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CONTRIBUTOR
- President Joe Biden’s Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) significantly scaled up its enforcement and grantmaking activities related to environmental justice in 2023.
- The EPA’s 2023 enforcement statistics show that the agency increased its inspections in areas of potential environmental justice concern and that the dollar amount of judicial and administrative penalties assessed in such areas also reached recent highs.
- “EPA-funded researchers dredge reams of data to find a few trivial environmental differences between rich and poor communities and then blame the inconsequential differences on racism,” Steve Milloy, a senior legal fellow for the Energy and Environmental Legal Institute and a member of the Trump EPA transition team, told the DCNF.
The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) intensified its “environmental justice” agenda in 2023 in terms of enforcement and grantmaking.
EPA Administrator Michael Regan said in May 2023 that the agency has “built environmental justice into [its] very DNA,” and over the course of the year the agency significantly increased enforcement in specific areas across the country, while handing out hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars to environmentalist groups to pursue environmental justice projects. These developments reflect a broader effort by the EPA and Biden administration to infuse social justice ideology into bureaucratic functions, and a strategy to build political patronage by funding activist organizations with taxpayer dollars, experts told the DCNF.
“From day one, President Biden and EPA have been committed to delivering progress on environmental justice and civil rights, and ensuring that underserved and overburdened communities are at the forefront of our work,” an EPA spokeswoman told the DCNF. “The agency is ensuring that people who’ve struggled to have their concerns addressed see action to solve the problems they’ve been facing for generations. These efforts to integrate EJ and equity into all of EPA’s work is seen through the work of the Office of Enforcement and Compliance in its enforcement of environmental laws.” (RELATED: Shortlist For EPA’s Multi-Billion Dollar ‘Green’ Fund Features Groups With Deep Connections To Biden Admin, Dems)
In fiscal year 2023, more than 60% of federal inspections occurred in areas of potential environmental justice concern, reflecting a significant increase in both the total number and relative proportion of civil enforcement case conclusions in such areas compared to years past, the EPA enforcement data shows.
The estimated amount of pollution — measured in pounds — reduced, treated or eliminated by the EPA in potential environmental justice concern areas was lower in fiscal year 2023 than in fiscal year 2021, according to the EPA enforcement data. The 41.18 million pounds that the EPA estimates it handled in such areas amounts to less than one-third of the 137.84 million pounds that the Trump EPA recorded in fiscal year 2019.
While the amount of pollution that the EPA estimates it reduced, treated or eliminated was not exceptionally high, the agency’s actions resulted in an estimated $69.15 million worth of administrative and judicial penalties assessed in areas of environmental justice concern in fiscal year 2023, a number that is far greater than any figure recorded since fiscal year 2014, according to the enforcement statistics.
The EPA asserts that environmental justice can only be achieved when “everyone enjoys the same degree of protection from environmental and health hazards, and equal access to the decision-making process to have a healthy environment in which to live, learn and work.”
The Biden administration “wants to say that pollution is racist, in the same way that they want to say education is racist,” Mandy Gunasekara, who served as EPA chief of staff during the Trump administration, told the DCNF. “They are using this as a political tool that is not supported by legal precedent … The problem with this administration is that they lack a balance in their mission; they just want to grab headlines, and to grab headlines you need extremes, and one of the easiest ways to do that is via environmental justice, as we have seen. It’s the ultimate weaponization of industrial action.”
The EPA’s environmental justice agenda is part of a broader push by the White House, which sees the concept as key to “confronting longstanding environmental injustices” endured primarily by “marginalized, underserved and overburdened communities.”
“EPA-funded researchers dredge reams of data to find a few trivial environmental differences between rich and poor communities and then blame the inconsequential differences on racism,” Steve Milloy, a senior legal fellow for the Energy and Environmental Legal Institute and a member of the Trump EPA transition team, told the DCNF. “If minority communities suffer from anything, it’s poverty. Ironically, poverty is caused by EJ policies that ban manufacturing facilities and kill good-paying industry jobs.” (RELATED: EPA Bureaucrats Can Rake In Six-Figure Salaries While Mostly Working From Home, Report Finds)
The EPA’s environmental justice agenda is part of a broader push by the White House, which sees the concept as key to “confronting longstanding environmental injustices” endured primarily by “marginalized, underserved and overburdened communities.”
