EPA enviro justice policy called inconsistent

The Environmental Protection Agency has been "inconsistent" in presenting its new environmental justice policy to local governments, according to the Detroit News.

Unveiled in February, the EPA draft policy was designed to address complaints by environmental and civil rights advocates that state agencies place a disproportionate burden on minority neighborhoods when granting permits for factories, incinerators, waste sites and other pollution sources. EPA Administrator Carol Browner last month said the policy is based on the 1964 Civil Rights Act and would address "disparate impacts" on minority communities and would not apply to low-income, non-minority communities.

The Detroit News reports that an EPA official in California last week suggested during a presentation that the policy also would apply to communities of people with "low incomes."

But EPA officials in DC and California "flatly denied" that the EPA's Karen Scheuerman "implied income would be involved" in the new policy. Moreover, they said the portion of her speech to state officials regarding the enviro justice policy was completely canceled for lack of interest (David Mastio, Detroit News, 8/24).

Meanwhile, the paper also reported that a proposed $175 million steel mini-mill "involving 200 high-paying jobs" near Flint, Mich., will be scrapped if the EPA continues with an investigation into the plant's "environmental civil rights impact."

Dunn Industrial Group Inc. said if the investigation goes forward, it would build the plant in Toledo, OH, "where a challenge isn't as likely" under EPA environmental justice policies. The EPA on 8/17 decided to continue with the investigation (David Mastio, Detroit News, 8/26).