The process also draws on practices from established environmental justice resources, such as EPA's Technical Guidance for Assessment Environmental Justice in Regulatory Analysis and Promising Practices for EJ Methodologies in NEPA Reviews, while still aligning with the HEAL Interagency Work Group’s shared common practices that were developed collaboratively over the past year.
This assessment is not required to be a comprehensive or an exhaustive examination of all potential impacts of a significant agency action. It doesn't require novel quantitative or economic analysis of the proposed significant agency action. The time and resource investment, and depth of assessment, will be influenced by the reasonable applicability of the questions to the agency action.
As of July 1, 2023, we will conduct an environmental justice assessment on the following types of actions that we've determined are significant and that meet the requirements of the law:
- Developing significant legislative rules (rulemaking).
- Adopting or developing new grant or loan programs.
- Designing or awarding capital projects, grants, or loans of $12 million or more.
- Developing agency request legislation.
We filed notice in the Washington State Register of this determination. We will hold a public comment period if we expand the types of actions that will receive an environmental justice assessment.
Looking forward, we're considering how we might expand the types of actions that will require an assessment. We also plan to update the Environmental Justice Assessment document to incorporate what we learn through practice, community engagement, Tribal consultation, and any guidance we may receive from the Environmental Justice Council. We plan to keep the doors of communication open along the way.
By July 1, 2025, we are required to consider expanding the types of significant agency actions that receive an Environmental Justice Assessment. Significant agency actions must be actions that may cause environmental harm or may affect the equitable distribution of environmental benefits.
We have carefully considered various activity types that could be added to the list of significant agency actions. This year, we have determined that we will not expand significant agency actions in 2025 because of the challenges keeping up with our current assessment workload and responsibilities.
Recognizing the importance of continued progress, we will:
- Regularly revisit adding significant agency actions.
- Continuously improve the environmental justice assessment process.
- Support our skills and capacity to complete environmental justice assessments.
