Environmental Justice-Related Document Number 3

To Members of IERG’s Environmental Justice-Related Issues Workgroup:

On Tuesday, June 25, 2013, IERG Staff met with the Illinois EPA to discuss changes the Agency is making to its Environmental Justice Public Participation Policy. Members may recall the June 6, 2013 email wherein IERG Staff detailed what developments it was aware of, as well as our intention to meet with Director Lisa Bonnett to obtain a more complete picture of what these changes mean for the regulated community. In attendance at the meeting were Director Lisa Bonnett, all three Bureau Chiefs, Deputy General Counsel Julie Armitage, Associate Director Elmo Dowd, Environmental Justice Officer Ken Page, Community Relations Officer Brad Frost, IEPA Attorney Chris Pressnall, and IERG Staff.

As indicated in IERG Staff’s earlier email, the changes being made by the Agency are the result of at least two events. First, the Agency recently settled its Title VI Environmental Justice complaint involving a permit issued to Geneva Energy which, among other things, required certain changes be made to the Public Participation Policy. Second, increased pressure on the Governor’s Office from activist groups who were primarily responsible for legislation creating an Environmental Justice Commission two springs ago, who were becoming increasingly irritated with the lack of progress with the Commission as well as perceived EJ shortcomings at the Agency.

Presently, the Agency is focused on addressing what it believes to be the first prong of a successful Environmental Justice program: enhanced public outreach (the second prong, taking into account cumulative risk in permitting transactions, may be on the Agency’s radar, but they are far from ready to tackle that issue). This enhanced public outreach involves two key steps.  The Agency must first identify those sources at which enhanced public outreach might be important. The Agency refers to this as “red-flagging” a site. A site is red-flagged if: 1) the site is located in an Environmental Justice area (i.e. demographic screening), 2) the site is considered by the Agency to be a “High Priority Violator” (a vaguely defined term IERG Staff took to mean “large emitter”), or 3) the site is considered to be otherwise worthy of increased scrutiny due to any one of a number of factors, including previous media scrutiny, NGO or other activist-led activities focused on the site, or possibly even business activities deemed controversial. To be clear, this enhanced public outreach extends beyond JUST environmental justice areas.

Once a site is red-flagged, all incoming permitting-related requests by an applicant for that site are collected in a database for consideration by Agency Staff of appropriate enhanced public outreach. Key Agency Staff meet once a week to walk through the red-flagged sites to determine which, if any, of the “community relations tools” available to it are appropriate. These tools include sending notices out to interested parties, preparing fact sheets and making them widely available, scheduling availability sessions, coordinating conference calls with interested parties, posting relevant documents on the Agency’s website in an area readily accessible to those interested in Environmental Justice issues, as well as others. The Agency noted that it could also work with a permit applicant to develop a community relations plan, and intends to ask the permit applicant to carry out some of these activities on its own.

A few important notes about these changes. First, it is not just construction permits or major operating permits that are the focus of these efforts. Any permitting transaction – a name change, a permit modification, or any other transaction that requires a final Agency decision – at a red-flagged site will be the subject of discussion by the Agency’s EJ staff. The Agency stated that this part of the policy may change over time as the Agency gains some experience with this new policy, but for the time being, the Agency is looking at all such transactions. Second, Illinois EPA indicated that U.S. EPA is pushing for Illinois and other states to add other actions to its list of items necessitating consideration of enhanced public outreach, specifically rulemaking and enforcement. The Illinois EPA has no plans to consider enhanced public outreach in the rulemaking or enforcement contexts at this time, but may revisit it in the future.  Third, as the Agency continues making improvements to its permitting web portal, it is also contemplating what changes it could make to bolster its Environmental Justice efforts. These changes have not yet been identified, but the Agency did suggest at our meeting that one such change might be a tool that allows interested persons to search for all enhanced public outreach efforts the Agency is engaged in. Fourth, IERG Staff asked whether we could obtain a list of all sites that have been red-flagged. The Agency is hesitant to share such a list at this time, as it suggests they are still “learning as they go,” and discovering bugs with their site screening tool.  Director Bonnett asked us to be patient as this program evolves and as the Agency makes important tweaks to its system. Fifth, IERG Staff suggested that the Agency should be sending these new notice letters to the applicant itself, in addition to the other entities on its list, so that a company is aware of the potential for increased scrutiny. The Agency agreed to make this change.
There are a few “next steps” IERG’s Members should be aware of. The Agency intends to hold an internal meeting with its Community Relations Staff on July 3rd, at which time they plan to
walk through the draft revised EJ Public Participation Policy one more time. While it is possible that the policy may not be finalized at that meeting, IERG Staff at least has a commitment from the Agency that it will be willing to share the policy – draft or final – after the meeting has concluded and changes have been made. IERG Staff will disseminate that document as soon as it becomes available.

Please also note that IERG Staff has extended an invitation, which has been accepted, to Director Bonnett to speak at IERG’s July Quarterly Meeting about changes to the Agency’s EJ Public Participation Policy and developments with Governor Quinn’s Environmental Justice Commission. Director Bonnett will be joining us for lunch and speaking afterwards. Finally, the Agency hopes to schedule the first meeting of the Commission in August. IERG’s Executive Director, Alec Messina, sits on the Commission, but there are a number of appointments still to be made. You may learn more about the Commission at: http://appointments.illinois.gov/appointmentsDetail.cfm?id=422