EPA's Environmental Justice Head Resigned After 24 Years. He Wants to Explain Why.

[babylonsister]

http://www.motherjones.com/environment/2017/03/epa-environmental-justice-head-resigns-move-backwards-made-no-sense

EPA's Environmental Justice Head Resigned After 24 Years. He Wants to Explain Why.
"To move backward didn’t make any sense."
Rebecca Leber
Mar. 9, 2017


The head of the Environmental Protection Agency's Office on Environmental Justice submitted his resignation on Tuesday. First reported by InsideClimate News, the resignation of Mustafa Ali comes as the Trump administration considers layoffs and budget cuts at the EPA that, if enacted, would eliminate the environmental justice budget and cut funding to grants for pollution cleanup.

Ali, a founder of the program in 1992 who has worked there since, told Mother Jones he resigned because he was concerned the administration's proposals to roll back its environmental justice work would disproportionately affect vulnerable communities. "That is something that I could not be a part of," Ali says.

"Each new administration has an opportunity to share what their priorities and values are," he says, adding that he has "not heard of anything that was being proposed that was beneficial to the communities we serve. To me, that was a signal that communities with environmental justice concern may not get the attention they deserve."

The office, created during the George H.W. Bush administration, defines its mission as reducing the disproportionate impacts environmental problems have on minority, low-income, and indigenous people by integrating these concerns into all the EPA's decision-making. Since its founding, the office has distributed $24 million in grants to 1,400 communities.

snip//

Ali hopes his resignation will bring attention to the effects on low-income and marginalized communities of the new administration's program cuts and loosened regulations.

During his confirmation hearings, EPA administrator Scott Pruitt told Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.) that he is "familiar with the concept of environmental justice" and acknowledged that the "administrator plays an important role regarding environmental justice."

"Under his leadership, he has the ability to move to the next level if he chooses to," Ali says. Environmental justice leaders "have dedicated decades to trying to gain traction and make progress. We've done some of that, and to move backward didn't make any sense to me."