Executive Order 12898 stated that to the extent practicable and permitted by law, each federal agency, including the EPA, “…shall make achieving environmental justice part of its mission by identifying and addressing, as appropriate, the disproportionately high and adverse human health or environmental effects of its programs, policies, and activities on minority populations and low-income populations in the United States…” In response to the 1994 order, among other things, the EPA Administrator issued guidance the same year providing that environmental justice should be considered early in the rule-making process. EPA continued to provide guidance regarding environmental justice in the following years. For example, in 1995, EPA issued an Environmental Justice Strategy that included, among other provisions, (1) ensuring that environmental justice is incorporated into the agency’s regulatory process, (2) continuing to develop human exposure data through model development, and (3) enhancing public participation in agency decision making. The Office of Environmental Justice, located within EPA’s Office of Enforcement and Compliance Assurance, provides a central point for the agency to address environmental and human health concerns in minority communities and/or low-income communities. However, the agency’s program offices also play essential roles. As such, the key program office dealing with air quality issues is the agency’s Office of Air and Radiation. In fulfilling its Clean Air Act responsibilities, the Office works with state and local governments and other entities to regulate air emissions of various substances that harm human health. It also sets primary national ambient air quality standards for six principal pollutants (carbon monoxide, nitrogen oxides, sulfur dioxide, particulate matter, ground level ozone, and lead) that harm human health and the environment. These standards are to be set at a level that protects human health with an adequate margin of safety which, according to EPA, includes protecting sensitive populations, such as the elderly and people with respiratory or circulatory problems. The Office of Air and Radiation has a multistage process for developing clean air and other rules that it considers a high priority. Initially, a workgroup chair is chosen from the lead program office—normally the Office of Air and Radiation in the case of clean air rulemakings. The workgroup chair assigns the rule one of the three priority levels, and EPA’s top management makes a final determination of the rule’s priority. The priority level assigned depends on such factors as the level of the Administrator’s involvement and whether more than one office in the agency is involved. The gasoline, diesel, and ozone implementation rules were classified as high-priority rules on the basis of these factors. They were also deemed high priority because they were estimated to have an effect on the economy of at least $100 million per year or were viewed as raising novel legal and/or policy issues. For high-priority rules, the workgroup chair is primarily responsible for ensuring that the necessary work gets done and the process is documented. Other workgroup members are assigned from the lead program office and, in the case of the two highest priority rules, from other offices. Among its key functions, the workgroup (1) prepares a plan for developing the rule, (2) seeks early input from senior management, (3) consults with stakeholders, (4) collects data and analyze issues, (5) analyzes alternative options, and (6) recommends one or more options to agency management. In addition, a workgroup economist typically prepares an economic review of the proposed rule’s costs to society. According to EPA, the “ultimate purpose” of an economic review is to inform decision makers of the social welfare consequences of the rule. After approval by relevant offices within EPA, the proposed rule is published in the Federal Register, the public is invited to comment on it, and EPA considers the comments. Comments may address any aspect of the proposed rule, including whether environmental justice concerns are raised and appropriately addressed in the proposed rule. Sometimes, prior to the publication of the proposed rule, EPA publishes an Advanced Notice of Proposed Rulemaking in the Federal Register. The notice provides an opportunity for interested stakeholders to provide input to EPA early in the process, and the agency takes such comments into account to the extent it believes is appropriate. As required by the Clean Air Act, when finalizing a rule, EPA must respond to each significant comment raised during the comment period. In addition, EPA’s public involvement policy states that agency officials should explain how they considered the comments, including any change in the rule or the reason the agency did not make any changes. After these tasks are completed, the rule, if it is significant, is sent to OMB for approval. Once OMB approves the final rule and the Administrator signs it, it is published in the Federal Register. After a specified time period, the rule takes effect. When drafting the three clean air rules, EPA generally devoted little attention to environmental justice. We found, for example, that while EPA guidance states that workgroups should consider environmental justice early in the rulemaking process, this was accomplished only to a limited extent. Key contributing factors included a lack of guidance and training for workgroup members on identifying environmental justice issues. In addition, while