Abstract
As the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) turns 50, we reflect on the progress of three important challenges issued by Environmental Justice (EJ) researchers and communities to the agency over the past four decades: demands for greater stakeholder inclusion, significant harm reduction from toxic exposures, and compensation for harm resulting from toxic exposures. We argue that the government has succeeded mostly on the first front and remains a laggard on the others. We add to the literature on securing EJ, by exploring the EPAs response to these challenges and discussing novel solutions to improving EJ outcomes within the current regulatory and legal systems. While these solutions do not mitigate the structural racism that caused environmental injustice, we feel them appropriate at this critical juncture, where an incoming President has made the strongest rhetorical and policy commitments to EJ in U.S. history.
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