The February 11, 1994, Presidential Executive Order 12898, Federal Actions to Address Environmental Justice in Minority Populations and Low-Income Populations, tasked each federal agency to make achieving environmental justice part of its mission.

The agencies were to do so by identifying and addressing, as appropriate, disproportionately high and adverse human health or environmental effects of their programs, policies, and activities on minority populations and low-income populations. The executive order also required the agencies to prepare a strategy for integrating environmental justice into all agency activities.

In response to Executive Order 12898, the U.S. Department of Energy (the Department, or DOE) prepared and issued its environmental justice strategy and conducted a series of activities to implement this strategy. Both the executive order and the strategy require that the Department establish and maintain an integrated approach for identifying, tracking, and monitoring environmental justice activities.

A Department-wide Environmental Justice (EJ) task force prepared the Departmental strategy in 1995. Now we need to update the strategy because of improvements in the way we now do business. In that regard, we have re-established the DOE-EJ Task Force (task force), which started its work earlier this year. Offices represented on the task force include

• Legacy Management
• Civilian Radioactive Waste Management
• the Chief Financial Officer
• Congressional and Intergovernmental Affairs
• Economic Impact and Diversity
• Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy
• Environmental Management
• General Counsel
• Health, Safety and Security
• Science
• National Nuclear Security Administration
• Carlsbad Field Office
• Richland Operations Office
• Savannah River Operations Office
• Western Area Power Administration

The task force is reviewing the current EJ strategy and EJ activities Department-wide with the intent of determining what elements of the strategy should be retained, updated, or deleted. The task force will also develop a 5-year plan associated with the revised strategy. Once the task force completes its work, the new strategy and the 5-year plan will be given a Department-wide review for comments and suggestions. After Department-wide approval, a public announcement of the draft strategy and 5-year plan will be made and then the stakeholder review and comment period will commence.

For more information contact: Melinda Downing, DOE Environmental Justice Program Manager, at (202) 586-7703 or Melinda.Downing@hq.doe.gov.