish an intranet EJ in Rulemaking web page and training materials to increase awareness of guidance and other support materials that will promote early consideration of EJ in the action development process by January 2013. 3. Work with EPA enforcement staff and manage interagency National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) workgroup to develop tools to support the consideration of children's health and environmental justice by all federal agencies (Supports Principles 1, 4, 5, and 6). FY 2013 Action Plan: Working for Environmental Justice and Children's Health ------- • The Office of Children's Health Protection (OCHP) will partner with the Office of Federal Activities (OFA) to integrate children's health considerations into EPA's NEPA and Section 309 reviews of federal environmental impact statements (EISs) and other NEPA documents. In FY 2013, each Region will participate in and propose children's health considerations for at least one NEPA review. • Produce and distribute training materials, including best practices, for federal government and external stakeholders that advance consideration of environmental justice in the NEPA review process government-wide. Environmental Justice 4. EPA will apply recommendations identified in FY 2012 for improving and advancing EPA's work with communities, especially those that have underserved and overburdened populations, in one pilot community or area in each Region and optimize available training resources for Agency staff in how best to work in and with communities (Supports Principles 5 and 6). • Convene two meetings of senior Agency officials to review and discuss the progress of the Regional community pilot projects and the lessons learned from their implementation. Target meeting dates of February 1, 2013 and August 1, 2013. • By September 30, 2013, compile: (1) a brief summary of the ten Regional pilots; (2) the recommendations identified in FY 2012 that each pilot was designed to test; (3) the lessons learned implementing the Regional community pilots; and, (4) a limited set of recommendations for integrating promising practices from the pilots into appropriate Agency programs as results from the pilots become available and recommendations are reviewed and approved by senior Agency officials. • Compile promising practices identified by the Regions in FY 2012 into a resource for Agency community practitioners by April 2013. • Review existing staff training opportunities for working with communities and develop a training plan to fill any gaps as warranted by September 30, 2013. 5. NPMs will promote the use of "EJ Legal Tools and Activities to Promote Environmental Justice in the Permit Application Process" and collect examples and best practices of their use and impact (Supports Principle 1). • By September 30, 2013, NPMs will collectively identify 50 examples of the use of EJ legal tools to more fully ensure that its programs, policies, and activities fully protect human health and the environment in minority and low-income communities. • By September 30, 2013, NPMs will collectively identify 20 best practices illustrating the use of the EPA activities to promote EJ in the permit application process. Children's Health 6. Assess the results of the OCHP and Regional Schools Coordinators' focused outreach and technical assistance to identify opportunities to increase adoption of EPA's guidelines and programmatic school environmental health tools (Supports Principle 5). • By September 2013, schools staff will participate in at least 20 outreach forums (webinars, conferences, technical assistance sessions, trainings, etc.) and evaluate effectiveness of activities to direct the FY 2014 outreach plan. FY 2013 Action Plan: Working for Environmental Justice and Children's Health 3 ------- 7. OCHP will monitor the implementation of Agency-wide Children's Environmental Health training at headquarters and Regional offices by tracking completion and offering group and web-based sessions. Work to reach 10% completion rate by September 2013. Training will be revised as appropriate and made available to federal, state, tribal, and local partners as well as non- governmental stakeholders by September 2013 (Supports Principles 5 and 6). 1 WHO (2006). Principles for Evaluating Health Risks in Children. Environmental Health Criteria 237 EPA (2003). Framework for Cumulative Risk Assessment. Risk Assessment Forum, US Environmental Protection Agency. EPA/630/P-02/001F. NEJAC (2004). Ensuring Risk Reduction in Communities with Multiple Stressors: Environmental Justice and Cumulative Risks/Impacts. National Environmental Justice Advisory Council. 2 U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (2008). Linking Early Environmental Exposures to Adult Diseases. National Institute of Health. National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences. Research Triangle Park, NC. http://www.niehs.nih.gov/health/docs/linking-exposures.pdf. FY 2013 Action Plan: Working for Environmental Justice and Children's Health ------- |