Attorney General Launches New Office of Environmental Justice

The United States continues to look more and more like a Kurt Schlichter novel, such as People’s Republic. Description from Amazon below.

America’s growing political and cultural divisions have finally split the United States apart. Now, as the former blue states begin to collapse under the dead weight of their politically correct tyranny, a lethal operative haunted by his violent past undertakes one last mission to infiltrate and take out his target in the nightmarish city of Los Angeles, deep in the heart of the People’s Republic of North America.

On to this week’s continued rolling out of Schlichter’s prophecies.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Thursday, May 5, 2022

Department of Justice

Office of Public Affairs


Justice Department Launches Comprehensive Environmental Justice Strategy

Attorney General Launches New Office of Environmental Justice

Attorney General Merrick B. Garland was joined by EPA Administrator Michael S. Regan today in announcing a series of actions to secure environmental justice for all Americans. In addition to launching a new Office of Environmental Justice within the Justice Department, Attorney General Garland also announced a new comprehensive environmental justice enforcement strategy to guide the Justice Department’s work and issued an Interim Final Rule that will restore the use of supplemental environmental projects in appropriate circumstances.

“Although violations of our environmental laws can happen anywhere, communities of color, indigenous communities, and low-income communities often bear the brunt of the harm caused by environmental crime, pollution, and climate change,” said Attorney General Garland. “For far too long, these communities have faced barriers to accessing the justice they deserve. The Office of Environmental Justice will serve as the central hub for our efforts to advance our comprehensive environmental justice enforcement strategy. We will prioritize the cases that will have the greatest impact on the communities most overburdened by environmental harm.”

“EPA and the Justice Department’s partnership to protect overburdened and underserved communities across America has never been stronger,” said EPA Administrator Regan. “This environmental justice enforcement strategy epitomizes the Biden-Harris Administration’s commitment to holding polluters accountable as a means to deliver on our environmental justice priorities. Critical to that is the return of Supplemental Environmental Projects as a tool to secure tangible public health benefits for communities harmed by environmental violations.”

Consistent with President Biden’s Executive Order on Tackling the Climate Crisis at Home and Abroad, Associate Attorney General Vanita Gupta issued a comprehensive environmental justice enforcement strategy to guide the Justice Department’s litigators, investigators, and U.S. Attorneys’ Offices nationwide to advance the cause of environmental justice through the enforcement of federal laws. Developed by the Environment and Natural Resources Division (ENRD) in partnership with EPA, the strategy will ensure that the entire Department is using all available legal tools to promote environmental justice.

The Justice Department also launched its first-ever Office of Environmental Justice (OEJ) within ENRD today. This new office will be a critical resource as the Justice Department implements the new comprehensive enforcement strategy. Assistant Attorney General Todd Kim named Cynthia Ferguson, an experienced ENRD attorney with more than a decade working on environmental justice issues, as Acting Director.

Finally, the Justice Department issued an Interim Final Rule today that will restore the use of supplemental environmental projects in appropriate circumstances and subject to guidelines and limitations set forth in a separate memorandum issued by the Attorney General today. For decades before 2017, EPA and ENRD relied upon such projects to provide redress to communities most directly affected by violations of federal environmental laws. For this reason, they are particularly powerful tools for advancing environmental justice. The Justice Department’s Interim Final Rule invites public comment on the new guidelines and limitations, including to inform any future changes to the Justice Department’s approach.

Topic(s): EnvironmentComponent(s): 

Environment and Natural Resources DivisionOffice of the Associate Attorney GeneralOffice of the Attorney General

Press Release Number: 22-472

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Tom Halla
May 8, 2022 6:07 am

Prosecuting green NGOs for abuse of process would do more to help poor communities.

BallBounces
May 8, 2022 6:09 am

The idea of citizens being viewed as equal under the law has gone completely out the window. Now it’s equity 24/7.

MarkW
Reply to  BallBounces
May 8, 2022 7:33 am

The left desires a world without consequences. So instead of letting people suffer from the consequences of their own choices, the left seeks to create equal outcomes, regardless of past actions.

