WWU's Troy Abel named to the EPA's environmental justice panel

WWU Professor of Professor of Urban and Environmental Planning and Policy Troy Abel has been appointed to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s  Environmental Justice Science and Analysis Review Panel. This Science Advisory Board panel advises EPA’s administrator on issues related to environmental justice.

“I am very honored to be appointed to a panel of leading EJ scientists from across the nation,” said Abel. “I look forward to reviewing EJ science advances that will improve EPA’s fair treatment and meaningful involvement of all people in environmental analysis and rulemaking.” 

Congress established the SAB in 1978 to review and advise the EPA on various scientific and technical aspects of environmental issues. Between 2012 and 2015, Abel served on the first scientific review of EJ for the EPA, which resulted in the first edition of the Technical Guidance for Assessing Environmental Justice in Regulatory Analysis (EJTG), a document designed to help EPA analysts evaluate EJ concerns during rulemaking. The EPA made EJ an agency-wide priority in 2010, and their commitment has grown in the last decade to a point where there is now a standing EJ committee.

Abel is a professor of Environmental Policy in the College of the Environment's Urban and Environmental Planning and Policy Department and joins other experts from academia, industry, government, Tribes, research institutes, and non-governmental organizations on the advisory panel.