“EPA-funded researchers dredge reams of data to find a few trivial environmental differences between rich and poor communities and then blame the inconsequential differences on racism,” Steve Milloy, a senior legal fellow for the Energy and Environmental Legal Institute and a member of the Trump EPA transition team, told the DCNF. “If minority communities suffer from anything, it’s poverty. Ironically, poverty is caused by EJ policies that ban manufacturing facilities and kill good-paying industry jobs.” (RELATED: EPA Bureaucrats Can Rake In Six-Figure Salaries While Mostly Working From Home, Report Finds)
In addition to the enforcement aspect of EPA’s work on environmental justice, the agency has massive amounts of taxpayer dollars at its disposal to give to activist organizations that engage in their own environmental justice initiatives.
In December 2023, the EPA named the recipients of a combined $600 million in grants for environmental justice pursuits. Among the awardees were explicitly left-wing activist groups and incubators such as the Climate Justice Alliance and The Minneapolis Foundation, as well as Social and Environmental Entrepreneurs, which facilitates de facto get-out-the-vote efforts.
The money came from the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), President Joe Biden’s signature climate bill.
In April 2023, the agency shelled out a combined $177 million to a range of environmental groups to serve as “Environmental Justice Thriving Communities Technical Assistance Centers.” Some of those recipients, such as WE ACT for Environmental Justice and the Deep South Center for Environmental Justice, had previously supported the Biden administration’s climate agenda.
Under Biden, the agency’s environmental justice grantmaking has essentially served as a “political tool” that is “used to fund activism of the left,” Gunasekara told the DCNF. “That’s what this administration is using environmental justice for, and it is really unfortunate because it degrades the way that environmental justice is considered in the administration … The communities that really need EPA’s help, they don’t need more activists.”
In addition to the more than $700 million in environmental justice grants that the agency distributed in 2023, the EPA is also gearing up to hand out approximately $2 billion in so-called “community change grants.” The program, also endowed by the IRA, is “designed to deliver on the transformative potential of the IRA for communities most adversely and disproportionately impacted by climate change, legacy pollution and historical disinvestments,” according to the agency’s website.
“During 2024, environmental justice will be a means for the Biden administration to funnel money to poor communities for election purposes,” Milloy told the DCNF.
The White House did not respond to a request for comment.
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A cynical person might surmise the administration was trying to buy votes.
A more cynical person might surmise that lack of oversight by voters/media/FBI/courts is a green light to do more and more and more con jobs with a free pass. Another cynical person might conclude that one Party gets away with 95 to 99 percent of misdeeds with the other Party challengers facing unequal levels of scrutiny. Yet another cynical person might observe the slow- walk prosecution of Sen. Menendez (NJ) as a display of Party power to retain his senate votes in a narrow majority in the Senate. That’s not even getting to the slow-walk approach with Hunter. In the end though, it is the lack of concern and outrage that encourages more bad policy and law-breaking behavior. It is one of the many advantages of coopting the press and nothing in the First Amendment says anything about playing fair.
1. please, can any person close to “environmental” matters in the USA provide a list of the Top Ten EPA projects in 2023, ranked by $$$ spent?
2. Further, can any improvement as a result of that EPA involvement be described? (As an improvement to the environment, not to classes of people.)
3. Can it be shown whether that improvement would have happened in any case, had EPA decided not to be a player?
For the EPA, public value from public money seems a quaint old concept.
Geoff S
apparently it’s now forbidden to think in terms of benefit/cost
I’ve been involved with a couple of EPA issues over the years. The most recent was
a waste water discharge permit for a city’s waster water. The permit is issued thru
the state DEQ unit that operates under the EPA’s authority. These permits are a big deal. One
permit in that time frame was for a town on a large lake to build a new large waste water plant
which in turn caused a tax rate hike that forced a large percent of the towns residents
to move due to their inability to pay this new tax rate. The particular one I was involved with
ultimately led to the director of the state’s deq wastewater permit unit to commit suicide.
This is an ongoing issue that has a very large widespread effect on things such as water
quality both surface and groundwater. Here is a link that will put a bit color on this issue.
https://montanafreepress.org/2023/04/21/montana-deq-classifies-stretch-of-gallatin-river-as-impaired/
It seems that every river, but one, in Oregon is classified as impaired in some way.
