EPA Head Tours Embattled Communities, Says Help on the Way

By MATTHEW DALY, The Associated Press

RESERVE, La. (AP) — EPA Administrator Michael Regan says a recently completed "Journey to Justice" tour from Mississippi to Texas enabled him to put "faces and names with this term that we call environmental justice."

The five-day tour in mid-November highlighted low-income, mostly minority communities adversely affected by industrial pollution.

A former environmental regulator in his native North Carolina, Regan has made environmental justice a top priority since taking over as EPA chief in March.

The trip included visits to historically marginalized communities such as St. John and St. James parishes in Louisiana, along with cities such as New Orleans, Jackson, Miss., and Houston.