Promising Practices for EJ Methodologies in NEPA Reviews: Report of the Federal Interagency Working Group on Environmental Justice & NEPA Committee

The Federal Interagency Working Group on Environmental Justice (EJ IWG) established the NEPA Committee in 2012 pursuant to the Memorandum of Understanding on Environmental Justice and Executive Order 12898 (2011). The Memorandum identified the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) as an area of focus for inclusion in the agencies’ environmental justice efforts and directed efforts to “include interagency collaboration.” The NEPA Committee seeks to improve the effective, efficient and consistent consideration of environmental justice issues in the NEPA process through the sharing of best practices, lessons learned, research, analysis, training, consultation, and other experiences of federal NEPA practitioners. Promising Practices for EJ Methodologies in NEPA Reviews, an EJ IWG report produced by the NEPA Committee (hereinafter referred to as “Promising Practices Report”) represents the professional experience, knowledge, and expertise of the individuals participating in the NEPA Committee. The NEPA Committee (see List of NEPA Committee Participants from ten departments, three agencies, and one White House office) spent almost 48 months researching, analyzing and discussing the interaction of environmental justice and NEPA. The Promising Practices Report is a compilation of methodologies gleaned from current agency practices identified by the NEPA Committee concerning the interface of environmental justice considerations through NEPA processes. The EJ IWG and NEPA Committee hope that this compilation will disseminate promising environmental justice practices across the federal government so that we can learn from one another about effective ways to build robust consideration of environmental justice into our NEPA practice. This document draws from existing environmental justice and NEPA Guidance developed by White House Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ) and federal agencies, but is not and should not be considered formal guidance. The forward-looking promising practices methodologies are derived from examples of actual agency practices that were presented by one or more agencies during the multi-agency NEPA Committee meetings. These examples were used by the NEPA Committee participants to generate approaches that federal agencies can consider for understanding environmental justice in the context of the NEPA process. For purposes of this document, the NEPA Committee looked at instructive examples from current practice, and where helpful or relevant, attempted to extract useful lessons learned from those examples. The NEPA Committee has also produced a National Training Product which includes information on specific examples that align with the Promising Practices Report for training purposes.

Accordingly, the Promising Practices Report sets forth these promising practices as a way of presenting a variety of methodological approaches and a broad overview of options that may be suitable across various NEPA process scenarios, but not as agency requirements or guidance. Information in the Promising Practices Report is intended to provide flexible approaches for agencies as they consider environmental justice in NEPA activities. The Promising Practices Report does not establish new requirements for NEPA analysis. It is not and should not be viewed as formal agency guidance, nor is the compilation of promising practices intended to be legally binding or create rights and benefits for any person. It is intended, however, as a way for agencies to compare and improve their methodologies for considering environmental justice now and in the future by applying methods established in federal NEPA practice. In that regard, the joint efforts of the NEPA Committee reflect the community of federal NEPA practitioners who seek to facilitate reasonable consideration of environmental justice within the context of NEPA. The EJ IWG and NEPA Committee hope that their efforts provide the groundwork for a renewed and dynamic process to advance environmental justice principles through NEPA implementation and thereby promote a more effective, efficient, and consistent consideration of environmental justice during NEPA reviews.