[00:00:18] Speaker A: Welcome to Uptown Chats, a podcast where we share stories about environmental justice by and for everyday people. I'm your co host, Jaron.
[00:00:25] Speaker B: And I'm your other co host, Lonnie.
[00:00:27] Speaker A: And today we're talking with Lisa Garcia, who is the current administrator for Region 2 of the Environmental Protection Agency, aka the EPA.
[00:00:37] Speaker C: Yeah, this is a good episode for.
[00:00:38] Speaker B: Folks who are less familiar with the EPA and what it does. Short answer, they keep our air, water and soil clean. Long answer. Stay tuned to find out.
[00:00:48] Speaker A: Yeah, but before we get to that, Lonnie, can you share what we AC's mission is?
[00:00:52] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:00:52] Speaker B: We ACT's mission is to build healthy communities by ensuring that people of color and or low income residents participate meaningfully in the creation of sound and fair environmental health and protection policies and practices.
[00:01:03] Speaker A: Thank you. Now, before we get to our interview with Administer Garcia, let's do a quick dive into the history of the epa, its mission, and how it operates.
[00:01:13] Speaker B: Let's do it. So the EPA was created in December 1970 under President Richard Nixon, came in at a time when environmental disasters like rivers catching fire, let that image sink for a second.
Unchecked pollution and growing public concern made it clear that the United States needed a centralized agency to tackle environmental problems.
[00:01:35] Speaker A: Exactly. Before the epa, environmental regulation was scattered across various federal agencies, making it inefficient to address complex and growing challenges. And the EPA brought these responsibilities under one roof and created a more coordinated effort to protect the environment and public health.
[00:01:54] Speaker B: Yeah. So what exactly does the EPA do? Its mission is to protect human health and in the environment. That means addressing air and water quality, regulating chemical use, cleaning up contaminated land, and enforcing environmental laws passed by Congress.
[00:02:11] Speaker A: And the agency plays a big role in environmental justice, too. The EPA defines environmental justice as the fair treatment and meaningful involvement of all people, regardless of race, color, national origin, or income, in environmental decision making. Which is crucial because historically marginalized communities have won the brunt of pollution and environmental neglect.
[00:02:32] Speaker B: That's right. Programs like EJScreen, the EPA's environmental justice mapping tool, help identify communities that are disproportionately affected by environmental hazards. The Agency uses this information to prioritize resources and actions in areas that need it the most. If you're interested in checking out the EJ screen, you can find the link in our show notes if you want to learn more.
[00:02:52] Speaker A: Now, let's talk about how the EPA is actually structured. At the top is the Administer, currently Administer Michael Regan, who's appointed by the President and confirmed by the Senate. They oversee the entire agency and all of its activities.
[00:03:07] Speaker B: The EPA is further divided into 10 regional offices, and New York is a part of EPA Region 2, which also includes New Jersey, Puerto Rico, and Virgin Islands. And these regional offices work together directly with states, tribes, and local governments to enforce regulations and implement programs.
[00:03:27] Speaker A: Beyond the regions, the EPA has specialized offices for areas like air quality, water waste management, and environmental justice, and those offices collaborate to make sure national policies are effective and equitable.
[00:03:41] Speaker B: A great example of this collaboration is EPA's role in Superfund cleanups. The agency identifies and cleans up hazardous waste sites, often partnering with communities to ensure their voices are being heard throughout the process.
[00:03:53] Speaker A: Speaking of communities, the EPA also administers grants to support environmental justice initiatives, helping grassroots organizations address local concerns, including funding for we act and other environmental justice groups.
[00:04:07] Speaker B: Yeah, it's a huge job, and the stakes couldn't be higher. Right now, the EPA is not just about protecting the environment. It's about safeguarding our health, ensuring clean air and water, and promoting equity.
[00:04:19] Speaker A: And with that, let's go ahead and jump into our interview with Administer Garcia, who will give us an insider look at how all this stuff comes together on the ground and a little bit more detail about how the EPA works.
[00:04:33] Speaker B: Let's go.
