Robin Morris Collin, a top aide to Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator Michael Regan, is rumored to be in consideration to receive a promotion to lead the EPA’s Office of Environmental Justice and External Civil Rights.
According to E&E News, the office will hold over 200 people and be in control of a $3 billion block grant, which was a part of the climate package that Congress passed over the summer. Regan announced the creation of this office in September, and they hope to make it as viable an office as the EPA’s offices of water and air. The appointee for this office will likely have to be confirmed by the Senate.
“From day one, President (Joe) Biden and (the) EPA have been committed to delivering progress on environmental justice and civil rights and ensuring that underserved and overburdened communities are at the forefront of our work,” Regan said in a press release. “With the launch of a new national program office, we are embedding environmental justice and civil rights into the DNA of EPA and ensuring that people who’ve struggled to have their concerns addressed see action to solve the problems they’ve been facing for generations.”
Currently a senior adviser to the administrator for environmental justice, Collin previously was the Norma Paulus professor of law at Willamette University in Oregon, according to a press release by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. She is noted as being one of the first law professors to teach sustainability courses in a U.S. law school, and taught law at several universities before teaching at Willamette University. Collin was also a founding chair of the State of Oregon’s Environmental Justice Task Force.
“Climate change is the single greatest environmental challenge of our time,” Collin said when she was hired to her current position, in the press release. “Environmental justice is the way a multiracial, multi-ethnic society engages that challenge. I am honored to serve in this role to protect our land, air and water and, as part of that work, lift up underserved communities so that we may all thrive together.”
The Office of Environmental Justice and External Civil Rights does already have some staff in place, despite not having an assistant administrator nominee. According to the EPA staff page, Marianne Engelman-Lado is the acting principal deputy assistant administrator, Matthew Tejada is the deputy assistant administrator for environmental justice and Lilian Sotolongo Dorka is the deputy assistant administrator for external civil rights.
The EPA defines environmental justice as ensuring that environmental laws, regulations and policies fairly treat and involve all people regardless of race, color, national origin or income. The job of The Office of Environmental Justice and External Civil Rights will provide leadership to the rest of the EPA to follow those ideas of environmental justice, implement them, provide resources and technical assistance, and engage with communities with environmental justice concerns.
