Charge to the National Environmental Justice Advisory Council on Superfund Remediation and Redevelopment for EJ Communities


Charge to the National Environmental Justice Advisory Council
on
Superfund Remediation and Redevelopment for EJ Communities
BACKGROUND:
The National Environmental Justice Advisory Council (NEJAC) has been at the forefront of contaminated
site cleanup and redevelopment initiatives since its founding. In 1995, the EPA and NEJAC co-sponsored
a series of dialogues across the country that provided an opportunity for environmental justice
advocates and residents of impacted communities to provide input on revitalization of abandoned
properties called "brownfields." In December of 1996, NEJAC finalized an extensive set of advice and
recommendations for EPA to consider titled Environmental Justice, Urban Revitalization, and
Brownfields: The Search for Authentic Signs of Hope. A consistent theme throughout the
recommendations was the importance of seeking and including communities in decisions and planning.
Taking these recommendations into consideration, EPA took numerous actions to improve its
brownfields initiative. For example, EPA agreed to create a Brownfields Job Training Grants Program
targeted toward residents living close to Brownfield sites. EPA initiated brownfields pilots with the U.S.
Department of Health and Human Services to focus on an assessment of health risks associated with
revitalizing brownfields sites. The NEJAC recommendations also led to the creation of the EPA National
Brownfields Conference and the Brownfields Showcase Communities.
After a decade of brownfields program implementation, it became apparent to environmental justice
leaders and many others that the clean-up and redevelopment of contaminated sites could just as easily
lead to the gentrification of neighborhoods and displacement of local populations as it could to local
revitalization. The NEJAC thus made substantive recommendations relevant to these issues with a
follow-on report in 2006 titled Unintended Impacts of Redevelopment and Revitalization Efforts in Five
Environmental Justice Communities. In addition, several other NEJAC recommendations have provided
major contributions to EPA's thinking and policy development around contamination, local impacts, and
community revitalization. These include multiple iterations of recommendations on meaningful public
participation and involvement in regulatory processes, a 2004 report Environmental Justice and Federal
Facilities: Recommendations for Improving Stakeholder Relations Between Federal Facilities and
Environmental Justice Communities, and more recently in 2015 with Recommendations for Promoting
Community Resilience in Environmental Justice Industrial Waterfront Areas.
With its long history of involvement in EPA's implementation of regulatory programs focused on
contamination and contaminated sites, it is natural that EPA's current focus on the Superfund program
should include the creation of a charge for the NEJAC. Recommendations from the 2017 EPA
Superfund Task Force (SFTF) Report address expediting cleanups; reducing financial burden on parties;
encouraging private investment; promoting redevelopment/revitalization; and building/strengthening
partnerships. The 2018 update to the Task Force's Recommendation Number 42 pinpoints cleanup and
redevelopment of sites through integration of environmental justice and directs the creation of a charge
to the NEJAC for development of recommendations that speak to these issues.
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RECOMMENDATION 42: Use a Federal Advisory Committee to Work with a Broad Array of
Stakeholders to Identify Barriers and Opportunities Related to Cleanup and Reuse ofSuperfund Sites
The NEJAC will undertake the task of preparing a report of formal consensus advice and
recommendations related to long-term stewardship and risk communication at Superfund sites.
Additional stakeholder and partner engagement processes will be used to seek feedback from targeted
stakeholders, including engaging other EPA federal advisory committees to inform them about what EPA
is doing. In addition to using this mechanism to elicit individual feedback from advisory committee
members, consideration is being given (in accordance with FACA obligations to hold open meetings) to
seek additional stakeholder and partner input related to long-term stewardship and risk communication
at Superfund sites.
This recommendation from the SFTF Report and the following charge to the NEAJC provide an
opportunity to continue the momentum of NEJAC's involvement in this sphere of EPA's regulatory and
policy work and help shape outcomes for the next generation of Superfund cleanup and reuse.
It is important to note that the NEJAC's efforts will not be carried out in a vacuum. There are in fact at
least two other recommendations in the SFTF second year report which are relevant and have significant
overlap with the charge for the NEJAC. Specifically, recommendation 40 on development of a
communications strategy which will largely take on the issue of advancing EPA's ability to effectively
communicate risk, and recommendation 39 which contains several elements of communication,
community revitalization, and local stakeholder engagement and collaboration, provide opportunities
for the work of the NEJAC to align and provide synergy with other EPA efforts related to the SFTF1.
Overall goal of this charge:
EPA is committed to continually improving our ability to achieve clean-ups of Superfund sites more
quickly and with better outcomes for local communities while maintaining our focus on protecting
human health and the environment. The overall goal of this charge is to provide recommendations to
the EPA Administrator that will identify barriers, solutions, and best practices to achieve this above goal
in a manner that takes central consideration of the unique burdens and vulnerabilities of environmental
justice populations living in and around superfund sites. The recommendations produced should not be
overly focused on the immediate activities of the superfund program but instead look out five to ten
years into the future and describe a horizon that the Superfund program can aspire to achieve through
the adoption of NEJAC's recommendations over time. The recommendations should account for the
importance of the intersection between remediation and redevelopment. And the recommendations
should also everywhere include consideration of improving EPA's ability to effectively communicate risk
to local communities and other stakeholders.
