President Clinton signed Executive Order 12898 in 1994.
The executive order on environmental justice:
- created an interagency federal working group on environmental justice
managed by the EPA
- required federal agencies to develop environmental
justice strategies
- required research on human health or the environment to
include poor and minority communities
- required guidelines for subsistence
consumption of fish and wildlife
- required opportunities for public
participation and access to information
Federal agencies responded with environmental justice strategies
and the National Environmental Justice Advisory Committee (NEJAC)
was created to bring community, industry and government groups together to
develop solutions to environmental justice problems.
Free copies of federal environmental justice strategies and documents can be
obtained via the:
Efforts to support environmental justice through law have not been easy because
environmental justice does not fit neatly within either civil rights law or
environmental law.
The lawsuits legal groups have developed in partnership with environmental
justice groups have experienced successes
and failures.
Federal legal action on environmental justice has developed slowly. Several
reports indicate, though, that federal civil rights and environmental laws
could be applied to environmental justice:
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