[00:04:41] Speaker A: Before we get too far in, we always like to start each of our episodes with a little bit more of a personal note, getting to know our guest and some of your personal connection with the work. So would you mind giving us just a brief introduction about yourself, you know, kind of at a high level, what you do in your role and how you ended up in this space and doing this work?
[00:05:00] Speaker D: Yeah. Great. Thank you so much. It's great to be joining you all. My name is Lisa Garcia, and I am the regional administrator at U.S. ePA for Region 2.
Region 2 includes New York, New Jersey, Puerto Rico, the U.S. virgin Islands, and eight Indian nations, mainly upstate New York. And it's a great pleasure to be here. So how I came to the environmental work, the first step was pretty easy in that I took a course on international environmental law in law school. I want to take a study abroad program in Spain. And the one slot that was open was international environmental law. But then I fell in love with it. And then the second step to the more domestic and environmental justice pieces. I actually went to a career fair for incoming lawyers, new lawyers, and there was a fact sheet on environmental justice work in New York City. And I was just so intrigued and interested. And I had lived in the Bronx, met with a few people, and it kind of set my path forward. I just Became passionate about the work from there.
[00:06:11] Speaker C: Yeah, I also have like a, one of those kind of journeys as well into this space of taking a class or just randomly kind of doing something related to it. And I did like a project, a consulting project. I was like, oh, I actually do like this environmental work. So this is how I also end up here. So definitely reflecting on that as well. But can you talk a little bit about the work that EPA does and how that has shifted over time and how it's changed?
[00:06:35] Speaker D: So as most people know, EPA was created, it was a bipartisan effort actually, but created in the 1970s. And it was really a place where one, the mission was protecting human health and the environment. And it would be the agency that would implement many of our environmental, you know, the bedrock environmental laws and statutes like the Clean Air act, the Clean Water act, some of our circular super fund programs. So the real mission has always been to make sure that we have clean air, clean water and clean soil. And that's really, I would say, the bread and butter of the agency over the past 50 years, let's say. But over the years, like with anything else, it had to evolve into thinking about things that were being raised, certainly by places like we act and other environmental justice communities that we need to look further into, not only how we're implementing the acts, but are we looking at things like justice and fairness. And so you see EPA beginning to move into more public education, public outreach, community based work, and then in 1992 creating the Office of Environmental Equity, which becomes the Office of Environmental Justice. And while that's kind of policy driven, it was the office that began to work at, okay, when we look at clean air, clean water and clean soil, how are we making sure that it's not impacting certain communities? And so the evolution of EPA again to do this kind of place based work was on this trajectory through that environmental justice lens. And then beginning in the 2000s, you also begin to see more of an effort of looking at not only the community, geographic locations of facilities and how it's impacting communities, but what is the health of those communities. And so you begin seeing in the 2000s also this nexus of looking at what is the correlation between health and our environmental laws. And in, I think it was 2010, really announcing or pronouncing that there is something called community environmental health or that we have to look at health disparities because emissions or pollution is really impacting health and creating health disparities across communities. And of course also in the 2000s or the late 2010, you know, around 2010, a real emphasis on climate change, that not only in looking at clean air do you look at things like, you know, the classic sick pollutant like Nox ox anyway, ozone. We also need to look at climate change and what is the effort behind greenhouse gases look to reduce the impacts from climate change. And of course, now in 2020-2024, you see a real advancement of every single agency saying we need to reduce the impacts from climate change. So, you know, so we still have the Clean Air act and the Clean Water act, and we're still protecting all of the great things there. But we're also. EPA has also grown up into understanding we need to evolve with the changing environment, if you can say it that way. But, you know, how do we make sure that we're keeping up with the times and looking at what the impacts are causing to our health, to our communities, and of course, to our planet? Right. With climate change, you're kind of capturing.
[00:10:22] Speaker A: This in your answer. All these kind of really big shifts and kind of evolutions over time. And just like anything else, a big institution like the EPA responds to influences from inside, internal influences and external influences to really shift the momentum and the direction for what are the priorities for the agency. What do you feel like some of the big influences that have helped kind of drive some of those changes that you just mentioned over time? How much of it do you feel like is internal, external, a balance of both? And what are some of those, I guess, key influences that you've seen, I guess, in your time that have led to some of these changes that you're talking about?
