My Green Job: Environmental Justice Program Analyst

Editors’ Note: This story was assigned to Amanda Cronin, a Bluedot contributor who works in environmental justice, for part of our My Green Job series. In it, Amanda describes her work within the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). On Feb. 6, Amanda, along with most of her coworkers in the Office of Environmental Justice and External Civil Rights, was placed on administrative leave. We still think it’s valuable to share her story explaining what environmental justice is all about.

Even before I would clock in at my job at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, my morning had already been shaped by environmental policy. For example, the tap water I used to brush my teeth and brew my coffee wasn’t contaminated, thanks to lead and copper water content requirements. Though I live on a busy street, the air I breathed on my morning walk was clean because of car exhaust limits. If it happened to be raining, that rain would not corrode the sidewalk thanks to the acid rain prevention program. 

These laws match the needs for the neighborhood that I live in. But my neighborhood does not look like every neighborhood in the country. For instance, a trip to the bodega in Harlem, New York, exposes locals to far more air pollutants due to their proximity to the truck-choked highways snaking through the area. Harlem is home to a majority Black population and has one of the highest poverty rates in the city. The policies that control the air quality help determine the health outcomes of the people who live there. Therefore, policies that misalign with the needs of the community will result in, for instance, more cases if early-onset asthma, COPD, and other respiratory diseases. 

Bridging the gap of this mismatch was the task that my office, the EPA Office of Environmental Justice and External Civil Rights (OEJECR), was created to address. The agency defines environmental justice as “the fair treatment and meaningful involvement of all people regardless of race, color, national origin, or income with respect to the development, implementation, and enforcement of environmental laws, regulations, and policies.” My colleagues and I carried out this mission by providing grant funding, holding public meetings and tribal consultations, advising on rulemaking, and more. 

Let me explain: Imagine a town called Somewhereville, a small community along a river where mostly African American families have lived for generations. The river is dotted with plastic manufacturing facilities, and the elementary school is located downstream of them. The residents all know each other by name, and they also all know a neighbor who has cancer. There is valid reason to believe that the high cancer rate is not a coincidence.

This might seem like a description of a developing country, but Somewhereville could be any one of thousands of U.S. communities. Our job at the EPA was to a) use science to demonstrate that such communities’ health challenges are consequences of their location, not random coincidences, and b) use policy to find ways to both respond to and proactively prevent these harms.

To get to my office in Washington D.C., I typically commuted via the green line metro train to the grandiose EPA headquarters building, passing portraits of President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris. While the agency’s policy domain has grown considerably since its creation in 1970, it was not until 2022 that the Biden-Harris administration formally created our national program office, giving it equal footing with established departments like the Office of Water.

On Earth Day 2023, President Joe Biden signed Executive Order 14096: “Revitalizing Our Nation's Commitment to Environmental Justice for All” in the Rose Garden, effectively sowing the seeds for the administration’s environmental justice policy. The Inflation Reduction Act — the largest investment in environmental programs in U.S. history — largely funded these programs, and we agency staff were given the responsibility to carry out these ambitious goals. 

The crown jewel of this executive order was the launch of the “Justice40” initiative, a program that required 40% of all federal funding on climate projects to be earmarked for communities that, throughout history, have been disproportionately affected by things like pollution and contamination. Part of my job was putting my communication and partnership-building skills to work to implement this initiative.

My days varied. Sometimes I was in the office, but often I traveled to engage directly with the people on the frontline whom we sought to protect. From San Juan, Puerto Rico to Huntsville, Alabama to Phoenix, Arizona, I organized public meetings for two councils: the White House Environmental Justice Advisory Council and the National Environmental Justice Advisory Council. These councils are governed by the Federal Advisory Council Act, which acknowledges that the executive branch is not the authority on all subjects, and that they shall solicit advice from experts on pertinent policy issues.

These meetings allowed members to put their ears to the ground and learn about what was happening in communities other than their own, in order to ultimately inform their policy recommendations. 

The convenings were an opportunity for the federal government to learn about regional concerns and for the locals to share their lived experiences. The members of these councils, who represented environmental justice communities from across the 50 states and U.S. territories, brought their own expertise to the table. 

Maria Lopez-Nuñez, a community organizer from Newark, New Jersey, was the author of a searing set of recommendations against carbon capture and sequestration facilities (CCS is a new technology controversial among disadvantaged communities). Harold Mitchell, a native of North Carolina,  suffered chronic illnesses for years before tracing their cause to pollutants in his community. He started a non-profit and, in partnership with the EPA and local businesses, is revitalizing his community by cleaning up and converting Superfund and brownfield sites into affordable housing and recreation areas. Dr. Kyle Whyte, a professor at the University of Michigan and an enrolled member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation, led the tribal and Indigenous workgroup to make recommendations on how to integrate Indigenous ways of knowing into the scientific process and sustain native practices like subsistence hunting and ritual forest burnings. 

My EPA team acted as the railroad conductors, carrying recommendations and public comments from the conference ballroom to the Oval Office. I played a supporting role to the council, which proposed policy reforms across a broad docket of programs. Once the report landed on the president’s desk, it would ideally go on to shape programs like Justice40. To me, these councils exemplified a functioning democracy.

While many political cartoons and commentators may depict the average federal worker as a grayscale pencil pusher, my office was the antithesis of these stereotypes. We operated more like a scrappy start-up company — endowed with the energy and expertise of career government workers and former community organizers, public-interest attorneys, social scientists, and other experts. My colleagues and I poured our hearts into our jobs because we believed (and still believe) deeply in the value of this mission. Working for this office was the job of my dreams, and I was so grateful for the opportunity to serve the country in this way.  

What You Can Do

Write a letter to your member of Congress to urge them to support H.R. 2550, the “Protect America’s Workforce Act,” using this tool sponsored by the American Federation of Government Employees.

Donate to the AFGE labor union legal defense fund.