EP109—Cumulative Impacts and the ‘Holy Grail’ of EJ Policy

EELP's Hannah Perls speaks with environmental justice pioneer Charles Lee, former director of EPA's Office of Environmental Justice and principal author of the landmark 1987 report, Toxic Wastes and Race in the United States, and now a visiting scholar at Howard University School of Law, and Sean Moriarty, former deputy commissioner with the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection. They discuss the growing field of cumulative impacts analysis and how states are increasingly using this tool in permitting and other programs to advance meaningful protections for overburdened communities across the country.
Transcript: https://eelp.law.harvard.edu/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/CleanLaw_EP109-Transcript.pdf
Toxic Wastes and Race in the United States: https://www.ucc.org/what-we-do/justice-local-church-ministries/efam/environmental-justice/environmental-ministries_toxic-waste-20/
New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection's Environmental Justice Archives: https://dep.nj.gov/ej/archive/#meeting-20210624
EELP's EJ Tracker page on EPA's cumulative impacts efforts: https://eelp.law.harvard.edu/tracker/epa-released-interim-framework-for-advancing-consideration-of-cumulative-impacts/
National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine's State-of-the-Science and the Future of Cumulative Impact Assessment report: https://www.nationalacademies.org/our-work/state-of-the-science-and-the-future-of-cumulative-impact-assessment
The New School Tishman Environment and Design Center's Cumulative Impacts Dashboard map of EJ laws: https://www.tishmancenter.org/cumulativeimpacts