>> [inaudible] welcome here in a moment.
Okay.
>> We're just doing a sound test.
Can you all hear us?
>> Hi, you're in the conference room?
Yes, we can hear you.
>> Fantastic.
>> Woo-hoo!
Welcome.
>> Well done.
Well done.
>> Welcome back to the office.
For those of you who are already joining us,
we're allowing the rest of our participants to join in.
While you're doing that, adjust your screen for optimal viewing.
What I recommend --
-- is going to the top right of your screen
where you have the little three dots, a box speaking.
You'll be concentrated on that person,
we do ask that you keep your mic and your camera off.
And this will have live transcription,
and it is being recorded.
And we'll get started in just a minute here.
>> Do you want me to share the opening slide?
[inaudible] Until Cynthia --
>> Yeah, that would be great, Gwen.
Thank you.
>> Yes, thank you.
>> So it is 2:03.
We're going to get started
and we'll let folks continue to join.
I want to welcome everybody.
This is the Department of Justice, Environment
and Natural Resources Division,
and we have folks joining us not only within in ENRD
and throughout the department, but our federal family partners,
and state and local and tribal partners as well,
so we're thrilled to have you here.
This session is our EJ, Environmental Justice Overview,
The History of the Environmental Justice Movement,
the Legal Landscape and DOJ's Role
in Addressing Current Challenges.
This session kicks off a multipart webinar series
on environmental justice and climate change.
We have a another session on climate change the science
and legal foundations on May 5th,
a tribal legal landscape overview on May 10th,
and a larger series of webinars May 17th to the 19th.
You're welcome to contact your colleagues in ENRD
for more information [inaudible] outside of ENRD.
Today, we have three outstanding speakers today.
I'm going to introduce just briefly
but we'll get fuller bios later in the in the series but we have
with us Cynthia Ferguson, who is ENRD senior litigation counsel
for environmental justice, Robin Morris Collin,
the senior adviser to the administrator
for the Environmental Protection Agency.
She's the senior advisor
for environmental justice, I should say.
And Gwendolyn Keyes Fleming.
She's a partner at DLA Piper and advises the industrial sector
on environmental justice issues.
This session is going to go till 3:30.
We're going to take questions in the last 15 minutes or so.
You're welcome to put those questions in the chat.
I'll be monitoring that and letting Cynthia and Robin
and Gwen know about your questions,
and of course we look forward to their presentation.
Welcome again, and Cynthia, I'll turn it over to you.
>> Great. Thank you so much, Jennifer, and thrilled
that everyone could join us today for this session.
I think you are in for a wonderful treat.
As Jennifer said, we've got two extraordinary here guests here
with us today, so before I introduce Robin
and Gwen more formally, I wanted to take a few minutes
to begin this session by talking about something
that I think I consider to be sort of foundational,
and that's the intersection of environmental justice
and DOJ's mission, so my goal, again, is to be very brief
in setting the stage for this webinar session,
and I hope that it resonates not just with DOJ,
but also with our, as Jennifer said, our state, local,
and tribal partners who have joined us today
or who may be watching the replay.
So as you can see from the slide,
there are five general elements to DOJ's mission statement,
broken down in the bullet points, and I usually think
of the mission in context of environmental justice.
If you take a holistic view of communities that are living
with environmental injustices, we might find any number
of these DOJ mission elements that are relevant
or that intersect with the concept
of environmental justice, but as you can see,
I highlighted just a few key words of the mission.
First, enforce the law.
Then ensure public safety.
But I really wanted to focus a little bit more
on the last bullet point, which is ensure fair
and impartial administration of justice for all Americans.
I think to truly achieve this mission statement,
we have to include the pursuit of environmental justice
in what we do, and many of you probably remember,
those from ENRD, the Environment Natural Resources Division,
remember several years ago when Vernice Miller-Travis,
really well-respected EJ advocate, came and she spoke
with us at one of our training sessions, and she talked
about the role of DOJ attorneys in issues
of societal injustices.
She focused on the civil rights movement as being one
of the first and most prolific occurrences
where she saw DOJ attorneys travel around the country
in order to protect people who were in danger,
and she mentioned, individuals like Nicholas Katzenbach,
as a leading historical example
of how devoted DOJ attorneys put themselves on the line to fight
for the rights of marginalized people,
and she also shared something --
well, many things that she shared, were just very profound.
She said that for those who come
out of the civil rights movement, as she did,
they think about the attorneys in DOJ is being the people
who would put themselves in harm's way and in
between communities and those who would do them harm,
and so as she spoke to us in that room years ago, she was --
she knew she was addressing attorneys
from the environment division of DOJ,
and not the Civil Rights Division, and that those
in the room were certainly not
around during what she considered
to be the pivotal period in the racial justice, history
and constitutional history of our country, but she said,
nevertheless, that's how communities feel
about the Department of Justice.
And we know they don't see DOJ
as separate divisions or components.
It's we are all one DOJ, and she really, I think,
expressed this sentiment so powerfully.
She said it's not a building.
It's not an aggregation of concrete.
It's a group of people who have fought the good fight
with the tools at their disposal, and we, you,
have fought the good fight to protect those
who have been vulnerable, so vulnerable, overburdened,
underserved communities of color, low-income communities
and tribal communities,
living with environmental injustices are looking to us
to fulfill our mission, and so as I transition
to introduce our speakers more formally,
I just want to leave you with this one last thought
and that is, as I think about environmental justice,
environmental justice, it's not an initiative.
It is a call to action that does not stop
until the mission is accomplished.
So with that, I'm going to introduce --
I'll read the bios for Professor Collins and Gwen
and then I will turn the mic over to Sir Robin,
so as Jennifer said, Professor Robin Morris Collins is Senior
Advisor for environmental justice
in EPA's office of the administrator.
She advises EPA Administrator Regan as the agency works
to advance environmental justice and civil rights in communities
that continue to suffer
from disproportionately high pollution levels,
including low-income communities and communities of color.
Previously, the Norma Paulus Professor of Law
at Willamette University College of Law,
Robin joined EPA just earlier this year.
She was the first US law professor
to teach sustainability courses in a US law school and served
as the founding chair
of the legislatively created Oregon Environmental Justice
Task Force, which has done some really fabulous, fabulous work.
Then, our other esteemed guest,
Gwen Keyes Fleming was a partner at DLA Piper.
She advises a wide variety of business, institutional
and organizational clients on all aspects
of environmental policy, government relations,
enforcement, defense litigation, special investigations
for private and municipal clients.
Gwen spent more than 20 years in the public sector, serving both
as elected and appointed officials at the state
and local levels, as well as in various branches
of the federal government.
She's served as a principal legal advisor for immigration
and customs enforcement at Department of Homeland Security,
and also as the Chief of Staff
to the Environmental Protection Agency during the
Obama administration.