Reply to  MarkW
May 8, 2022 8:08 am

And wind up with *everyone* suffering from the consequences of of the choices of “some”.

czechlist
Reply to  MarkW
May 8, 2022 4:21 pm

nope. this is just a “humanitarian” excuse to grab more control and win votes. dims don’t give a rat’s a$$ about anyone except themselves or anything other than power. they need the issues to accuse their opponents of not caring. what issue have they ever resolved?

Rich Davis
Reply to  BallBounces
May 8, 2022 8:21 am

Umm, hello? All citizens are equal but some citizens are more equal than others, duh! What are you, some kind of racist, sexist, homophobic, trans-phobic, climate denier?

John Garrett
May 8, 2022 6:12 am

A Modest Proposal:

There’s a foolproof equitable method to obtain perfect “environmental justice”— just get rid of ALL the jobs. Problem solved.

n.n
Reply to  John Garrett
May 8, 2022 7:11 am

Yes, practice labor (e.g. practical and actual slavery) and environmental (e.g. Green, equity) arbitrage.

MarkW
Reply to  n.n
May 8, 2022 11:10 am

Have government set up a universal basic income, that way nobody will need to work.
Anyone who doesn’t recognize the above as sarcasm, is beyond hope.

Spetzer86
Reply to  John Garrett
May 8, 2022 8:00 am

I think they’re working on getting rid of the food and fuel first. Jobs should follow right along.

Reply to  John Garrett
May 8, 2022 11:12 am

I didn’t think it possible that any president could outperform President Trump on the sheer magnitude of transformative change in such a short period of time! I’ve got to hand it to President Biden, despite his being mentally diminished, he has the Gold medal already in hand in this event after less than a year and a half in office!

I sincerely hope Trump is offered a rematch. Just erasing all JB’s handiwork alone will be a 150% of Trump’s former achievement. I fear that the rest of the horn-snouted right on the political veldt will simply stop this, but will cement in what’s already there.

Jeff Alberts
Reply to  Gary Pearse
May 8, 2022 5:42 pm

I sincerely hope Trump is offered a rematch. Just erasing all JB’s handiwork alone will be a 150% of Trump’s former achievement.”

Has to be done by Congress, not Executive Order. The latter will just as quickly be undone by the next president. So hopefully, if the 2022 midterms are as monumentous as we hope, Congress can get rid of these fascist agencies, and pass laws against all this woke nonsense that is dragging the country right into the outhouse.

David Elstrom
May 8, 2022 6:15 am

Supplemental environmental projects—just another euphemism for Democrat Marxist looting.

n.n
Reply to  David Elstrom
May 8, 2022 7:14 am

Redistributive and retributive change through single/central/communist/socialist/fascist monopolies and practices.

AWG
Reply to  David Elstrom
May 8, 2022 8:50 am

I think it has more to do with the quality of this generation’s law school graduate. This generation is amoral, stupid, lazy, irrational, doesn’t have the language to process Right or Wrong – so they go after regulatory and process crimes. How do you prosecute an actual moral crime when there is an actual victim when you don’t value any moral code or can’t tell Right from Wrong?

Today, people are screaming in the streets because they were told that they would lose some “right”. It doesn’t matter what manufactured “right” is being threatened, its the trigger of losing a “right” that is supposed to justify violence.

Lies are just a simple restating of the argument. Reality has been replaced by Narrative and unsubstantiated Perceptions.

Similarly in “environmental justice”. Note the requirement for a modifier to the word “justice” because genuine justice is not what is at stake here. It is the imposition of some process crime, a regulation, a witch hunt, and even if that is too difficult to prosecute, then some hypothetical and unseen harm to a protected political class because the process is often the punishment and the payoff (bribes, grift, extortion) is what really justifies the effort.

Dave Fair
Reply to  AWG
May 8, 2022 2:01 pm

+42X42^42

fretslider
May 8, 2022 6:24 am

I know that the new woke ideology has an hierarchy of victimhood based on identity

No doubt like me, you’re at the back of the queue….

Gregory Woods
Reply to  fretslider
May 8, 2022 9:26 am

Old, white, libertarian, and UnWoke – what can I say?

MarkW
Reply to  Gregory Woods
May 8, 2022 11:12 am

Whatever you want to say, make sure you say it while it is still legal to do so.