[00:10:58] Speaker D: Yeah, I think epa, again, so if the, you know, if our baseline has been to implement these bedrock environmental laws, there's always been a sense that we need the scientific data or the technology to support and justify the work that we're doing, especially when EPA is issuing new regulations to cut down on particulate matter, to cut down on ozone. And so there's always been people in house, right? The scientists and the technical people and the engineers in house talking about where we're evolving to, you know, what the new science is showing us, what the new data is showing us. And so that's one part of it that as we're, you know, the obligation, I think even each statute has an obligation. EPA needs to revisit some of its regulations on pollution every five years. And so there's this opportunity for our team, epa, to go out and look at what's going on in the world or go to conferences and get the greatest new technology. And we also have in house people who are doing it. So there's that effort between, I would say the science and the technical to make sure that everything is based on this scientific integrity here at epa. But a big portion of EPA moving the needle or even asking the question, should we move the needle? Should we do more EJ work? Should we reduce certain pollutants because of the health impacts or huge asthma rates? That push, I would say, is 100%. The communities externally, a lot of the EJ leaders, a lot of the environmental justice community groups, along with some of the civil rights groups and health advocates and health agent leaders, talking about this issue of health disparities in especially communities of color and in low income communities, Right? So we know that some of the data has shown that black children suffer more from asthma, have higher asthma rates. But then there was a study done that Hispanics have high incidence of asthma also. But if you break it down by ethnicity, Puerto Ricans have the highest asthma rates. And so those are the efforts that you're combining what the communities are saying, again, especially communities of color, like we are suffering from certain ailments, respiratory illnesses, cardiac illnesses, and pushing the agencies to do something about it. And so that kind of activates our science teams and our great teams at EPA to meet the moment that the community groups and the public are forcing us to do. And so that's how you see some of the reductions in particulate matter. That's how you see environmental justice analyses in rules really saying we need to focus on these disparities that we're seeing also. So I would say a huge piece of it is the advocate saying EPA needs to do a better job than just issuing permits under the Clean Air act and issuing rules. We need to start really digging deeper into the work we. And of course, climate change also, I would say a big push was, you know, a lot of the environmental groups saying, we need to begin to look at how we can address the climate impacts because it is caused by air pollution. And that really put EPA at the forefront of community groups, environmental groups asking the question, what is EPA going to do about the increase in greenhouse gases? And so you see epa, obviously with some of the regulations responding, I just.
[00:14:42] Speaker C: Want to add there, I never really thought of the connection of the kind of health disparity kind of movement and figuring that out. And why were there health disparities, especially racial disparities, kind of being the catalyst for the EPA kind of getting involved a little bit more into the environmental justice work. That they're doing and also just doing more than just saying, you know, we're going to acknowledge that these disparities exist. It's what can we do at our agency to kind of help mitigate or lessen those disparities between, you know, ethnic and racial groups and socioeconomic classes and things. Can you talk a little bit about how that manifests? Like, what does that look like kind of on the ground when it's saying, like, all right, there's a problem here. We've also assessed the kind of environmental justice aspect of it. How does that go about what you guys do when it comes to regulations or rules or any. Or permitting or any of that when you. When you do your work?