Gwen was also -- also served
as EPA Region 4 Regional Administrator,
where she was responsible for establishing
and implementing environmental policy, including the principles
of environmental justice for eight southeastern states,
including six federally recognized tribes.
And Gwen is also currently working with a former colleague
of ours, Quentin Pair on the ABA's --
I think is the environmental justice committee,
but I'll let Gwen tell you more about that, when she presents,
but with that, welcome, Robin and Gwen,
and I will pass the mic over to Robin.
>> Thank you so much, Cynthia.
And welcome to all of the attendees today.
It is an honor to be here and to be presenting
on this particular topic to you.
Especially want to thank Cynthia
because she was the very first person outside of EPA to reach
out to me, and I'm really pretty young and EPA years.
I've only been here in DC and at EPA for two months.
So with that, I want to begin a talk
that really builds upon my previous academic career.
I did include in the materials a chapter
which is largely a history of environmental justice,
and I'll turn to the history first, and noting at the outset
that the history
of environmental justice is a history of a movement.
It's not a history of a statute.
It's not like other legal history.
It is really the history of a movement
that is being written into law as we speak.
So to begin in the United States, environmental justice,
environmental racism,
environmental equity are all terms that have been used
to describe a social movement uniting low-income
African-American, Native American, Asian/Pacific Islander
and Latino communities.
We'll call these environmental justice communities,
and they are united in challenging the distribution
of environmental burdens and benefits based upon race.
Race is an iconic social structure,
a construct deeply embedded in US history
and in contemporary law.
It's also embedded in our politics and our institutions,
and even though race has no immutable genetic foundation,
at least according to the Human Genome Project,
US law and policies have made fundamental distinctions
on the basis of race.
Current social inequities in income, health, housing,
transportation, and access to clean water
and healthy food have their origin in deliberate political,
economic and social decision making that treated both nature
and environmental justice communities as sacrifice zones,
and these approaches to vulnerable communities
and to nature have destabilized our environment
and our communities, and the most pernicious legacy
of this history remains in our land, air,
water and in the bodies of people
who are most closely connected to the earth,
including inherited genetic consequences of trauma
to the land, and the cultures
of environmental justice communities.
For many years, most of its history in fact,
racial segregation
and race-based discrimination was US law at the local,
state and federal levels and it affected private, financial,
insurance, and real estate practices, and over time,
those practices became customary
and shaped the landscape of our communities.
If you haven't read it,
I recommend the book The Color of Law.
In it, Richard Rothstein documents how American cities
using the power of municipalities over housing,
intentionally segregated American cities beginning
in the 1920s, shaping the conduct of banks,
insurance through redlining, and real estate agencies.
Public zoning and public services placed the path
of waste and pollution deliberately,
into EJ communities already isolated by law and policy.
Industrial and business decisions followed those
footprints of the governmental agencies
and policies situating streams of pollution and waste
where environmental justice communities live,
work, play and learn.
Business decisions about benefits and burdens
of development discounted the value of lives
in environmental justice communities,
depositing the waste and toxins of development
into these enclaves and into the bodies of the people
who live there, and in this way, racism transformed landscapes,
polluted air, and water and all living forms.
Racism shaped the places where we live, work and play.
This pattern of governmental and business decision making
that burdened environmental justice communities continues
into the present, and indigenous people have also played a unique
role in the environmental justice movement.
Genocide of indigenous people and relocation far
from ancestral land was part of us territorialism.
Tribes resisted that expansion and continued
to fiercely protect their sovereignty,
their lands, and their culture.
Indigenous communities have also felt pressure
to continuously accept hazardous waste.
For example, you can consider Yucca Mountain in Nevada,
which was named as a potential site
for long-term nuclear waste.
These kinds of waste disposal decisions place pressure
on environmental justice communities in the US
and globally to accept waste, and with it, the exposures
that come to the community.
Native American lands have also been the site of illegal dumping
from outside sources, a practice
that is sometimes colloquially known as midnight dumping.
The relationship of indigenous people to their environment,
their understanding of local knowledge
and their human rights are all violated
when the US environmental laws fail to address this dumping.
Many of the early environmental justice protests began
as protests over waste siting, transfer, treatment and storage,
and these issues persist,
in many environmental justice communities
in the US and globally.
Extreme weather events will increase with climate change,
and as they do, they spread hazards that were once confined
to environmental justice communities
to the general population with disastrous consequences for all
as hurricanes, floods, droughts and landslides,
fires all increase in intensity and frequency exposure
to these wastes released by these disasters, spread hazards
to people, all people and the environment.
So the origins of the US environmental justice movement
begin as protests based upon racial distinctions
in our public policy.
As the US began formulating an environmental policy,
on a separate track and a later time, by the way,
than the civil rights movement.
The US EPA was formed, for example, in 1970,
and it became the lead governmental agency
on the environment, and the EPA was unprepared to engage cities
or address racial discrimination even though both
of them were obviously embedded
in the fabric of the environment.
Despite overwhelming evidence
of a racially disproportionate exposure
to environmental hazards,
the mainstream environmental movement
in the US remained predominantly white,
middle to upper middle class and did not embrace
or support the growing environmental justice movement.
In 1990, several environmental justice organizations sent a
scathing letter to the, quote,
group of 10 national environmental organizations,
the big greens, criticizing their monocultural perspective
on environmentalism, their lack of racial and ethnic diversity
in their membership, staffs, and boards of directors
and their blindness to the plight of people
of color struggling against environmental racism.
Similarly, the civil rights movement didn't address issues
of environmental -- urban environmentalism,
even though these issues had been raised
in the early formative years.
The rise of community right to know law,
Toxics Release Inventory dramatically increased community
awareness of the unequal distribution
of environmental harm and their public health risks,
but these new environmental laws
and policies did not protect environmental justice
communities even [inaudible] this became known.
EJ found no friend in the courts.
In the US, perhaps more so than anywhere else in the world,
it's traditional to seek redress of wrongs through litigation,
but regrettably, environmental justice communities have rarely
found vindication in court for several reasons, including lack
of adequate legal protection
for disproportionately burdened communities
under US anti-discrimination law, and limited access
to legal representation.
By contrast, mainstream environmental organizations
such as Sierra Club and the Natural Resources Defense
Council have been able to make use of environmental statutes
that permit citizen enforcement
such as the Clean Water Act and Clean Air Act.
Furthermore, access to judicial forms is prohibitively expensive
for poor communities, and adversarial models
of litigation focusing on two stakeholders
such as the government
and an offender often exclude community
involvement altogether.
Finally, when a remedy requires further litigation
to enforce it, it isn't empowering
to the community left behind.
While environmentalists were winning in court,
environmental justice claims rarely succeeded,
and the failure to find an adequate remedy
in court has forced environmental justice
communities to mobilize in other ways
to challenge unequal environmental treatment,
and those other ways include protest and policy research.
As I said, many of the early environmental justice protests
were over waste siting, waste transfer,
waste treatment and storage.
