"The Biden administration could soon deliver on its promise to create a Senate-confirmed position to coordinate environmental justice initiatives across EPA.

Last year, President Biden’s first budget blueprint proposed establishing an EPA assistant administrator for environmental justice, an effort to elevate decisionmaking on the issue to the highest levels of the agency.

Observers see an appropriations package for the entire federal government — the omnibus bill — as providing the money to stand up that new position at EPA. That legislation could be enacted as early as next month.

“The omnibus is the best opportunity to be able to get the funding that is necessary,” said Mustafa Santiago Ali, a former EPA environmental justice official who is now a vice president at the National Wildlife Federation."

Kevin Bogardus and Kelsey Brugger report for E&E News February 17, 2022. [2]