[00:15:37] Speaker D: Yeah. So I would say there's two great examples. One, when you look, I mean, not great in that there's these health impacts, but great in that it came together. One is if you look at some of the asthma or, you know, work to reduce asthma rates. And then also even in our work around lead and certainly the lead service lines that you begin to see, you know, sometimes people talk about, if you look at a map of the United States and you begin to overlay poverty and communities of color and then asthma rates or cardiac illnesses, you know, you begin to see that certain communities are always red, let's say, or activated. And then if you begin to overlay it with where are some of our highest concentrations of air pollution or traffic pollution, where are some of the highest incidence of lead in pediatric rates? Right. So of lead poisoning, you begin to see this picture of why certain EJ groups especially have said there are hotspots in the United States, and you need to address these issues, because it's not only environmental, but it's impacting the health. And that's where you get this discussion about health disparities. So the way that EPA has been able to work on this. And I remember in the early 2000s, 2000s around there, there was one piece about, okay, asthma rates. How do we look at what EPA can do around pollution? But then what's the policy piece? And EPA was able to join, like, a federal task force on reducing asthma rates in the United States. And so there's education that goes along with that and understanding the prevention piece. So working closely with our health advocates and human health and services on the policy pieces, we need preventive health care. We need to make sure that we're focusing on reducing those asthma rates. But at the same time, EPA was able to look at some of the potential correlation between air Pollution. And look at, let's say, particulate matter, can we reduce the levels of particulate matter? And that's EPA's regulatory space. Right? The space that we've been in for many years and begin to look at studies that showcase and highlight those high levels of pediatric asthma rates. And so you see EPA again, balancing this work with the external world, the community groups, the health advocates, saying maybe we can work on reducing PM through our regulatory space, but there's also a policy place where we want to make sure that we work on the preventive care with the health in the health space. And so that's one piece. And then, of course, quickly, just on the lead, there's been so many great organizations working on reducing lead poisoning in children. And of course, the studies have shown that historically, unfortunately, kids, you know, black kids, Latino kids, are the ones that have the higher rates of lead poisoning. And so what do we do? And so EPA was able to, on the regulatory side, look at, of course, the federal government, I should say, looked at how do we stop lead paint, how do we ban lead paint? And then EPA started looking at buildings that had, that may still have lead paint and really focusing in on what we can do about lead dust and regulations around lead and then also in lead and drinking water. EPA has the lead and copper rule. So again, while we're working on the policy piece and making sure we're working on educating communities and working on the policy, EPA was able to also come in and say, how do we improve our lead and copper standard? And how do we. And now under the Biden Harris administration, how do we fund replacing lead service lines? Just get all the lead pipes out and hopefully you can reduce the levels of lead and drinking water. And so again, EPA kind of is cobbling together this work of, yes, we are the regulatory agency, but we have opportunities under funding and grants to the states in helping to get out lead service lines, funding to get out lead paint, and also regulations for those lead dust standards and lead. And I think it's the renovation and repair standards also that make sure that when you're renovating a house, you make sure that there's no lead paint or impacts to kids, again, from lead paint. Anyway, that's a long way of saying it's the external, the organizations on the outside pushing, putting the pressure on EPA and EPA hopefully rising to the level to meet that challenge in tackling these issues.
[00:20:44] Speaker A: You really set me up well with that last piece of your response. And you really touched on the regulation piece, the policy piece, the science all the things that the EPA is doing to reduce the impact of environmental exposures on communities, especially environmental justice communities. And starting to talk about some of the lead pieces and funding some of that work. That kind of brings us into one of the next questions we want to ask you, which is about some of the programs that EPA is leading to address some of the environmental exposures across the country and environmental justice communities. And wanted to give you a chance to highlight what some of those programs are. There are some that we act as connected with directly. For example, the Environmental Justice Thriving Communities Technical Assistance Centers or TIC tac. And you know, some of the lead, the lead work, other things like, you know, electric school buses. So any programs you want to highlight that the, you know, EPA is, is leading, that is kind of related to this, you know, environmental justice work or just in general that are important for people to know about.
