环境正义的核心

As an attorney for the DOJ and EPA, Quentin Pair (’71) helped develop environmental justice practices within the federal government.

Quentin Pair (’71) had been a senior trial attorney for the 环境及自然资源司 of the Department of Justice (DOJ) for 18 years before he began working with the US 环境保护 Agency’s (EPA) 环境司法办公室. 在他开始临时工作后不久，他接到了陆军工程兵团一位官员的愤怒电话。 该办公室正在调查弗吉尼亚州一座大坝的建设，该大坝将干扰当地印第安部落Mattaponi的供水和渔业。

1994年比尔·克林顿总统签署的第12898号行政命令指示每个联邦机构将环境正义原则纳入其使命声明，并减轻机构澳门威尼斯人注册行动对少数民族和低收入人群的负面环境影响。 The dam project, Pair notes, was approved without consulting the tribe, and would have infringed on a buffer zone established by a 1677 treaty between the region’s Native American tribes and King Charles II of England.

“[The Army Corp official] was hopping mad,” Pair says, so they decided to cool down and meet to discuss the project. “I’ve got EPA people on my side of the table, lawyers and executives, and this guy is sitting across the table from us with his boss, and in walks this one-star general, the Corp’s supervisor for the dam project. 他绕过去坐在我旁边。 He is the district commander for the Corps, and he said ‘I’ve read the Executive Order, I don’t think we’re in compliance, and I’m not signing off on this.’ ”

“And that was my introduction to environmental justice.”

基金会

Pair’s father was the first black doctor in West Chester County, New York. 虽然他希望他的儿子跟随他的实践，但他更倾向于人文学科而不是科学。 “Chemistry took care of that,” he says, “and I decided that maybe science was not my forte.” 但有了妻子和年幼的女儿，在父亲的支持下继续接受教育，他参加了律师资格考试，并申请了几所法学院。 BU Law “had the good judgment” to accept him.

“It was here that I found that I really liked the law,” he says. 保罗·利亚科斯（Paul Liacos）教授在IBM和百事可乐/菲多利公司（PepsiCo/Frito-Lay）成功地完成了暑期工作后，后来成为马萨诸塞州最高法院首席大法官的他推荐帕埃在贝伦、贝利和贝利公司担任代表欧洲各地军事法庭士兵的职位。 在欧洲五年的审判实践变成了在华盛顿特区的犯罪实践。 But in 1980, when hazardous waste regulations under the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act went into effect, Pair’s extensive court experience put him in line for a job prosecuting violations for the Department of Justice (DOJ).

他在司法部的职业生涯长达35年，在此期间，他负责起诉环保局提交给他办公室的案件，以执行联邦环境法。 He prosecuted and settled the first cases involving the EPA’s superfund program, which funds the cleanup of the country’s most contaminated land, was appointed the special prosecutor for the 环境及自然资源司, and helped the DOJ establish the Environmental Crimes Section.

解决不公

Pair didn’t know much about environmental justice before he began working on those cases with EPA. 没有人做。 当他和Mattaponi一起处理这个案子时，无论是部落首领还是弗吉尼亚州的律师都不知道这场运动。 尽管如此，他还是一炮而红。 “When I came back to the DOJ I felt this was something we had to promote,” he says.

在接下来的几年里，帕特在司法部和各联邦机构工作，以促进对环境正义问题的理解。 He helped implement an environmental justice policy to make sure it was an important feature of the DOJ’s work. In each attorney’s recommendations on how to proceed with a case, Pair and his team institutionalized a section that required a comment on any environmental justice issues that might arise in the case. “Not every environmental case had an environmental justice issue, and not every environmental justice issue would be litigated by the EPA,” he says, “but we wanted the attorneys to think about it.”

“The heart of justice is equality,” Pair says, so justice looks different for each impacted community. “It’s not about spreading pollution to each community equally, but about sharing the responsibility for providing a clean environment to all populations.” The decisions for siting these polluting facilities aren’t made by one person. 没有单一的坏人。 但根据2007年的一项澳门威尼斯人注册网站研究，决策过程导致四分之三的有害设施被安置在有色人种社区。 这种歧视可能不是故意的，但结果是一样的。 “Justice in those cases is getting these waste sites out of communities. Or coming to an agreement as a whole community on how to treat the waste so it’s not affecting communities. How do we spend resources so that nobody is affected?”

面临的挑战是缺乏起诉的环境正义法律。 “The authority to do the work is in the Executive Order,” he says. 1964年《民权法案》第六章禁止在接受联邦资助的项目中基于种族和国籍的歧视，这是社区向政府机构寻求正义的另一个工具。

但是，他指出，这项工作是值得的。 在他的解决方案中，听取社区的意见，了解他们认为的问题是什么，以及解决方案可能是什么，这一点至关重要。 “Environmental justice is about trying to protect the poor and disenfranchised,” he says, “those who don’t have a voice. We cannot have environmental justice for all until we address environmental injustices.”

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