Reply to  MarkW
May 8, 2022 2:07 pm

Might I please join the queue.
At the back, of course, somewhere in Mongolia, I s’pose.
Pretty please?

Auto
Looking to defensive items. Hedges are, I think, allowed, still in London. Just.

Reply to  Gregory Woods
May 8, 2022 11:00 pm

And male.

observa
May 8, 2022 6:44 am

Well you can’t have a Ministry of Truth without a goon squad show trials and gulags.

DMA
May 8, 2022 6:50 am

If I remember right the Trump administration pursued efforts that reduced more outstanding super fund sites than all previous administrations. That shows consideration for “environmental justice”. These current efforts are political in nature and nonproductive in fact.

MarkW
Reply to  DMA
May 8, 2022 7:34 am

If the problems were solved, many leftists groups would lose their reason for being.

fretslider
Reply to  MarkW
May 8, 2022 8:11 am

Which is why a green solution is guaranteed to create several more problems

Bryan A
Reply to  fretslider
May 8, 2022 8:26 am

And a vast number of low paying low skilled jobs

Dave Fair
Reply to  Bryan A
May 8, 2022 2:05 pm

Filled by illegal aliens.

Reply to  Bryan A
May 8, 2022 2:09 pm

And a shedload of useless regulations, too, I suspect. . . .

Auto

DipChip
May 8, 2022 6:54 am

After the coming election the Congress, both houses, need to line up a list of all the nonsense new regulations and executive orders that have been executed and implemented; then laws need to be written and passed to rescind all the new regulations and executive orders and made ready for the next President to Sign into Law when he assumes office. Hopefully sooner than Jan,20 2025.

Spetzer86
Reply to  DipChip
May 8, 2022 8:01 am

Just shut it all down and start the trials.

2hotel9
May 8, 2022 6:55 am

More leftarded, America hating shyte from the Democrat Party. Enemies of the human race.

Reply to  2hotel9
May 8, 2022 12:29 pm

If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face – for ever.”

-George Orwell

2hotel9
Reply to  Johne Morton
May 10, 2022 3:06 am

Problem is I am old now. Want to stomp on me? Ain’t going to end well for stompers.

May 8, 2022 6:55 am

A false accusation is itself an injustice. Such is the unsound attribution of harm, in respect to warming, to emissions of carbon dioxide and other GHGs. The huge benefits of utilizing natural deposits of hydrocarbons are ignored, and fictional harms are charged. Buckle up.

n.n
Reply to  David Dibbell
May 8, 2022 7:17 am

Yes, environmental, social, politically congruent justice anywhere is injustice everywhere.

Reply to  David Dibbell
May 8, 2022 7:20 am

Thanks, a very good point.

Scissor
May 8, 2022 6:56 am

Some raccoon just the other night ate most of the goldfish in my pond. Can I get some environmental justice?

Reply to  Scissor
May 8, 2022 7:26 am

Scissor:

As the International President of Goldfish Lives Matter Inc., I can advise you that we tirelessly advocate 24/7 for justice for fish of colour around the globe. Do you have the name and address (and colour) of said raccoon?

Bryan A
Reply to  Alastair Brickell
May 8, 2022 8:30 am

This may be the one
comment image
Hard to tell as it was wearing a mask at the time

Scissor
Reply to  Bryan A
May 8, 2022 9:28 am

I’m impressed by their fishing skills and ability to see in the dark. I have a hard time catching them to clean the pond and I use a net.

At least I only spent about a dollar for 3 fish, not hundreds like if they had been Koi.

Dave Fair
Reply to  Bryan A
May 8, 2022 2:09 pm

He was also a criminal identified in Guardians of the Galaxy; shouldn’t be too hard to find.

Virgil
Reply to  Scissor
May 8, 2022 7:40 am

Careful, you might not want to let them know you have a body of water on your land. Do all types of fish have equal access to your pond? Why do you only have one type of fish in your pond? Sounds like systemic racism.

Jeff Alberts
Reply to  Virgil
May 8, 2022 8:17 pm

Hydrophobia.

Rich Davis
Reply to  Scissor
May 8, 2022 8:48 am

Dear Mr/Ms/Mx Scissor,
Thank you for confessing to your violation of Section 502(7) of the Clean Waters Act. You are now in queue for a midnight visit from an EPA SWAT Team.