[00:21:45] Speaker D: Yeah. So just since I closed out the last comment with the Lead and Copper Rule, you know, we EPA updated the Lead and Copper Rule to more stringent and to make sure that communities have the funding to be able to identify where lead service lines are and then hopefully the funding to continue to replace those lead service lines within 10 years. And that's a huge effort or initiative that couples together this regulatory piece and the policy piece and being able to fund it. And so that's going to be, I mean, that's just delivering a huge health benefit to the United States of America is to just get rid of the lead. And so the Biden Harris administration has been really forceful about this, get the lead out. And I think now we are well on our way. It's really exciting. The other piece also is this combination of reducing pollution and also tackling climate change or reducing the impacts from climate change. Epa again, under the Biden Harris administration, had the Clean School Bus grant program and loan program. And this is really working with local communities to say, okay, we know so many communities depend on school buses to get their kids to school. And we've also heard that the older diesel buses, sometimes not only is it the pollution or the contamination and emissions coming from the tailpipe, but also seeping into the cabin of the bus. And so the Clean School Bus program is funding that allows local school districts to purchase new clean school buses, you know, electric school buses, and change out their old diesel school buses. And that is really, again, localized health benefits from the family standing on the corner waiting for the bus, to the kids riding the bus or waiting outside of the school to hop on the bus. And those are just huge Benefits. And in the region, we were able to give out so far $116 million on that one. I think also for us, the increased money and efforts around cleaning up contaminated sites like orphan sites. So many times you have a Superfund site, but you don't have a principal responsible party that contaminated the site. So it just sits there and abandoned. And we know a lot of times low income communities are really suffering from just these abandoned sites and they can't reuse them. So the funding that went into cleaning up orphan sites and also more funding for Brownfield. So if you don't know who the principal responsible party is, the funding for communities to work with their local government to get the money to do a phase one, figure out what the contamination is and then go through the process of cleaning it up and then reusing it. And the administrator, Administrator Regan always likes to say that we go from blight to might, you know, that we give back this land and this property to the community to reuse for anything. It could be a recreation center or if it's cleaned out pristinely enough to a park, just anyway it goes back into the. Back to the community as great properties. And then of course, like you were mentioning, two to three billion dollars for environmental justice investments. This is really a once in a lifetime first ever. All the accolades people could say this is really Congress coming together with the federal government and communities and saying, we hear you. The community groups and EJ groups and civil rights groups have been saying this for years.
There needs to be money going to communities to clean up, to make sure that we are bringing about benefits to low income communities, communities of color and indigenous communities. And so the money that you see coming out of the, well, it was the inflation reduction act, but $2 billion for community change grants that could be used for communities collaborating with local governments on a host of different issues. That is just really exciting from how they reduce local asthma rates, how they reduce local flooding. It could be for educational programs, around the environment, for schools, a host of issues. And that's just really exciting. You know, the deadline was actually just November 21st. So we're really excited to get the $2 billion out. And of course to be able to do this work, we have heard over and over for decades, communities need technical assistance, they need capacity building. And so the $10 million for each thriving community technical assistance center, and we act as one of them, thank you very much. We fondly call them tic tacs. That was essential to make sure that if there's a community group or A small grassroots organization, they have somewhere to. They have somewhere to go to be able to sit down and say, you know, we have this flooding issue or an odor issue and just talk to us about what is going on with all these grants in the federal government at EPA and Department of Energy especially, how do we access some of the funding? How do we build out our own capacity? So the Tic Tacs, there are one or two in each region and it's really localized. This is about having someone in your state willing to help you or in your region ready to help with that technical assistance. And again, this is a first ever for EPA to be able to fund the Tic Tac communities, especially EJ leaders, have been asking for this type of work for decades. And EPA was finally able to deliver. We have great partners, you know, in region two with we ACT and the Inter Americana University in Puerto Rico that's helping with our Caribbean work. And I think it has just been amazing to see how much work has been done over the years to be able to talk about the success of these programs and how environmental justice principles and climate justice principles are integrated or institutionalized or operationalized, as some people say, throughout EPA's programs to really ensure that we bring benefits to communities that have been historically suffering for so long with, you know, high rates of pollution and other health disparities.
[00:28:50] Speaker C: I really love hearing about this large federal agency really focused on kind of like this localized community driven action. Because we often say, especially here we act, is that the community knows what they want, they know what they need. Sometimes they don't have the funding, they don't know how to access the funding. And when we do give access, then there's also like, there's the assistance part that you talked about that's really important. Not everyone has grant writers, not everyone knows the language, and not everyone knows how to go through these applications. So to have these centers to get people, communities to access money, to do the things that they know exactly what's going on in their communities and what they want to fix and change. I think it's really. I think it's really powerful and important to kind of see the federal government working in this way that's kind of turning some of this power over to localized communities. So I just wanted to say that I think that's a great.
