EPA Legal Tools to Advance Environmental Justice
View Publication: EPA Legal Tools to Advance Environmental Justice (pdf)
Overview
EPA Legal Tools to Advance Environmental Justice (EJ Legal Tools) is an updated and expanded compilation of legal authorities available to EPA for identifying and addressing the disproportionate impact of pollution on underserved and overburdened communities, including communities of color, Indigenous peoples, and low-income communities. EJ Legal Tools is intended to help EPA decisionmakers and partners understand their authorities to consider and address environmental justice and equity in decision-making, and to promote meaningful engagement. EPA Legal Tools builds on an earlier version, Plan EJ 2014: Legal Tools, which was released in 2011.
EJ Legal Tools highlights the environmental and civil rights statutes EPA implements to achieve the agency’s mission to protect human health and the environment for all communities and persons and to ensure that the environmental justice and equity agendas are integrated throughout the agency’s policies, programs, and activities.
EJ Legal Tools is not intended to be comprehensive and will be updated as needed. The document does not provide action-specific legal advice and is intended to foster a dialogue among EPA offices and programs to accelerate EPA efforts to advance environmental justice and equity.
EPA Legal Tools to Advance Environmental Justice: Cumulative Impacts Addendum (pdf)
The Cumulative Impacts Addendum builds on EPA Legal Tools to Advance Environmental Justice (EJ Legal Tools), which was released in May 2022. The Addendum is a compilation of legal authorities available to EPA for identifying and addressing cumulative impacts on communities with environmental justice concerns and other underserved populations, including communities of color, Indigenous peoples, and low-income communities.
In communities with environmental justice concerns, the combined exposures to a broad range of stressors (i.e., cumulative impacts) may often increase their vulnerability to environmental hazards, resulting in disproportionate environmental and public health harms and risks in those communities. Addressing cumulative impacts is an important tool to help protect public health in communities with environmental justice concerns and other underserved populations.
A product of the EPA’s Office of General Counsel, the Addendum identifies for EPA decisionmakers and partners a wide range of authorities that can be deployed to address cumulative impacts affecting communities with environmental justice concerns and provides some illustrative examples. The Addendum is not intended to be comprehensive and will be updated as needed. It does not provide action-specific legal advice and is intended to foster a dialogue among EPA offices and programs to accelerate EPA efforts to advance environmental justice and equity.