Based on our latest arbitrary definition of the Waters of the United States, your “pond” is deemed a navigable body of water if a paper lantern holding a 1g votive candle can be successfully floated in it. As such, no human abode is permitted within a 2-mile (3.2km) radius. Regrettably we have no alternative but to demolish your house and any other structures within the buffer zone of the aforementioned body of water.

If you qualify for an exemption from the law due to your race, ethnicity, or preferred gender, kindly contact your local DemSoc Party headquarters to have our goon squad called off.

Thank you for using an NSA monitored device to facilitate our enforcement efforts. Have a nice day.

Reply to  Rich Davis
May 8, 2022 10:18 am

Well done!

Reply to  Rich Davis
May 8, 2022 10:36 am

comment image

Dave Fair
Reply to  TEWS_Pilot
May 8, 2022 2:15 pm

Whip me, beat me, make me write bad checks.

Dave Fair
Reply to  Rich Davis
May 8, 2022 2:15 pm

Fantastic! 2022 Demsoc Party replaces 1984 Ingsoc Party.

ResourceGuy
Reply to  Scissor
May 8, 2022 11:30 am

Better not try it yourself or they will start an investigation starting with your Party affiliation and comments.

Reply to  Scissor
May 9, 2022 10:39 am

Justice for some a meal for others.

May 8, 2022 7:00 am

Apparently the Left has no concept of cause and effect.
Mother nature does not choose areas to flood based on the color of the residents’ skin.

Those folks are in these areas BECAUSE the property values and rent are very low as a result of those local weather problems

Anything the “Justice” department can do is actually only an excuse to expand the Administration’s mindless EQUITY program (equal outcomes) that will have NO impact on the actual causes of the “disadvantaged” populations’ distress. They can only treat the symptoms.

Any effort to either address the environmental problems of an area or to compensate the residents must come from Congress and not an agency of the Executive Branch.

Virgil
Reply to  George Daddis
May 8, 2022 7:43 am

Curious how Martha’s Vineyard, Miami Beach, California and Hawaii qualify as communities in need.

DipChip
Reply to  George Daddis
May 8, 2022 7:44 am

Equity programs, in the long run, magnify what ever problem they are intended to solve. Over time everyone learns that failure is the food of success, and someone covering for your problems is the road to total failure.

Dave Fair
Reply to  George Daddis
May 8, 2022 2:18 pm

“Sue and Settle” has been a favorite technique of those in the Deep State and NGOs to get what they want by bypassing Congress.

May 8, 2022 7:11 am

Supplemental environmental projects (SEPs) are as old as environmental enforcement. They are a reasonable tool to redirect enforcement penalties into useful, locally beneficial projects rather than send monies into the governmental back hole. SEPs customarily are options selected by the violators and directed and carried out by the violators. They are not usually linked to so-called “environmental justice.”

The vague notion of environmental justice arose from the sense that businesses intentionally located their facilities, especially waste management, in poor and minority communities. With limited exceptions, that was shown to be untrue. Older process industries were originally built on suitable, largely vacant land, often beside waterways or railroads for transporting materials and products. Neighborhoods then grew around those facilities, often built by those very industries to house their own employees. As those facilities aged, so did the neighborhoods, often transitioning to poor occupants due to low costs of real estate. The lands were often flood prone and subject to noise, odors and occasional upsets from the nearby facilities. Then along came “environmental justice” to try and right the alleged wrongs.

In the ensuing years, business and industry in the U.S. have dramatically changed their designs and operations to reduce emissions and waste and comply with applicable regulations. Rarely do “polluters” (a pejorative, since most legitimate businesses don’t intentionally foul their local air, land and water) cause disproportionate harms to unsuspecting poor and minority neighbors. All along, “environmental justice” had been a cause seeking a problem.

This new office will be just another bloated government bureaucracy trying to justify its existence. To do so, they will be forced to broaden the meaning of environmental justice to include practically anything they can rationalize.

MarkW
Reply to  Pflashgordon
May 8, 2022 7:38 am

In the eyes of the left, all people are not just equal before the law, but they are completely equal in all aspects.
This explains their eagerness to declare any difference between groups as proof of racism, sexism, whateverism.