In addition, important research studies,
public policy research studies by government, nonprofits
and academics validated community claims
about underlying racism and its impacts on communities of color.
So in the readings that I gave you, I provided much more
of the history of the key protests, but I'll just note
that in the beginning in 1982, there is a particular protest
in Warren County in North Carolina, over a PCB,
polychlorinated biphenyl landfill,
and it's worth hearing the story of this one because it's so --
this pattern is repeated so often.
So this landfill was located in a majority African-American town
with high homeownership rates, and the waste dumped
in this landfill was soil laced with PCBs
from 200 miles of state highways.
The state of North Carolina decided to deposit it in an area
where the greatest concentration of African-Americans lived,
even though it was unsafe due
to a sandy soil and high water table.
Several hundred protesters gathered including national
civil rights activists to bring attention to this issue
for the very first time.
They were of course arrested, and protesters then began
to call for studies of environmental racism,
and that call was heard.
So then we've got a series of very important formative,
public policy-based research studies.
I'll give you a few of them.
In 1983, the year after the Warren County protest,
the US General Accounting Office did a study that revealed three
out of four commercial hazardous waste sites in the southeast
of the United States, were located
in predominantly African-American communities,
even though African-Americans made up only one-fifth
of the entire population.
Subsequent studies identified the specific fact
that industry avoided communities that were more able
to resist these unwanted land uses.
both government and business sought
out environmental justice communities lacking
in financial, scientific, technical and other resources
that would have enabled them to resist or to participate
in the decision making processes regarding citing
of polluting facilities in their neighborhood.
I say all this to say we know where these communities are,
and we know where these facilities are,
and they are located together for a very specific reason.
In 1987, the United Church of Christ commissioned
for racial justice issued the first national study,
to correlate waste facilities and demographic characteristics,
something that you can now do on EJ screen, which we'll talk
about a bit more later, but it's a very important tool
that the EPA has developed and placed free online.
The study in 1987 was entitled Toxic Waste and Race,
and it found that race was the most significant factor
in determining where waste facilities were located
to a 99.9% certainty nationally.
Among other findings, the study revealed that three
of five African-Americans and Hispanic Americans --
that was the term used by the study then --
lived in communities with one
or more uncontrolled hazardous waste sites,
as did half of the Asian/Pacific Islander Americans
and Native Americans.
By the way, a follow up study was done in 1994
and concluded this trend had worsened.
A couple more studies because they indicate
where EJ has focused.
In 1992, a study by the National Law Journal called Unequal
Protection uncovered significant disparities in the way
that US EPA enforced its law
in environmental justice communities.
White communities saw faster action, better results
with the imposition of stiffer penalties on perpetrators
than environmental justice communities.
In 1994, the first real legal response from government came
as President Clinton signed Executive Order 12898
That's 12898.
It was signed in 1994.
President Clinton directed federal agencies to identify
and address the disproportionately high
and adverse human health or environmental effects
of their actions on minority and low income populations.
These became the two key components
of environmental justice analysis, disproportionate,
high, and adverse human health or environmental effects,
and the focus was minority and low income --
those are the terms used --
minority and low income populations.
Executive Order 12898 also ordered the federal agencies
to develop a strategy
for implementing environmental justice, and three,
to promote non-discrimination in federal programs
that affect human health and the environment,
as well as to provide minority
and low income communities access to public information
and public participation.
This was, as I say, the first governmental public policy
statement in favor of environmental justice.
It has proven durable, even if implementation has been uneven,
and from it, I think, you see these two core principles
that I'll talk about later as essential for lawyers, one,
disproportionate adverse impact analysis.
This is far easier for us to do now because we have some
of the online tools that we'll talk about,
such as environmental justice green,
and a way to engage communities, especially minority
and low income communities that have been left
out of the promise of equal environmental protection,
to engage them in robust and meaningful public participation.
I will just note one other study that was done as late
as February 2018 that was even under the Trump administration.
EPA confirmed that a focus on poverty to the exclusion
of race may be insufficient to meet the needs
of all burdened populations.
I think this is an extremely important point to emphasize
about race and income.
Income does not eviscerate or eliminate all
of the negative effects of racism.
Therefore, when we look
at disproportionate high adverse impacts,
income and race are important as we think about what is happening
to the lived experience of communities.
Both of these things are important.
So let's talk about a new relationship, and I'll move
on towards the end of my remarks.
We are in a new relationship with government.
The environmental justice has important champions
in leadership positions in the government.
So for example, on his very first day in office,
President Biden issued Executive Order 13985.
This was 2021-13985.
It's called advancing racial equity,
and support for underserved communities
through the federal government.
In issuing this order, President Biden said, and I'll quote,
our country faces converging economic, health,
and climate crises, that have exposed
and exacerbated inequities.
While the historic movement
for justice has highlighted the unbearable human cost
of systemic racism, it is therefore the policy
of my administration, that the federal government should pursue
a comprehensive approach to advancing equity for all,
including people of color and others
who have been historically underserved, marginalized
and adversely affected
by persistent poverty and inequality.
That policy has been carried forward at EPA by Michael Regan,
the 16th administrator of US EPA,
who says that EPA has a responsibility to pursue justice
as we jointly confront environmental
and climate challenges with our federal, tribal,
state and local partners,
including through the vigorous enforcement of civil rights.
In our strategic plan at EPA, we have done something
for the first time in our history,
which is to add two cross-cutting across-the-agency
goals in our strategic plan.
One is environmental justice, and the other is
to pursue climate change.
Our EPA's equity action plan is available online,
and I encourage you to take a look at it, but I did want
to highlight one or two important pieces
of these -- this action plan.
Number one, the plan calls for EPA
to develop a comprehensive framework
for considering cumulative impacts
in relevant EPA decisions that operationalize the framework
in EPA's programs and activities.
This is an important first foundational step
because instead of regulating in a landscape that is anchored
in racist public policy, we are seeking to uncouple
that historical landscape from our regulatory actions,
and instead base our regulatory actions on the lived experience
of environmental justice communities and all communities.
I mention all communities,
because all communities are entitled to the equal protection
of the environmental laws.
The fact is that some communities have been left out,
and to be left out of that promise is to be exposed
and vulnerable to the worst dangers and hazards
that our industrial society has been able to produce.
A couple of our other initiatives
as an action commitment is to develop the capacity
of communities to act for themselves,
and this involves our grants-making opportunities
and other opportunities, including technical assistance
to make sure that communities are empowered to speak
for themselves, which has long been part
of the environmental justice movement.
A couple of other ideas is to strengthen
and support participatory science.
Participatory science is science that is led by the people
who live in a place and is accountable
to the people who live in a place.
These are just some of the important action plans
that we have committed to at the agency,
so together with political leadership,
a committed action plan, there is one more important step
that has changed for environmental justice
in this landscape, and that is money.
For the first time,
environmental justice communities have financial
commitments to back promises of help.
