Environmental justice is the fair treatment and meaningful involvement of all people regardless of race, color, national origin, or income, with respect to the development, implementation, and enforcement of environmental laws, regulations, and policies. This goal will be achieved when everyone enjoys:
- The same degree of protection from environmental and health hazards
- Equal access to the decision-making process to have a healthy environment in which to live, learn, and work
Environmental justice is one of the very important topics studied in the Supplemental Draft EIS and Supplemental Final EIS. The Biden-Harris administration passed the most recent executive order in April 2023 that specifically explores opportunities to extend the study to communities beyond Black, Indigenous, and People of Color and Low-Income Population. It also includes study of past harms on the environmental justice communities.
The project team has initiated effort focused on environmental justice community identification, outreach, input gathering, and analysis to evaluate avoidance, minimization, and mitigation of the disproportionately high or adverse impacts on the environmental justice communities. This study is ongoing to encompass as much input as we receive from the communities and will be presented in the Supplemental Draft Final Supplemental EIS.