A Survey of Federal Agency Responses to President Clinton’s Executive Order Number 12898 on Environmental Justice

In an effort to address the well-documented and serious problem of environmental justice in the United States, President William J. Clinton issued Executive Order (EO) No. 128981 on February 11, 1994. The EO represented the culmination of a century of rapid changes in society\u27s attitudes toward the placement of hazardous facilities in poor, disadvantaged, and minority communities, as well as the denial of services to these communities. This survey examines the impact of the EO on federal agencies. Environmental justice is not a problem unique to the late 20th century. Majoritarian societies have historically discriminated against minority groups.3 For example, the post-World War II exodus to the suburbs in the United States partially reflected an effort by affluent members of society to insulate themselves from the more unpleasant realities of modern-day living. Through zoning and other land use planning tools, economically deprived persons and sundry undesirable facilities were excluded from the affluent suburbs. Zoning was often an effective tool of exclusion