As you know, ARPA, the American Rescue Plan Act will provide $26
billion in fiscal recovery funds to state and $16 billion
to counties and cities with a population of over 50,000.
In addition to that,
the bipartisan infrastructure law will put $1 trillion
into infrastructure all over this nation, and together,
ARPA and BIL will invest many, many billions of dollars
into areas that have been plagued by neglect, and worse.
So in conclusion, let me say we are building towards a new
shared mental model of environmental protection,
shared not just within the federal government,
but a shared mental model that we hope will spread
to the other partners with whom we do work,
and that mental model is to uncouple our work
from a landscape that has been shaped by racist public policy
and move together towards accountability
to our communities, all of our communities,
for their lived experience.
Lawyers have a role to play.
Lawyers may not always be in the heroic, visible position
that sometimes was the case under the Civil Rights Act,
but lawyers in this transition
to environmental justice must cultivate
to important competencies,
disproportionate adverse impact analysis --
and I know Gwen is going to talk more about that --
and also the understanding
of what meaningful robust engagement
of communities looks like.
And to do this, well, lawyers must be prepared to ask
at each stage of decision making,
how these core competencies might shape their work.
In addition, lawyers for are governments will need
to participate in the work
of creating a whole-of-government approach,
so that when we go into communities
who do not see their communities in the same silos as we do,
we come prepared to offer help and not simply
to say what we cannot do.
A key part of this nascent work is to ask, how should we think
about environmental justice disproportionate adverse impact
analysis in the work that we do?
If you'd like a thoughtful, provoking example of how
to do that, consider the New York State Senate bill 8830
which just passed -- let's see.
Today is Tuesday -- last week,
requiring that environmental impact address the cumulative
effects on disadvantaged communities and can be the basis
for denying a permit in that community.
Last thought, as lawyers, we should recognize discretion.
We have discretion in the legal authorities and tools
that we presently employ to do environmental protection,
and where we have discretion, I asked you to use that discretion
in favor of communities that have been so left out,
and so exposed for so long.
The EPA will publish in the upcoming two weeks, I hope,
an updated version of legal tools for environmental justice
that will also consider the role of cumulative impacts in it,
so I know that you have lots of work in your webinar,
but I urge you to pay close attention to these things,
disproportionate adverse impact analysis,
the robust meaningful engagement of community,
and the environmental justice legal tools.
Thank you so much for your patience,
and especially thank you, Gwen, as you wait for me to finish.
I look forward to the question and answers.
Over to you, Gwen.
>> Thanks, Robin.
I was going to say you were taking me back to law school.
I'm sitting here taking notes as you're giving new information.
So Professor, I appreciate it, and let me be one of the first
to also congratulate you on your appointment to EPA,
and it's an agency that I love.
I'm thrilled to see that you're there with so many friends,
and here's to hoping they get that AA position
that they are looking for dedicated
to environmental justice and equity.
That may be something else we could talk in the group
about later, and love to see you nominated for that.
Just going to put that out there in the space.
Well, good afternoon, everybody.
My name is Gwen Keyes Fleming.
Hopefully you are able to see and hear me okay.
Please send a note in the chat if there are any issues,
or Cynthia or Jennifer, let me know,
if we have some challenges.
I again am thrilled to be here., I consider it an honor to talk
with many of you that have spent decades in government.
As Cynthia said in my opening, I was in public service
for 24 years before coming into the private sector,
and so I always relish the opportunity to come back
and talk to folks in government.
The majority of my 29 years as a lawyer was as a prosecutor,
so I have a particular affinity for the folks from DOJ
on the phone, even my EPA colleagues,
I saw a couple in the roster.
As I made the transition from a line prosecutor,
elected District Attorney into the federal government working
for EPA in Region 4, considered myself a environmental cop
on the beat.
So again, I'm just excited to be here and talk with you
about a couple of things.
Now that I'm in the private sector, one of the things
that we wanted to do is give you a little bit of a preview
of how the private sector looks at environmental justice issues.
And so we'll talk through that in a little bit,
and many of you may wonder, why do we need to know that?
We are the government.
It's our job to come in and protect communities.
We wield a big stick.
We have a huge responsibility in administering the laws,
and it's our job to hold folks accountable, and the reason I go
into this with folks is because as a prosecutor or as any member
of law enforcement, there are three things
that you absolutely need to know in my view.
You need to know your case, your facts, your witnesses,
the documents, all of the things that you need
to prove the various elements of whatever charge,
whether it's criminal or civil that you are proceeding on.
You need to know your court.
For us local prosecutors, it's very often people
that we're familiar with.
Same is somewhat true on the federal level, though,
obviously, it's a broader landscape, but you need
to know your judge their inclinations,
what they like to do, how they like to operate their courtroom.
Again, that's your home field, and so you want to maintain
that home field advantage every time you step into a courtroom,
but what I found as a prosecutor is in addition
to knowing your case and your court, you also want
to know your opponent.
You need to know what the defense is thinking,
where they might be headed, what kind of witnesses do they have?
And the reason at least as a prosecutor,
I focused on those things was because I like to play chess,
and so if I'm planning to put up a particular witness
and to focus on a particular element of the case,
I want to know what's coming at me as a potential counter
to what that witness says,
and that I can build an even stronger case.
It's sort of the notion of getting -- letting --
knowing the end at the beginning,
and planning accordingly, and so I want to give you a little --
a few thoughts of how I have been advising clients
and what I've seen now in the private sector
for the last couple of days, or last couple of years,
specifically, when it comes to environmental justice,
and let me also say, all that I had learned
about environmental justice and the opportunities that I have,
I'm tremendously grateful to Quentin Pair
who Cynthia mentioned earlier.
He trained me on environmental justice along
with Vernice Miller-Travis, Mustafa Santiago,
so many good friends, again, and so as I make this transition
into the private sector, it's my hope that while advocates
and government attorneys are working
to create positive change for communities and eliminate some
of the environmental injustices, I would be that counterpoint
on the other side of the V, if you will,
working to effect positive change inside companies,
and hopefully as we come together, whether it's
through enforcement cases or other means, there's a way
for us all to be focused on the same thing, and that's one
of the things that Quentin Pair and I are focused on.
We both are co-chairs of the new American Bar Association,
Environmental Justice Task Force, and so I ask
that you stay current on what we're going to be doing.
We've had a few meetings so far with our 13-member task force.
Lawrence Pittman, who I saw earlier, is one of the members.
He's attending this conference, but there's a lot of great work,
but we obviously want all folks at the table dialoguing
about these issues, so we can work towards making positive
change for communities, and so let me put my slides back up.
I have my chat up as well.
As folks have questions, please let me know.
Okay, so as Robin was saying, there are a lot of folks
in government that are focused on advancing the President
and the Vice President's agenda with respect
to environmental justice.
You heard about administrator Regan.
We're certainly thrilled that he is in that post
as a history maker himself.