[00:29:40] Speaker D: No, I appreciate that. And I'll just say that, I mean, you phrased it so well. The Tic Tacs were created with community groups. And so each Tic Tac may also have something that is localized that helps with the work where they are. For instance, our Tic Tac in Puerto Rico, they have to travel to other islands, to the United States Virgin Islands. And so even setting up the Tic Tac in the way that EJ was meant. Right. EJ101 communities speak for themselves. They need to be at the table. They make decisions for themselves. So even setting up the tick tock with that understanding, like you just said, is a huge change in the way EPA thinks. The culture of EPA has changed because of the EJ movement, you know, really instilling the work and EPA adopting it. Thanks to all, you know, all the work over the years of the EJ movement and the elders in the movement and making sure they don't give up.
The resilient elders in the EJ movement. Yeah. To finally get here and say we are going to build it in the way that you would like us to do it.
[00:30:58] Speaker A: Yeah. It's been nice from the weak perspective, seeing the pieces come together again locally, trying to build out the team, actually what it takes to make that kind of regional coordination happen and bring all the right team members together and bring people to the table from the different regions. And it has been cool to watch that build out from the announcement of the program and then we being selected and then just that whole process of seeing something kind of come into reality. I'm excited to see kind of where it goes over the next few years as those regional partnerships really build out. So it's exciting. Something else that you touched on is this funding for really supporting the capacity building for EJ groups, kind of standing the test of time in different administrations. And that kind of naturally leads us to one of our next questions, which is thinking about the durability of this work and thinking about the fact that we're at a time where we're anticipating a new administration and thinking about what the transition might look like and maybe some potential changes that you might anticipate. But really just thinking about how this work around environmental health has persist, has been durable and what you maybe anticipate over that transition.
[00:32:13] Speaker D: One of the things that I will say about the transition is one, I've just had the opportunity of a lifetime. So I guess I want to publicly say thank you so much for the opportunity. I am the one person who will be leaving Region 2, but the great thing is that there's like 1,000 other people in Region 2 who come to work every day, are totally dedicated to the mission of epa, protecting public health and the environment, and do this work day to day like, you know, administration over administration. And so we have lots of confidence that this wonderful team would just will continue to do the great work here in Region two. And of course across the epa, right, like we've been talking about, so many of these programs are around for decades and decades. The other thing is obviously we know that there has been some new money that came in under the bipartisan infrastructure law and the inflation Reduction Act. EPA has done a great job at making sure that much of the funding has been gone out the door. That was the mandate EPA had to here's some more money. Make sure you get it out the door for delivering benefits to across the United States, for infrastructure, for climate change, for environmental justice, so many other things. And so EPA has done the work of that much of the money has been obligated and will be obligated or awarded by January. So that's really great.
And so that, that is a way to again ensure that the work continues. And I think, you know, historically, like, like we've been saying, if you think about the Office of Environmental Equity that became the Office of Environmental justice, that's been around since the 90s, the Office of Children's Health, like we just mentioned, has been around for decades. And so there's so much work that will continue here at epa. And while administrations sometimes do come in and have different priorities, sometimes one administration may highlight the Superfund program and our remediation work and another administration may come in and focus in on the air all of the day to day continues even if it's not on the front page of the newspaper or not, you know, pinging your phone as in your feed, it's still going on, the work is still continuing. And so while like I said, I truly think the work here at EPA is amazing, wonderful, and if history tells us anything, the work will continue. Like I said, priorities may change. But EPA has been here and will be here. And so I'm confident in saying that and really look forward to see what EPA does into the future.
[00:35:21] Speaker A: Thanks for listening. If you like this episode, make sure to rate and review the show on whatever platform you listen on. And if you have thoughts, we encourage you to reach out to us with your thoughts and
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[00:35:34] Speaker B: Act on Facebook at weak4ej that's W E a c T F O R E J on instagram x and YouTube@weact4ej that's w e a c t number 4ej and check out our website weak.org for more information about environmental justice.
[00:35:52] Speaker A: Until next time, peace.
