Review of Methods and Data in EPA Environmental Justice Analyses, 1995-2012

In 1994, the President signed Executive Order 12898 addressing Environmental Justice (EJ). Since then, the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has put significant effort into developing guidance to better incorporate environmental justice (EJ) into rulemaking analyses. As part of this work, in 2012, EPA began a review of the methods and data used in the EJ analyses supporting EPA rules published from 1995 to early 2012.

The review of existing EJ analyses was conducted in early 2012 by members of the analytic subteam of a Cross-Agency, EJ in Rulemaking Team, with representatives from across the Agency. Reviewers included staff with extensive prior experience reviewing EPA regulations and EJ analyses. The targeted universe of the review was defined as all EPA proposed or final rules signed by the Administrator, published between 1995 and early 2012, with EJ analysis. “EJ analysis” was defined as any qualitative or quantitative discussion of EJ that went beyond a brief mention. A list of almost 80 questions was developed, and each rule was reviewed with regard to these questions.

A total of 73 rules were identified that had EJ analysis as defined here. The review found that almost 75% of rules with EJ analysis were published since the start of 2010, and almost 75% were from the air office. Risk information was a major data gap - Most analyses had to use proximity/co-location as a proxy for impact. The review also found that only a few analyses quantified predicted changes in disparity due to the rule, and only a few used EJ metrics to compare regulatory options. Several examples of more sophisticated analysis used health risk estimates, used multiple geographic benchmarks, displayed distributions of risk by group, or examined key locations driving the results.