You heard Brenda Mallory, who has been confirmed to head CEQ,
also a history maker in that role as well as Shalonda Young,
the head of the Office of Management and Budget,
another history maker in that role, and so it does seem
as though now is the time, to really be able to identify ways
that the federal government can institutionalize some
of the thoughts, ideas and concepts
that were first presented in 1994
in President Clinton's executive order.
To assist the government and all of the people that I named
as well as their various staffs, President Biden,
as you all know, in his executive orders,
particularly Executive Order 14008, created what many
of us affectionately call as the WHEJAC,
the White House Environmental Justice Advisory Council,
and so again, those of you are in government,
or at least what I learned when I joined EPA,
it is alphabet soup, but there is the WHEJAC,
which is the advisory council that is made up largely
of community advocates to be able to advise the President
and all of the -- not the folks that have been nominated
and confirmed to the positions that I said earlier,
but there's also the WHEJIC, the White House,
Environmental Justice Interagency Council,
and so one of the things the President has said is
that this is going to be a whole of government approach,
so those are all of the Cabinet Secretaries and subcabinet folks
that are looking at how to direct change
down through the government in their various agencies
and departments, with the advice and counsel
and assistance of the WHEJAC.
So again, one of the ways that you see all
of that coming together is the justice 40 initiative
that was mentioned, where the government endeavors to have 40%
of its benefits in order to the benefit of communities
that are overburdened and that are most in need,
and so various policies have come
out of the Office of Management Budget.
You see those marrying up with various resources at EPA,
and the reason I'm saying all of this is
because that will then flow down to a OECA in EPA and so as many
of you partner with the attorneys in OECA
for various enforcement actions, you will be thinking
of the different ways that settlements or policy
or other things can work to the benefit of these communities,
but it's important to note that it's not just enforcement.
You see that at the bottom of the slide here,
but the commitment to environmental justice,
as noted in Michael Regan's memo early on in his tenure is
that it will be all aspects of EPA.
So you see that it will be as part of the scientific reviews
that are done out of the Office of Research and Development.
It will obviously be part
of the rulemaking that's largely governed by the Office
of General Counsel, but involves all of the media,
whether it's the Office of Land and Emergency Management,
the Office of Chemical Safety, Pollution and Prevention, OCSPP,
whether it's the Office of Water, whether it's the Office
of Air, all of those, all will be looking
to infuse environmental justice or have it evaluated
as it proposes various regulations.
And then obviously, permitting this is an opportunity whether
it's the federal government that'll be issuing permits
in limited space, or working with its state partners,
who through delegated programs will be handling a lot
of the permitting as well, you will start to see more
of a focus on environmental justice considerations,
how those permits are written and again, for this audience,
largely, how those permits will be enforced.
So again, who are these partners?
We talked about the federal agencies.
That includes a lot of folks here on the phone.
I'm thrilled to see that we have almost 500 participants,
and I understand it's broader
than just the DOJ and EPA family.
So we're excited.
Again, that plays into the whole of government approach
to what is happening to advance environmental justice
at the federal level.
Robin spoke about tribal considerations,
and the unique -- some of the unique dynamics
of environmental justice on tribal lands.
Obviously, we recognize the sovereignty of our tribes
and the very important consultative requirements
when it comes to various policies that are executed
or considered on tribal lands.
I talked about state and local governments,
state governments largely in that permitting and also
as co-partners and enforcement actions,
but local governments are coming to the table
on environmental justice as well,
which I think is an important consideration when you --
if you go back to what Robin said, a lot of the policies
that have put environmental justice communities
in such a difficult and horrific situation, they all go back
to zoning laws, where you either had redlining,
which prevented people of color from living in certain areas
of a community and/or restricted them to certain areas.
When you think about siting various facilities,
that all goes back to zoning laws, which are covered largely
by your local elected officials.
And so these are some things to think about in different ways
that even as members of the enforcement corps, you can work
with some of these local officials, or at least reach
out to them as part of an engagement plan,
make sure you understand or look for the opportunities for them
to exercise their local authority
to help various communities by changing zoning laws
or those types of things, in addition to some
of the enforcement actions or requirements that you may build
into various enforcement documents.
And then obviously, community-based work,
this really should have been first.
This is the most important thing
about environmental justice is ensuring that communities are
in a position to dictate or to least give input
on various decisions that affect them, whether it comes
down to permitting, whether it's at the higher levels
of rulemaking, whether it's in enforcement actions,
and we know obviously, various consent decrees,
as they're proposed, they are put
out for public comment for a period of time.
Hopefully, discussions
with communities would have happened long before anything is
published on the federal docket
so the original proposals can include
that very critical community voice.
One of the things we tell clients,
and what I think is most interesting, particularly
under the Biden administration, is the notions
of environmental justice will affect almost every industry,
every industry.
Obviously, when you think about manufacturing, when you think
about oil and gas and some of the energy industries,
even if you think about it in terms of renewable energy,
but you've got technology industries and things
that may also be implicated.
You obviously -- we had in region four,
whereas the Regional Administrator,
we had environmental concerns around our --
environmental justice concerns around our ports.
We had them -- I, unfortunately, fortunately
or unfortunately was a regional administrator soon
after the decision was made to transfer 4 million tons
of coal ash to Perry County, Alabama, and so again,
going back to that siting requirements,
that was how the state of Alabama
and the local elected officials, at least in that case,
relied on their zoning laws in a way that was
to the detriment of the community.
So I think there's an opportunity again,
for folks in government to really drill down as
to who are you hearing from?
Very often I counsel clients that it's not enough just
to talk to elected officials.
You also have to look for the influencers in a community,
and I would advise this group of the same thing.
It could be that the elected officials
and the actual community members are not on the same page,
and so again, as members of the enforcement corps,
it's important for you to really understand who stands
to benefit, and what they stand to gain from various decisions
that are made and who do you really seek
to provide the service to?
So let's talk a little bit more directly about private companies
and how they view environmental justice or at least how,
in the past, I've provided some guidance
on how they should view environmental justice,
and as I do this, I want to make sure that folks know,
just like any industry, just like any segment
of the population, companies are in different spaces
when it comes to how they consider environmental justice.
You have obviously the recalcitrant operators
that may go so far as to say my plant was here first.
This community built up around me.
We're not going to change our policies or operations.
Basically, they came to us, which again, I think,
fails to take into account some of the zoning
and possibly redlining
that might have occurred in a particular area.
You've got folks more in the middle that are curious
about what's happening environment --
in environmental justice.
They want to learn more about it.
They want to understand where the opportunities might lie
in their operations to be able
to do the right thing by these communities.
And then then you've got folks at the top end of the spectrum,
that not only are educated and absorbing everything that comes
out of the administration, but they are going one step further.
They're building it into some of their ESG,
or their environment social governance policies,
and many of you may know
that the SEC has just issued a proposal on climate aspects,
climate disclosures under that ESG space.
