In the News

The Biden administration on Thursday will move to restore authority to states and tribes to veto gas pipelines, coal terminals and other energy projects if they would pollute local rivers and streams, reversing a Trump-era rule that had curtailed that power. Richard L. Revesz, a professor of environmental law at New York University, said he did not believe the actions by the Biden administration would affect prices at the pump, since the Trump administration’s limits would remain in place until the Biden rule is finalized, most likely next year. “Keeping the Trump rule in place is not going to keep gas prices low, and removing the Trump rule is not going to raise gas prices,” he said.

Richard Revesz, director of the Institute for Policy Integrity at New York University Law School, says EPA has authority to require cumulative impacts assessments under the Administrative Procedure Act (APA) and anywhere it is required to “look at the consequences of its policies,” such as when it conducts a regulatory impact assessment including costs and benefits.

Carefully orchestrated comment and complaint campaigns can be a powerful, low-risk tool at communities’ disposal, and the organizers and lawyers convened by the Critical Legal Empowerment conference provide important insight into how to get the most out of them.

As the Federal Transit Administration and its partners roll out electric transit across the country, the agency should ensure that its Title VI guidelines for funding recipients explicitly require nondiscrimination in the distribution and routing of such clean vehicles. FTA should also implement the appropriate reporting requirements to effectively monitor the distribution of electric vehicles and their air quality benefits. These recommendations are discussed in more detail in our comments to the agency.

Policy Integrity’s comments make two categories of recommendations: (1) improving public participation, and (2) improving analysis.

But what would serious distributional analysis look like? As we explained in our recent comments on EPA’s Draft Strategic Plan for 2022–2026, serious distributional analysis requires that an agency consider the distributional consequences of multiple regulatory alternatives.

In a report issued late last month, the Institute for Policy Integrity (IPI) at New York University urged agencies to prioritize equity consideration across federal regulations. The Sept. 30 report, “Making Regulations Fair: How Cost-Benefit Analysis Can Promote Equity and Advance [EJ],” recommends rigorous guidance on assessing and weighing the distributional impacts of regulations. “This insufficient analysis is an enormous obstacle in the effort to make policies, environmental and otherwise, fair for all communities,” IPI says in a release on the report.

EPA is urging Michigan regulators to consider asking an asphalt company to move its planned facility to a different location rather than building it in an already-overburdened community, a first-time request in an air permit review that underscores agency efforts to address civil rights and other environmental justice (EJ) concerns. Max Sarinsky of the Institute for Policy Integrity at New York University praises EPA for “wisely recommend[ing] consideration of alternatives that would avoid causing disparate impacts on environmental justice communities.”

The Institute for Policy Integrity, a regulatory think tank based at New York University, says in July 6 comments that OMB should “detail sustainable methodologies and procedures that agencies can implement,” and identifies four principles to guide such action.

The environmental law field has been slow to diversify and there is widespread agreement that diversity is critical to providing high quality work that has a deep and lasting impact. So this winter and spring, in partnership with Green 2.0 and the New York City Bar’s Environmental Law Committee, we set about to explore the best strategies for proactively addressing the disparity.