EPA officials stated that economic reviews of proposed rules considered potential environmental justice impacts, the gasoline and diesel rules did not provide analyses of such impacts, nor did EPA identify all the types of data that would have been needed to perform such analyses. In finalizing the three rules, EPA considered environmental justice to varying degrees although, in general, the agency rarely provided a clear rationale for its decisions on environmental justice-related matters. For the three rules we examined, concerns about whether environmental justice was being considered sufficiently early in the rulemaking process first became evident by its omission on the agency’s “Tiering Form.” Once a workgroup chair is designated to lead a rulemaking effort, the chair completes this key form to alert senior managers to potential issues related to compliance with statutes, executive orders and other matters. In each case, however, the form did not include a question regarding the rule’s potential to raise environmental justice concerns, nor did we find any mention of environmental justice on the completed form. Beyond this omission, EPA officials had differing recollections about the extent to which the three workgroups considered environmental justice at this early stage of the rulemaking process. The chairs of the workgroups for the two mobile source rules told us that they did not recall any specific time when they considered environmental justice while drafting the rules. Other EPA officials associated with these rules said environmental justice was considered, but provided no documentation to this effect. Similarly, the chair of the ozone workgroup told us that his group considered environmental justice, but could not provide any specific information. He did, however, provide a document stating that compliance with executive orders, including one related to low-income and minority populations, would be a part of the economic review that would take place later in the process. Overall, we identified three factors that may have limited the ability of workgroups to identify potential environmental justice concerns early in the rulemaking process. First, each of the three workgroup chairs told us that they received no guidance in how to analyze environmental justice concerns in rulemaking. Second, as a related matter, each said they received little, if any, environmental justice training. Two chairs did not know whether other members of the workgroups had received any training, and a third chair said at least one member did receive some training. Some EPA officials involved in developing these three rules told us that it would have been useful to have a better understanding of the definition of environmental justice and how to consider environmental justice issues in rulemaking. Finally, the Office of Air and Radiation’s environmental justice coordinators—whose full-time responsibility is to promote environmental justice—were not involved in drafting any of the three rules. As required, an economic review of the costs, and certain other features, was prepared for all three rules. According to EPA officials, however, the economic review of the two mobile source rules did not include an analysis of environmental justice for various reasons, including the fact that EPA did not have a model with the ability to distinguish localized adverse impacts on a specific community or population. EPA’s economic review of the 2004 ozone rule did discuss environmental justice, claiming that the rule would not raise environmental justice concerns. However, it based this claim on an earlier analysis of a 1997 rule that established the 8- hour ozone national ambient air quality standard. Yet rather than indicating that the 1997 ozone rule did not raise environmental justice concerns, this earlier economic review said it was not possible to rigorously consider the potential environmental justice effects because the states were responsible for its implementation. Hence, the inability of EPA to rigorously consider environmental justice in the economic review of the 1997 rule appears to contradict EPA’s subsequent statement that there were no environmental justice concerns raised by the 2004 ozone implementation rule. In finalizing each of the three rules, EPA considered environmental justice to varying degrees, but the gasoline rule in particular provided a questionable example of how comments and information related to environmental justice were received and handled. As noted earlier in this testimony, the Clean Air Act requires that a final rule must be accompanied by a response to each significant comment raised during the comment period. In addition, according to EPA’s public involvement policy, agency officials should explain how they considered the comments, including any change in the rule or the reason the agency did not make any changes. In the case of the gasoline rule, representatives of the petroleum industry, environmental groups, and others had asserted during the comment period that the proposed rule did in fact raise significant environmental justice concerns. One commenter claimed that inequities arose from the fact that while the national air quality benefits were broadly distributed across the country, higher per capita air quality costs were disproportionately confined to areas around refineries. Despite comments such as these, EPA’s final rule did not state explicitly whether it would ultimately raise an environmental justice concern, although EPA officials told us in late 2004 that it would not.