Environmental Justice-Related Document Number 8
To Members of IERG’s Environmental Justice-Related Issues Workgroup:
As Members are aware, IERG Staff has been following the Illinois EPA’s revisions to its Environmental Justice (“EJ”) Public Participation Policy. In October 2013, IERG Staff disseminated a memorandum outlining the Agency’s changes and explaining its new policy of enhanced public outreach. As described earlier, the process of enhanced public outreach is initiated when clerical staff logs a permitting transaction into its Agency tracking program. At that point, the Agency’s software compares the site location against its Agency EJ map to determine whether the site falls in a potential EJ area and decides whether enhanced public outreach is necessary.
Recently, IERG Staff asked the Agency what its process is with pre-existing permit transactions, i.e., permit requests that were made before the Agency updated its EJ Public Participation Policy. The Agency explained that for those permit requests that may have EJ concerns it is including language in the public notice. The public notice language that appears in the newspaper is as follows: “The facility is located in a potential Environmental Justice area. More information concerning Environmental Justice may be found at http://www.epa.state.il.us/environmental-justice/.”
As always, if you have any questions, please feel free to reply to this email or call IERG Staff at 217.522.5512.