There's an opportunity for environmental justice
to also be incorporated into the social aspect
of what's happening in a particular company.
They are also writing or changing various protocols,
plant protocols to include environmental
justice provisions.
Some in the past have hired an environmental justice
coordinator to help not just take a one-time look
at policies, but really evaluate on an ongoing basis.
And the reason I tell folks, particularly
in the enforcement corps, to kind of know
where your company is or where your defendant might be,
is because having that knowledge helps you build various types
of carrots and sticks to get them
to do whatever it is you are requiring them to do,
or would like them to do as part of a settlement.
And obviously, we all know
that the government carries a big stick.
I have to candidly say it's something that I miss.
I miss being on that side of the V, but at the same time.
in terms of environmental justice,
because there is no statute for environmental justice yet --
there's obviously several that have been dropped in Congress --
it's important to realize that this --
sometimes to be able to reach what is needed
in environmental justice community,
you need to be creative.
It's one of the reasons why we've got --
I was thrilled to see that SEPs we're back in consideration
at the Department of Justice.
But again, in the absence of a law, the stick,
the environmental justice stick
that a government attorney may wield may be slightly --
and I only say slightly --
weaker than what you might be able to wield
under the substantive environmental statute.
So you just want to make sure that you understand how far,
where the opportunities are to really push a defendant
to where you want any of them to be for the community.
So what we tell companies is the reason they should consider
environmental justice first and foremost,
it maintains the company's status as an industry leader.
Again, we have been fortunate that as we have continued
to talk about environmental justice over the years,
companies are beginning to appreciate,
particularly their stakeholders
and stockholders are paying attention to these issues,
and so there's an opportunity
to use those pressures or influences.
It bolsters a record of compliance.
Again, I think this is a place
where it really hits companies in the pocketbook.
They want to make sure they are limiting their legal risk,
and that also goes back to some of the SEC disclosures
that they are required to make.
It helps build relationships with their customers
and folks on the ground.
I have clients where their plant managers are
in on various community meetings or local government meetings
or local chamber meetings.
They're trying to build these relationships,
so it's not just a arm's length transaction.
Companies that are at that upper end of the spectrum,
they want to be a part of the community
and be a part of the solution.
And then again, obviously, the transparency is favored
by regulators, and we'll talk about some cases where attempts
to be transparent or attempts to adhere to or at least try
to apply to environmental justice considerations were,
I don't want to say rewarded, but at least that didn't result
in the project being completely gutted,
that the company was able to go forward with various tweaks
in part, I think, because the court saw or at least perceived
that the company was trying to do something
in the environmental justice space,
even if they didn't get it exactly right.
So when we talk to clients, again, we are focusing
on the fact that very often, the enforcers are using either NEPA
or title six or other statutes on the books to affect --
and obviously the environmental statutes
to effectuate enforcement and permitting.
We outline for companies that there are three major risks.
You've got legal risk, you've got the financial risk,
and then you've got reputational risk.
So legal risk, I think we all, those of us on the phone,
are very familiar with this.
There's the challenge of citizen suits, lawsuits challenging EPA
in its action or inaction and various things.
All of that has operational consequences
for various sectors and industries.
You've -- and I'm sure Robin knows of dozens of cases
of legal claims based in the due process clause
or in the equal protection clause.
You have some states that have created a state constitutional
right to a clean environment,
and there could be legal cases brought
under those particular statutes.
You have your Title VI claims,
and I know EPA is working diligently to continue to look
and address Title VI and disparate impacts,
and those kinds of things through that construct.
I think Marian Rutigliano is still with the agency focused
on those areas, and so it's an opportunity again,
for I think the enforcement corps, to look and examine,
for opportunities to partner with EPA or expand, amplify some
of the work that's happening there.
And then the legal risk of regulatory uncertainty.
Basically, we tell clients, even though there is no law,
and even as you see policies come out of agencies like EPA,
there's a chance that this is not going to go away
with the election of a new president,
and so it's not something that you can wait it out.
For these and other risks, as companies begin to think
about long-term capital plans, we advise them to think
about the various ways that they can be protective of communities
in the long term, as opposed to taking a risk,
building a facility or expanding a facility in a way
that is not protective, and then ultimately being
on the wrong end of an enforcement action
or not being able to get a permit renewed
or not getting a permit at all.
You heard Robin talk about the New York law that focused
on cu -- or is now going to focus
on cumulative impacts in EJ analysis.
New Jersey was, I think, one of the first in the country
to issue an environmental justice law
where their state regulators can take away the permit
if environmental justice considerations are not
handled adequately.
So again, those are all examples of legal risks.
The financial risks, you know, this is easily summarized
as an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.
When companies are investing literally millions,
if not billions of dollars in projects
or as they are thinking about, maybe even an enforcement action
so they have to have new equipment and all
of those kinds of things.
We advise them it's best to think
about what provides the most and greatest level of protection
for a particular community because If you get started
down a certain path that is not protective, and even we --
there was a -- for other presentations,
I go through a case study, hypothetical case study,
where a company only talks to the elected officials.
They think everything is fine, and then lo and behold,
members of the community that are actually on the ground
that would be the ones actually having to deal
with the pollution or whatever the adverse consequences are,
they come in and object and that throws the time schedule
for the project off and sometimes puts the time --
puts the whole project in jeopardy,
so those are things again, from a financial perspective,
the cost of delaying projects or adding equipment midway
through as opposed to having an eye on opportunity to add them
at the beginning of the project.
Those are all things that could be very costly for companies,
and then obviously, reputational risks.
Again, I think this is why the real opportunity here is
with all of the attention that the ordinary person now has
about environmental justice,
I think this is a great opportunity for companies
to be influenced by non-lawyers, non-regulators,
non-government entities, just folks that are their customers,
the folks that are their stockholders,
folks that are stakeholders.
It's interesting.
I just got an a call from my cousin who's an architect,
and he said he wanted to sit down and talk
about environmental justice, and so again, I don't know
that that's something that normally would have been
on his radar screen, but if you think about his work,
and what he may be doing for companies that are building
in certain areas, that is a demonstration
of where a company's reputation of building in a right way,
they're going to start bringing in vendors and others
that are going to help them achieve that goal.
So again, depending on where the company is on the spectrum,
if they are at that higher level, and are concerned
about their reputational risk, knowing that as a member
of enforcement may be helpful,
so that you can fashion a settlement agreement
that might push them a little more, or maybe they're coming
to the table and offering ideas and suggestions,
just things for you to think about.
Big question as to if we know environmental justice is the
right thing to prioritize, why is it not being done?
Here are some of the reasons I think companies may not
understand why it's important.
They may not know how they can be a part of the solution.
It may be that they have angst that -- and let's face it.
