Pollution in Overburdened and Underserved Communities

Executive Order No. 14008, Tackling the Climate Crisis at Home and Abroad (January 27, 2021), requires the Attorney General to “ensure comprehensive attention to environmental justice throughout the Department of Justice” and, more specifically, “to develop a comprehensive environmental justice enforcement strategy, which shall seek to provide timely remedies for systematic environmental violations and contaminations, and injuries to natural resources[.]”.

The Associate Attorney General in turn issued the Comprehensive Environmental Justice Enforcement Strategy (“Strategy”). A primary principle of the Strategy calls on EES and other DOJ components to seek to prioritize cases that will reduce public health and environmental harms to overburdened and underserved communities. The Strategy further counsels EES and other DOJ components in the proper enforcement of applicable federal laws to pursue litigation that will achieve meaningful results in addressing these harms.

Pursuant to Exec. Order No. 14008 and the Strategy, EES works closely with EPA and other agencies to identify and address environmental justice concerns and assess whether available enforcement tools would address such concerns. For cases that raise environmental justice concerns, the case team may conduct community engagement as part of case development. Community engagement may be conducted in a number of ways, such as by holding open meetings with the public, meeting with community leaders, or circulating information regarding issues related to a case. Engagement allows the case team to share appropriate information on how the government is proceeding in the case, allows the community to share information about the impact of the alleged violations on the community, and allows the case team to learn any concerns the community may have, and recommendations from the community for addressing the violations or related concerns. Among other things, information gleaned from such community meetings can assist the government in developing appropriate remedial measures to address the alleged violations. Another form of community engagement the case team may use is to seek the affected community’s comments (during a required public comment period) on a proposed settlement before it becomes final.

The DOJ Office of Environmental Justice and EPA have conducted training and prepared guidance documents to assist attorneys in identifying environmental justice issues and conducting outreach and community engagement.