Implementing the executive order of environmental justice at the US Department of Energy

摘要

Environmental justice has grown out of a grassroots movement aimed at forging links between environmental decision-making, civil rights, and social justice. Public interest in environmental justice translates into the application of community organizing, coalition-building, and legal strategies developed in the civil rights movement to address a disproportionate burden of risk and exposure to pollution borne by low-income and minority communities. Currently, public interest activities in the US are most concerned with siting polluting facilities in low-income and minority communities, with the slow pace of contamination clean-up in these communities, and with the way in which environmental planning decisions are made. The federal response to these activities has included several pieces of proposed Congressional legislation (none of which have been enacted to date), and an Executive Order issued in February 1994 (Executive Order 12898, Federal Actions to Address Environmental Justice in minority Populations and Low Income Populations), directing each agency of the executive branch to determine whether administrative changes are needed to promote environmental justice goals. This paper reports on efforts undertaken to date by the US Department of Energy (DOE) to implement the Executive order. While DOE faces relatively few decisions about siting new facilities outside its current installations, in recent years the Department has begun a massive environmental restoration and waste management challenge. In addition the Department is responsible for carrying out the nation's energy policy, which allocates economic and environmental benefits and burdens.