DOJ’s Environmental Justice Enforcement Strategy and Restoration of Settlement Projects: 5 Things You Should Know

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The Department of Justice (“DOJ”) issued a Comprehensive Environmental Justice Enforcement Strategy (“the Strategy”) on May 5, 2022, pursuant to President Biden’s January 2021 Executive Order on Tackling the Climate Crisis at Home and Abroad. The Strategy provides a roadmap for DOJ civil and criminal enforcement authorities, working alongside federal agencies such as the Environmental Protection Agency (“EPA”), to “advance environmental justice¹ through timely and effective remedies for systemic environmental violation and contamination and for injury to natural resources in underserved communities that have been historically marginalized and overburdened[.]”