Who does the EPA protect? [View all]

When President Joe Biden announced his Justice40 Initiative, a week after he took office in January 2021, it had been almost 30 years since a U.S. president had signed an executive order related to environmental justice. He directed the federal government to allocate 40 percent of the benefits of climate, clean energy, and other investments to disadvantaged communities “marginalized by underinvestment and overburdened by pollution.”

Biden’s initiative was a kind of rejoinder to President Bill Clinton’s earlier executive order, which directed federal agencies to identify and address the adverse human health and environmental effects of their actions on minority and low-income areas. While much toxic pollution was curbed in the decades in between, for the parts of the country with the highest concentrations of industrial activity, things hadn’t improved at all. More industrial companies set up shop. Dump sites swelled. Contaminated rivers became more contaminated. Lead accumulated in the soil. Biden’s Justice40 Initiative gave his new Environmental Protection Agency administrator, Michael Regan, the task of not looking away.



https://grist.org/project/accountability/biden-environmental-justice-epa-tour-pollution-revisited-cancer-alley-houston-jackson/