Communities that have been overburdened and had to suffer
for years or decades with unclean water,
dirty air that have led to a host of health
and other concerns, high mortality rates,
I would be angry too, and I think we need to make sure
that we put environmental justice not just
in a legal frame, but also in the frame of just
as human beings, what is not equitable, what is not fair,
and how angry any one of us would be if as all we are trying
to do is be good parents, good stewards, good daughters,
good sons, whatever it is, and take care of our families,
if we are denied that opportunity because as we try
to say that something is harmful to us, that will dirty our air
or harm our ability to have clean water, and we are ignored
in our continued attempts to advocate on our behalf,
then yeah, folks are going to get angry,
and that cannot be the thing that stops a solution.
They are entitled to be angry in that space, and it's up to us
or folks on this phone -- I say us when I was in government --
to recognize the righteousness in that anger and help be a part
of the solution so that those angry feelings can be worked
towards an opportunity to really provide some sort
of protective solution for the company.
Other reasons you can see here, a lack of resources.
One of the big ones is how do you define success?
And I think this may be one of the challenges for government.
Communities want outcomes.
They either want the permit adjusted,
they want the facility shut down, they want it re-sited.
They want an outcome.
That's candidly a little scary for corporations
because it's a less of what they control.
And again, I'm not suggesting that's the right spot to be
but very often corporations are, "Give us the list
of what we're supposed to do.
Tell us how to conduct the community engagement.
Tell us how to do this, the scientific analysis.
Tell us where to put the monitors.
If we do all of that, is that going
to meet the regulator's needs?"
Sometimes it does, sometimes it doesn't, and so it's just again,
communities and regulators need to come together
and really identify what is success?
So then again, as you enter -- engage the regulated community,
you're on the same page and being able to make sure
that that success is achieved.
Robin talked about disproportionate impacts.
This is another big question, which I thought was interesting
as I talked to folks in the private sector trying
to understand disproportionate to what?
And so from this slide, hopefully,
you can see some examples that I found in literature,
particularly at the top one, if the statewide average
for a level of promote pollution is six, and this average
of pollution in communities of color is more than twice that,
that's a disparate impact, disproportionate impact.
And so again, I think there will be a whole subset of the course
on this, but I just wanted to give some visuals,
so in your minds, when people ask, "Disproportionate to what?"
it's usually disproportionate to the state average,
or to a majority population, so you can look to ensure
that the minority population is not varying an over-amount
of burden, given the statistics, and things there.
I'm watching my time.
I see we've got about 15 minutes left.
These are two cases that I think many
of you may be familiar with.
They come largely from the energy space
and my previous firm.
We would track quite a bit some of the things
that FERC was doing, so I just pulled them as an example,
but this first case, Vecinos, again, you'll see at the bottom,
the court gave the company the opportunity to cure,
and I think it's largely because here, the company did try
to do an environmental justice impact,
but they only looked within two miles.
They didn't look at the full impact
of the particular project, but they at least took the step
to conduct some sort of analysis.
Again, wasn't -- didn't go far enough, but at least
in my individual reading, it seemed as though
that was somewhat persuasive to the judge,
and they were given --
this company was given the opportunity to go back and cure
in a way to ensure that their LNG facility would not create
adverse impacts for an EJ community.
On the other end of that, I think we're all familiar
with Friends of Buckingham.
This is one where the board just blatantly failed
to do an adequate environmental justice analysis.
Many have described it as a check the box exercise,
and so again, there, the board decided, you did not do enough,
you need to go back, you need to start over.
And as a result of that, ultimately,
this project was pulled.
Again, that's an opportunity of the financial risks not landing
or landing poorly for the company in that regard.
So with that, I see I guess we have maybe 15 minutes
or so for questions.
I'm going to turn it back to Cynthia and see
if we can open it up for folks.
>> Thank you, Gwen.
And also thank you, Robin.
I think Jennifer is going to help moderate our Q&A session.
>> Yes, so I have one question for my from myself,
but I'm going to take one from the audience first,
and I encourage others also to put them in the chat.
We have one question from the audience.
What are the thoughts on how to address impacts
to environmental justice communities
from existing permitted and/or grandfather facilities?
Are we limited to the tools of compliance and enforcement?
I'm sure this can be directed at, you know, Robin or Gwen,
either of your current or former capacities.
>> Gwen, why don't you start and I'll tag
on to your answer, if you don't mind.
>> Sure. So I think this --
well, obviously from the enforcement angle, you heard EPA
through administrator Regan and subsequently through a memo
from Larry Starfield, the current acting AA
until Dave Ullman gets through with his nomination.
There's going to be more inspections,
and so we tell companies, you need to be prepared for that,
so getting out, getting on the grounds,
ensuring that they are meeting the statutes
and regulations is a key way to evaluate things.
I think that was a little challenging
at least earlier during the pandemic,
but they found creative ways to do virtual inspections
through whether it's through Jones,
or folks holding video conferencing cameras to be able
to inspect things, so again, as regulators,
I think there's an opportunity
and we've seen several folks be creative.
If you do that type of inspection, and then see
that they are still needing code, but there's an opportunity
to do more, that might be where you, you know,
this is where we would get creative.
When I was Regional Administrator,
I would call the CEO or the president and say,
"Hey, can we sit down?"
Never underestimate the power
of a government official's call to a company leader.
And c) can we talk about this?
Your community is saying this.
It seems as though you're doing a great job with the inspection.
I think that's great, but can we talk about something else?
This is the -- and you never know.
Sometimes that worked in various situations,
and sometimes it didn't, and when it doesn't work,
then again, never forget, you still have that stick in terms
of the enforcement angle, but so those are some thoughts
that come to mind that we tried to do when I was RA.
>> Yeah, that's -- it's really a good question.
Thank you, Gwen, for your leadership on that.
I would add to what you'd say --
what you've just said in a couple of ways.
It is possible to ask an existing facility,
as Gwen has said, to do more, and there are good reasons
as Gwen outlined, for a facility to do more, to want to do more.
It makes good sense.
I think a lawyer for compliance is serving the client well
to make those kinds of arguments.
And then in terms of implementing them,
I would suggest a protocol of early outreach to communities.
Don't wait for something to blow up or --
literally or figuratively, but to reach out to communities
to begin that engagement process.
And I say do that with help.
People like Gwen can assist in early, robust,
important community engagement.
The other thought that I had about this question is
to remind the audience that compliance
with the environmental laws does not mean
that there is automatically compliance
with the civil rights laws, and one of the things
that people need to start being sensitive to and looking for,
is the possibility that even though a facility is
in compliance with its permit, it may still be acting in ways
that violate Title VI.
That is something that you should expect to see coming
out of EPA's Office of Civil Rights
and external civil rights compliance.
Thanks.
>> That's great.
Thank you both.
We have another question about community outreach,
and I just wanted to preface this by saying
that for everybody who's participated today,
we do have a session as part of our webinar series
on community outreach, which also will touch
on language access and ensuring that we're acting
in a culturally competent manner.
That session you may have seen in the agenda, it's on May 17th,
from 3:00 to 4:30 Eastern.