Temperature is an impairment.
The rivers here in Montana are impacted in a number of ways. The NPK
nutrient load has increased with the growth in population over the past
50 yrs. The first dams on the Missouri River, Canyon Ferry, Hauser and
Holter have seen toxic algae blooms occur regularly in late summer for a number of years, it’s nasty stuff. The NPK is the least of the issue, the endocrine disruptors
along with pharmaceuticals that get pass thru the sewage then can’t be removed
by the treatment plants down stream. I would want to have to use water
from those sources.
I have some irrigated farm land that uses Missouri river
water and the moss blooms have increased over the past 30 yrs to the
point the ditch company has to shut down and dump some weed killer
in to clean it up cuz it clogs the ditch headgates which then shuts off
the pumps. I have over 50 yrs experience on that system and it
gets worse every year, A local town tried to force the ditch company
to take the sewage effluent but there was a large enough backlash
that killed it. For now.
I remember back in my Navy days in the early 70’s being
warned not to go swimming in the Ocean in San Diego because
Tijuana was dumping raw sewage into the sea which drifted north. I also
remember we could smell China a good 3 days away when going WesPac.
Yes and of course the “ biggy” , all those poor pitiful climate refugees screaming : “ it so hot down there!” Please your excellency Mr Biden sir sent me to Chicago in the winter, Si”
Funny though, the last time I was in Florida the state was over run with “ climate refuges” from Texas trying to escape the cold and no heat.
Russia needs more people- we can fly them to Siberia- they’ll love it there.
The Arctic is now fully iced up so you don’t have to fly them, they can walk.
For year 2023 Trading Economics estimates US Government Debt to GDP of 132%, that is higher than pandemics years 2020 and 2021 and higher than during the WW2 years 1942 to 1945.
I wonder when Biden started worrying about Racism. He was buddies with Robert Byrd so we can assume public money is being spent to buy votes and for no other reason.
At least Byrd seemed to mellow out in old age.
In one sense I can see why the Biden Administration wanted to wipe out debt completely for recent tertiary education-
Winemakers could save the world, one goon bag at a time (msn.com)
A full refund is entirely apt under the circumstances.
PS: The kids shouldn’t be paying anything in Oz either-
‘He’s a fake’: Details emerge of late Indigenous scholar’s heritage (msn.com)
Otherwise known as bleeding heart liberal code words for “spend more money”
Whenever you see the word “communities” preceded by adjectives that somehow don’t apply to the audience that the article is intended for, you can be sure it is a bleeding heart liberal that is writing it looking for tax dollar funding for a boondoggle. Ditto when using the word “Justice”. Justice is dispensed by courts, not by political agendas.
As an aside, Ever since American newspaper journalist Westbrook Pegler used the term “bleeding heart” as criticism of Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal policies in 1938, bleeding heart liberals hate those adjectives placed next to their political label of choice as well. So one would think they would wise up. But no.
bleeding heart = ischemic brain
We certainly need to protect the environment with due consideration for benefit/cost. And we certainly need justice based on laws. But environmental justice is pure politics and will do little either for the environment or justice.
Biden loves his EPADEI.
I got an email from Congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee. I’m not sure why because I don’t live in her district. But she bragged about getting $50 million for Texas Southern from the EPA to do environmental justice work. It came from the Inflation Reduction Act. Does anyone know what kind of work would require that much money for one University, and how would it reduce inflation?
On this day in 1964: The longest war the US was ever involved in began.
LBJ calls for ‘war on poverty’ in America, 60 years ago today
Kirkegaard, E. O. W. (2023). Systemic Racism Does Not Explain Variation in Race Gaps on Cognitive Tests. Mankind Quarterly, 64, 2.
Dire Straits has a great song about this: “Money for Nothing”
The purpose of all government spending is to buy votes.
It’s just that some of is it better disguised.
This started with Pres. Clinton creating whole programs for money shoveling to minority communities as rewards for busing (favored) voters to the polls with an exclusion from IG audit oversight–street money with alcohol and smokes handouts for votes was old hat at that point. It only got worse from there.