As outlined in the SFTF Report recommendations, the EPA reaffirms the Agency's commitment to
incorporating advice and recommendations from the NEJAC to determine best approaches to
integrating environmental justice considerations and the perspectives of multiple stakeholders into
cleanup and redevelopment of sites. The EPA intends to integrate EJ considerations into site cleanup
and redevelopment by collaborating with NEJAC to include a diversity of voices in driving the best
outcomes for underserved and vulnerable communities.
1 For more information and the text of recommendations 39 and 40, please see the Superfund Task Force report at
httpsi//semspub. epa.gov/work/HQ/197209.pdf.
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Charge Questions:
Specifically, the EPA requests that the NEJAC consider the following issues related to cleanup and
redevelopment of Superfund sites to provide feedback on barriers and opportunities:
Phase 1: Completed by June 1. 2019
1.	What are specific ways in which the NEJAC, EPA, and other relevant stakeholders can facilitate
strong, strategic relationships with stakeholders to facilitate effective cleanups and site reuse, and
equitable decision-making throughout the entire SF process? How can NEJAC and EPA most
effectively and efficiently identify EJ stakeholders and their interests, capacity and needs
(community education, engagement, and capacity building) and ensure that interests and needs are
considered in redevelopment planning and implementation processes?
a.	Who are the impacted populations?
b.	What are best practices and important considerations to achieve meaningful engagement and
fair treatment when there are different impacted communities and disparities exist between
those communities?
c.	What are methods and innovations for community capacity building?
d.	Are there other essential services and needs providers (e.g. health care, healthy food,
recreation)?
e.	What are specific ways in in which all communities can be encouraged to move from passive
stakeholders to active partners?
f.	Are there additional/unique educational needs related to the technical aspects of clean up and
redevelopment?
g.	What do equitable cleanups of Superfund sites look like to EJ stakeholders?
2.	What does NEJAC believe should be done to facilitate effective, efficient, and consistent decision-
making regarding remediation and redevelopment of NPL sites? How can EPA better ensure that all
parts of the community - especially vulnerable, overburdened, and underserved populations - are
able to meaningfully engage in every phase of the Superfund process and have the information they
need to understand the data and issues? How can EPA more clearly communicate the risks at sites
and ensure that concerns and knowledge from all parts of the community are being heard and
considered in remediation and redevelopment decision-making? Please consider these questions
relevant to the following major items/areas within the Superfund process:
a.	Remediation Approaches, especially Institutional and Engineering Controls: assumptions,
considering cumulative impacts, community awareness of requirements, etc.;
b.	Long Term Stewardship: notice of ICs, maintenance of ICs over time, adapting operation and
maintenance plans, etc.;
c.	Risk Communication and Community Engagement: cultural and linguistic differences, learning
strategies, access, and availability of current site-related information, etc.;
d.	Barriers and Opportunities for community participation in the Remedial Process (Discovery to
Deletion), and_ensuring that EJ stakeholder interests and needs are considered in
redevelopment planning and implementation;
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e. How can EPA be more proactive in avoiding the creation of Superfund sites in the first place?
Phase 2: Completed by March 30. 2020
3. Can the NEJAC provide examples of case studies and models - Superfund and non-Superfund alike -
that illustrate best practices and lessons learned (cleanup, redevelopment, risk communication,
federal initiatives) which can inform ways to elevate equity in Superfund cleanup and
redevelopment, to ensure all have a voice in EPA decisions? How has the EPA Superfund Task
Force's plan and recommendations advanced contaminated site remediation and redevelopment in
vulnerable, overburdened, and underserved communities?
a. Are there certain practices and tools (e.g. Health Impact Assessments) that are especially
effective in facilitating relationships with all stakeholders?
b. How can EPA best implement the Superfund Redevelopment Initiative? Are there certain
practices and tools that can be improved as part of this process?
c. Are there certain practices and tools from other waste media programs (e.g. wastewater
management) that have been effective?
d. Are there retrospective and/or prospective case studies that best illustrate the barriers and
opportunities?
4. Which additional resources (e.g. water infrastructure investment, job creation) can be realized to
support reuse and redevelopment of remediated Superfund sites from other sources? Specifically,
resources including but not limited to:
a. Federal, Tribal, state, and local agencies;
b. Private sector/third party investors.
5. Does the NEJAC propose any additional issues related to the clean-up and redevelopment of
Superfund sites that are not captured in the questions above? Does the NEJAC identify any issues
related to the implementation of the SFTF Plan and Recommendations?
a. Legacy contamination that impacts multiple generations
b. Disposal of contaminated materials
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