So I do encourage you, as one of the pillars
of environmental justice,
advancing environmental justice principles,
as Robin has mentioned, we want to make sure that you're aware
of that community outreach session.
So with that, we do have a question.
What efforts and strategies are being implemented or plan
to proactively reach out to impacted communities?
And maybe this is a little bit what you were hinting at, Robin,
in kind of the best practices
that EPA is promoting in this area.
>> Well, there are a couple of ways
in which communities make their concerns known and one
of the most important is through the NEJAC,
the National Environmental Justice Advisory Committee,
which meets regularly.
They have monthly telephone calls.
They also participate in a robust way with EPA on a --
I think it is at least a monthly basis through the workgroups
and other kinds of outreach efforts.
In addition, the agency is starting to think about how
to be proactive in its civil rights compliance,
and I think we're in the early stages of that,
partly because as you all may or may not know,
the Civil Rights Division is drastically understaffed,
and our headquarters office only has 12 people in it,
but what we are trying to think about how to wrap our arms
around with the help of the regions is how
to be more proactive and reaching out to the recipients
of federal funds, and alerting them to the need to comply
with our civil rights statutes and rules.
In terms of what actual businesses
and industries are doing to reach out to communities,
I'll turn that one over to Gwen for some ideas.
>> Before I go into that, one of the things again,
I would encourage folks to do is think outside the box,
the traditional government box, and do that in two ways.
You heard Robin say early on, she was talking about --
or maybe it was Cynthia that was talking about the talk
from Vernice Miller-Travis and how communities, when they look
at DOJ, they don't look at it as the Civil Rights Division
or ENRD or an anti-trust, or any of the other divisions.
They see it as DOJ, and so when I was Regional Administrator,
one of the things that we would do is when we would go
to a community, particularly one in North Birmingham
where they had multiple concerns --
it started as a Clean Air Act concern under Lisa Jackson
and then grew into Superfund and water concerns
and other things -- we had our teams going
out on different days and at different times
and talking to the same folks.
Well, again, think about it from the community's perspective,
and once we did, we started going
out as the whole federal family within EPA.
One meeting, so again, the constituents aren't having
to meet this week on Tuesday, next week on Thursday, you know,
two weeks from now in the middle of the day,
when they might have to work.
We synergized ourselves to be in one spot for them as a means
to be a little bit more convenient.
We did the same thing when we expanded beyond the
environmental services that EPA could provide,
and brought in the Department of Transportation, the Department
of Health and Human Services, so for those of you that may be
in regions, reach out to your other regional counterparts.
These communities need more than just what may be able
to be provided through either EPA or DOI or some of the others
in that environmental space, they could need other services
that would then help alleviate some of the conditions leading
to some of these environmental problems.
But from a private perspective, or one of the other things --
I'm sorry -- that we did is we started convening quarterly
state environmental justice calls.
So we would hear from communities that they would try
to call various states and not get any attention.
Again, using the power of the position of the RA,
I'm going to call the state regulator.
You're coming to a meeting with me with this community.
And so it made the regulators a little uncomfortable but again,
once you start the dialogue and begin to use that federal power
to convene organizations or convene groups, you can start
to make some magic happen if folks are really in it
for the right reasons and are willing to be creative.
On the business side, you know, I'm realizing it's not
as easy now that you don't have the government title.
Very often communities don't want to hear
from a plant manager or other,
so you have to meet people where they are.
You have to work slowly.
The biggest thing is you have to build trust.
You can't go in and dictate like you know the answers.
You have to listen first, and then come back with suggestions,
ideas or other things, so that's one of the biggest things
that I'm realizing on this side without the power
of that convening authority of the government.
You got to find another way to build trust.
>> So, both of your responses key off of our next question,
which is exactly what you just ended with, Gwen,
and that is how does an office or an individual attorney
or team build that trust
with a community that's historically
been disenfranchised?
You mentioned kind of going slow,
meeting people where they are.
As the questioner said, sometimes outreach isn't enough.
So are things that you'd recommend?
>> So I -- yeah.
I tell people it's like any other relationship
where you build trust.
You're not going to automatically sit
down to someone on a first date and be like, cool, bet --
we're, you know, I trust you completely.
They need to prove to you that they are worthy of your trust,
and I think that's something we miss or we think doesn't exist
in EJ circumstances, but the challenge is,
they have more reasons
to distrust either the private sector or government
than they do to trust, so it's going to take a while
to be there, to show up to listen, and listen,
not just listen and walk away, listen and come back,
actually be responsive.
Say, hey, I heard you wanted x, y, and z. I went back.
I researched it.
I can do y. I'm having trouble with z. X might not be possible
through legal authority, but I wanted to come back
and tell you what I found.
That sort of repeated cycle is what eventually will build,
hopefully build the type of trust, but folks have
to realize, as in any relationship,
when you have been given reason not to trust, you quickly get
to that spot of I need to see proof and even in the face
of that, I may trust, but then I'm going to verify,
so it's just going to take time.
>> Robin, did you want to add to that?
>> No, I just -- I think that the key words are, listen,
and I might add this one other thought.
Bring something that they can believe in.
Bring something with you that is tangible
and real that you're offering.
You know, these are communities that have done a lot
with nothing at all, and you know, just to as a show
of good faith, give them something, give them a reason
to want to talk to you.
I'm thinking for example, there are communities that are looking
for help in terms of health monitoring.
They're faced with very serious health consequences
from something a facility is emitting.
Well, be prepared to offer something that meets them
where they are, why they should believe you,
fence line monitoring, health monitoring,
some other sort of tangible benefit.
Just some thoughts.
Thank you.
>> We are almost at the bottom of our time at 3:30,
but we actually have several messages.
Gwen and Robin and Cynthia, would you be willing to stay
on a little bit longer?
>> I unfortunately have a client call at 3:30, but I --
you're more than welcome to -- if it's appropriate,
and folks want to reach out, and I got to realize I'm
at a new firm, and I don't want to mess
up any client confidences that I don't even know about yet,
but I would be happy to at least speak from my perspective
as a government -- former government official,
if it may be helpful for folks,
recognizing you all will have confidences on your end, too,
so it might be an interesting conversation, but we'll do
that dance if it would be helpful.
>> Unfortunately, I also have a hard stop at 3:30.
I've got to hop to another call.
>> I'm sorry.
That is perfectly understandable.
Well, I'm going to stop it right there then
and just give you my hearty thanks and well-wishes
for you both in your new position, Gwen, and of course
in your new partner position, Robin, and of course,
thank you to Cynthia, who we are so fortunate to have in ENRD.
I know there are questions that didn't get answered,
and we are excited for everyone's enthusiasm.
We look forward to the rest of our webinar series
on environmental justice and climate change,
and welcome you back to all the other sessions
that we'll be following.
Thank you so much and have a great day everybody.
>> Thank you.
>> Bye, everybody.
>> Bye-bye.
>> Thank you
>> Thank you.