"The agency has announced a series of policies intended to elevate those efforts, including the creation of an office meant to address the “harm caused by environmental crime, pollution and climate change.”"
"WASHINGTON — Last November, officials in Lowndes County, Ala., began fielding inquiries from an unexpected inquisitor — the Justice Department, which had opened an investigation into the link between environmental racism and the chronic water, flooding and sanitation woes in the area.
The Biden administration’s choice of Lowndes as the site of its first big environmental justice inquiry was based on the magnitude of the county’s problems. But it also sent a message. The county was a voting rights battleground and a focal point of Martin Luther King Jr.’s march from Selma to Montgomery in 1965, making it a logical choice to open a new front on civil rights.
Last week, Attorney General Merrick B. Garland announced a series of policies intended to elevate the department’s environmental justice efforts from the symbolic to the substantive — as President Biden’s allies questioned the pace of other White House efforts to help Black and Hispanic communities hit hard by pollution, neglect and climate change.
Mr. Garland’s most important step, by far, was the creation of an office inside the department responsible for addressing the “harm caused by environmental crime, pollution and climate change” in communities of color and in low-income cities, towns and counties."
Glenn Thrush and Lisa Friedman report for the New York Times May 12, 2022.
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