Kenji
Reply to  Pflashgordon
May 8, 2022 8:45 am

How many refineries or airports will be shut down … because they are located in disproportionately underserved communities? Because they cause harm to BIPOC communities? Make no mistake … it’s coming. The radical leftists won’t be happy till they’ve completely destroyed all fossil fuels … and America

Rud Istvan
May 8, 2022 7:12 am

A ‘pity’ (NOT) that Biden and Garland do not know the first rule of holes:
when in one wanting out, first stop digging.
Won’t end well for them.

Reply to  Rud Istvan
May 8, 2022 10:43 am

Biden doesn’t ‘know’ anything. As for the rest of the administration, they know they’re unpopular, so there’s nothing for it except to heave as much progressive crap against the walls as possible, safe in the knowledge that the ‘Miracle Whip faction of the GOP’ (h/t Kurt Schlichter) won’t do anything to undo the damage.

Dave Fair
Reply to  Rud Istvan
May 8, 2022 2:21 pm

Won’t end well for any of us, Rud.

n.n
May 8, 2022 7:15 am

Throw another baby on the barbie, it’s over? Wicked [solution].

Reply to  n.n
May 8, 2022 7:55 am

This has nothing to do with abortion (your hobby horse)

whiten
Reply to  Andrew Wilkins
May 8, 2022 9:43 am

What about institutionalized legalized compulsory pedophilia in kindergarten!

(and many many other older children that have not even reached yet the first stage puberty)

Strange world indeed.

Jeff Alberts
Reply to  whiten
May 8, 2022 8:46 pm

This post has nothing to do with that either.

MarkW
May 8, 2022 7:31 am

Once again, the left gets history wrong, in their desperate desire to paint those they hate as the ultimate in evil.

As the left tells it, factories moved into minority neighborhoods with the intention of polluting the land and killing minorities.

In reality, the factories came first, then poor people moved in first because the land was close to where they worked, and secondly because the presence of the factory made the land cheap.

Dave Fair
Reply to  MarkW
May 8, 2022 2:23 pm

Then the socialists ran industry out of Western countries.

May 8, 2022 7:32 am

“Climate denial” will become an actionable crime. Michael Mann will sit in judgment of us all. That’s not sarcasm. It’s a scenario with real possibility.

Some idiot will write a paper about ‘The Intersectionality of Climate Change’ or some such sociological BS. Women, “communities of color,” and “the poor” will be the chosen victims, oppressed by a warmer climate. Oppressed by the ‘climate deniers.’.

“Climate denial” will be equated to violence against the DOJ’s cast of victims. As a prominent speaker of truth to nonsense, Anthony Watts will become a target of prosecution. Likewise Willie Soon.

Not reality yet. But the clouds are visible on the horizon.

Richard Page
Reply to  Pat Frank
May 8, 2022 9:48 am

The southern wall will be to keep people in, not to keep others out.

whiten
Reply to  Pat Frank
May 8, 2022 9:54 am

MAGA movement and as a group is already publicly declared and labeled as worst terrorism,
By no other than AL Biden.

Reply to  Pat Frank
May 8, 2022 10:37 am

‘Some idiot will write a paper about ‘The Intersectionality of Climate Change’ or some such sociological BS.’

I’m sure it’s already been written. I’ll just check my unread stack of alumni magazines and confirm.

Reply to  Frank from NoVA
May 8, 2022 1:42 pm

Your prediction made me look, Frank.

Guess what. Google Scholar produced Climate Change through the lens of intersectionality as the first academic hit.
Apparently, An intersectional approach, developed within critical feminist theory, is advantageous. Isn’t science wonderful.

The article has been cited 537 times.

I couldn’t resist letting the authors know that their article intersected with Propagation… and what that did to their thesis.

