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specifically emphasizes that consideration of environmental justiceissues in the settlement of an enforcement action so that we can getsome direct and immediate environmental justice benefits to our communities as quickly as possible.Our office is also piloting efforts to make sure, where possible,we are implementing the injunctive relief that we often times get as aresult of our civil settlements in environmental justice communitiesfirst. When a company is willing to spend hundreds of millions of dollars to clean up its operations, lets make sure that where we canwe are making sure that the operations that they have in EJcommunities are being addressed immediately.We also, as I said -- I think we need to bring some strategicthinking into how we go about doing some of our environmental justice planning and targeting, and I think that one of the ways wecan do that is how our agency uses some of the data that we collect.I know it is never sort of -- it is never wise to compare yourself to theIRS in any capacity, but I am told that one of our databases, thePCS, the Permit Compliance System database, is the second largestgovernment data base behind only the IRS’ database on taxpayers.The wealth of information that we have in that database isnothing short of staggering. Well, I believe that we need to starttaking that data, start analyzing it and start to use it to do some smarttargeting, some smart compliance assistant work and look at non-compliance rates in environmental justice communities to try to drivesome results based upon the information that we have.I know through the help of Barry we were able to include in oneof our systems an Enviro Mapper, which is a program that reallyallows us to do some fairly complicated analysis on environmental justice issues and indeed compliance rates in our environmental justice communities.This is one of the ways where I think we can use the data, theresearch and the experience and the resources that we have to starttaking some strategic looks at compliance histories and thendeciding on a strategy about how we can approach compliance toget companies into compliance, stay in compliance and eliminate the
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environmental impacts that they are having in our communities.We need to look at all of the tools that are available to us andfigure out how to incorporate EJ into the use of all of those tools, be itcompliance assistance, be it incentives, be it monitoring or be it goodold fashioned enforcement, and we need to be able to use each andevery one of those tools, especially in our environmental justicecommunities so that we can start doing some of the tragic and smarttargeting that Governor Whitman speaks about quite frequently.Of course, with all of the efforts that we are taking, with the workof the NEJAC being done, with the advice and recommendations thatyou have given us there is obviously more work to be done, and weneed to continue in the strides to reduce the risks of environmentharm in our communities.And one of the things that we need to do is not just capture thatinformation, but communicate it well. We need to make sure that our communities understand the successes and also the failures of howwe go about doing our job. We need to communicate well with thepublic, and we need to make sure the public understands not justwhat we can do, but what we cannot do when we talk about the workthat we can do in the Office of Enforcement and ComplianceAssurance.I think where the NEJAC, in my view, critically important, is wealso need to continue to listen well. As a public agency sometimeswe do not listen as well as we can, as well as we should, indeed aswell as we must, and so we must continue to get out there and listento the communities, to understand, to get the feedback and then helpus make the decisions we need to make about some of the smarttargeting and smart enforcement work that we can do.Those are some of the things that I think that we can and wemust do. One of the other areas that I would like to see us do and Iam working with Barry on and we will continue to work with the Officeof Environmental Justice is in order to insure that environmental justice is integrated into all of our programs, is to provide thenecessary training to all of our staff so that they understand how tomake EJ issues real, rather than something that they read about in
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the paper or on our strategic plan.We must continue also our outreach so that everybodyunderstands what we are doing. One of the things that we arelooking for the NEJAC to help us on is in the area of how we goabout delivering some of our compliance assistance tools, and wewould love some feedback and some input from the NEJAC on howwe can go about designing and implementing those complianceassistance tools that can help us get to the regulate community andwork with the regulated community to help them get their facilitiesinto compliance, stay in compliance, and indeed, moving beyond justcompliance.I just want to wrap up by again expressing my thanks to theNEJAC for the work that you do, the commitment that you all make totrying to make sure that we are doing everything we can as anagency to insure that no community is left behind and that we doinsure that we have environmental protection for all both now and for our future generations.And on behalf of Governor Whitman, I just want to thank you for your efforts, and we look forward to our positive and constructiverelationship over the upcoming years, and I thank you. Thank you,Barry.(Applause.)MR. LEE: Thank you, J.P. One of our partners in holding thismeeting is EPA’s Region 3, which is the host of this meeting, and Iwant to introduce Tom Voltaggio, the deputy region administrator for EPA Region 3. Tom.
By Tom Voltaggio
MR. VOLTAGGIO: Thank you, Charles. As the host I do, of course, want to welcome the NEJAC members and the attendees of this conference to Baltimore here. Of course, the topic of pollutionprevention is an important one. Not only for the country, but for Region 3, the middle Atlantic region of the country as well.The active involvement of all of the stakeholders is extremelyimportant in order to insure fair treatment to all.Region 3 supports the principles of environmental justice and
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will continue its efforts to improve our programs to assure theprotection of human health and the environment. I am very proud of the work that our office does in the area of environmental justice, andI would like them to stand up so that you can see them.Number one, so that in case you have any concerns or issuesyou would like to raise about issues that are in the Region 3 states,you can go to these folks throughout the conference. SamanthaFairchild is the head of the office. Could you stand, Samantha. Isaw Reginald Harris. Reggie, are you here? Is Hal here? HalYates. Okay. He is outside. Okay. Is anyone else here,Samantha?MS. FAIRCHILD: No.MR. VOLTAGGIO: No. Okay. These are the folks that if youhave issues, please go see them. If you can’t fine me. I think thatthey do an excellent job, and I think that they are of great help to thenational program office in implementing the environmental justiceprogram at EPA. I think they do a great job.Active involvement in issues of environmental justice startedpretty early for us in the middle Atlantic region of EPA. Mainly as aresult of concerns in the City of Chester Pennsylvania back in 1993.I can’t believe it has been that long ago.Reginald Harris, Pat Anderson and I worked on what I believeto be the first cumulative risk assessment of an area, of an EJ area,in the country. We investigated a number of environmental impactsto the community with the best scientific information that we had atthe time. We looked at air sources, we looked at motor vehiclesources, we looked at exposure from lead base paint, we looked atexposure from untreated water, we looked at a number of areas andcame up with what we thought was, for its time, reasonablysophisticated analysis of the types of exposures that people in thatcity were getting.I think it led the way towards other kinds of analysis that havesince been done. The important part of that was not just theanalysis, but in rolling that analysis out to the community. We wereinvolved in a multi-year process of looking at what the data showed
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