Last week, the LSPA sent this letter to the Massachusetts Executive Office of Energy and Environmental Affairs ("EEA") as part of its public comment period on the secretariat-wide draft Environmental Justice (EJ) Strategy. The comment period ends on Friday, February 17, 2023. The effort to develop the report was led by EEA’s Environmental Justice Task Force and convened by EEA’s Director of Environmental Justice in September 2020.

In its materials, EEA noted that it seeks the public review to “elaborate on approaches that are likely to be successful, identify strategies that were missed, and highlight practices that may fall short of our mutual goals to establish a more just and equitable commonwealth.”  The strategy is intended to improve the internal management of EEA agencies and the intended audience is EEA staff in their efforts to engage the public. In addition to an overview of the EJ Policy, the report is organized into 13 sections, one for each EEA agency, that outline how each specific agency intends to implement actions for promoting and integrating EJ considerations across its programs, policies, activities, and other strategies.