EPA National Office Means `No Excuses’ on Equity, Official Says

The EPA’s launch of a new national environmental justice office will mean adding roughly a dozen staffers, with possibly more in the years ahead, to each of its 10 regional offices to help disadvantaged communities that have long borne the brunt of pollution, a top agency official said Wednesday.

The move will mean communities for the first time will be able to bring concerns to the Environmental Protection Agency at the regional level where there is more local expertise “to actually answer what’s going on in those communities,” Matthew Tejada, the agency’s deputy assistant administrator for environmental justice, told a ...