EPA's Smart Growth Strategy

"An ever-growing number of communities are recognizing the benefits of protecting the environment while encouraging economic growth and are seeking EPA's assistance. To better coordinate and focus our smart growth efforts and make the best use of our resources, the Office of Policy, Economics, and Innovation recently led an intra-Agency collaborative process to develop a new Smart Growth Strategy. This Strategy will ensure that our actions help states and localities revitalize more brownfields and reduce the impact of development on air and water."

- EPA Administrator Mike Leavitt

The full memo from EPA Administrator Michael Leavitt (PDF) (1 pg, 113 K, About PDF)

On November 19-20, 2003, OPEI convened a workshop of 35 EPA staff representing each program office and 8 regional offices to create an EPA Smart Growth Strategy. The goal of the retreat was to identify 5 areas where the Agency should focus its smart growth efforts to achieve the maximum environmental results. The areas were selected based on the following criteria:

Measurable environmental improvements would result from work in this area
Success would result in real change at a scale that would be meaningful
Activity would be consistent with EPA’s Federal role in the issue

The following document outlines the Smart Growth Strategy by describing each target issue, its impact on the environment and community health, and the primary strategies to address each target issue in a focused and coordinated way. Following this description, a list of proposed projects is presented that help achieve the strategies. These projects are multi-disciplinary, address the needs of federal, state and local governments, and seek to work with diverse partners to best support smart growth.

Read the complete EPA Smart Growth Strategy (PDF) (9 pp, 28 K, About PDF)

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EPA's Smart Growth Strategy

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