May 8, 2022 7:36 am

There is no end of jobs created in the enviro supervisory field. Governments in general are highly supportive of departmental addition and enlargement, and the application of “sin taxes” to pay for those jobs. It has to do with Pournelle’s Iron Law of Bureaucracy and the secret desire of government to always be a larger and larger part of the economy. Missing from their definition is “productive economy”….
https://www.jerrypournelle.com/reports/jerryp/iron.html

John Hultquist
Reply to  DMacKenzie
May 15, 2022 8:35 pm

DMac,
 Your reference to Jerry Pournelle is the first I’ve seen in many years. Younger readers might want to check out the wiki entry.
I was a regular subscriber to Byte and read his blog “Chaos Manor.”
Jerry Pournelle – Wikipedia

Walter Sobchak
May 8, 2022 7:52 am

From the Declaration of Independence:

“HE has erected a Multitude of new Offices, and sent hither Swarms of Officers to harass our People, and eat out their Substance.”

Reply to  Walter Sobchak
May 8, 2022 10:33 am

Big George also imported and quartered foreign mercenaries to enforce his laws at the expense of the colonists. Of course, America’s progressives, who can find any half-baked justification for their programs in the ‘penumbras’ or our Constitution, take a literal interpretation of the 3rd Amendment wrt the government’s annual importation of millions of foreigners, most of whom are ‘domiciled’ at public expense.

Richard Page
Reply to  Frank from NoVA
May 8, 2022 2:48 pm

As opposed to the American revolutionaries who imported and quartered French mercenaries to overturn said laws at the expense of the colonists? Sorry but I simply couldn’t resist – too easy!

Dave Fair
Reply to  Walter Sobchak
May 8, 2022 2:28 pm

Oh, you mean that dusty old document written by white male slaveholders. Its not relevant in this advanced society of enlightenment.

May 8, 2022 7:57 am

Time for “John Galt”-esque industry strikes. If the green idiot-in-chief and his band of bandits want to denigrate industry and jobs, the productive people need to show the fans of the green grifters the alternative – what the ultimate result of the climate shakedown would be.

fretslider
Reply to  PCman999
May 8, 2022 8:27 am

Watch out for the ‘Thompson Harmonizer’…

Tekov Yahoser
May 8, 2022 7:58 am

Why not the EPA? Subpoena power.

Bar Code
May 8, 2022 7:58 am

Where I live, the poor subsidize solar panels on the roofs of the relatively well off, and live in apartments built without natural gas due to greenies in local government.

Spetzer86
May 8, 2022 7:59 am

I’ve heard you can’t fire federal workers all that easily, but you can move them. I’m thinking one of the little Alaskan towns up near the Artic would probably be best for monitoring climate change.

John Garrett
Reply to  Spetzer86
May 8, 2022 11:02 am

I like it.

Some residents of the swamp went berserk when the Trump Administration insisted that some employees of the Agriculture Department be relocated near farms.

Dave Fair
Reply to  Spetzer86
May 8, 2022 2:29 pm

Polar Amplification, bureaucrat style.

Coach Springer
May 8, 2022 8:02 am

So, they’re going to sue to put refineries and wind turbines in all the tony suburbs and Martha’s Vineyard? That would be cool.

May 8, 2022 8:10 am

FEDERAL???

Is “Environmental Justice” in the Constitution?

Rich Davis
Reply to  Joao Martins
May 8, 2022 8:55 am

It’s in a shadow of a penumbra of an emanation.

Rich Davis
Reply to  Rich Davis
May 8, 2022 9:04 am

My sarcastic comment may have been too obscure. Here is my reference

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penumbra_(law)

whiten
Reply to  Rich Davis
May 8, 2022 10:32 am

Penumbra_(law)

Not sure,
but by the looks of it, if there is any value at all, to consider, in such “acrobatics”, as to support some legislation or policy of some kind,
it definitely is or must be clearly outside the hospice and hands of the Federal Legislature and Federal Government… and SCOTUS too!

just saying. 🙂

cheers

Rich Davis
Reply to  whiten
May 8, 2022 11:58 am

It has been an outrageous fabrication and demonstration of the raw judicial usurpation of power, for going on 60 years.

The Left doesn’t accept the principle of limited government. For them, the totality of society must be subject to government. That is the meaning of totalitarianism—

Tutto nello Stato, niente al di fuori dello Stato, nulla contro lo Stato.
—Benito Mussolini

(Everything within the State, nothing outside the State, nothing against the State)

If the Constitution doesn’t say what they want it to say and they don’t have the support of enough of the people to amend the Constitution, then they brazenly usurp the Constitution. It is their Will to Power.