‘Environmental Justice’ for U.S. Minorities Is Ordered : Pollution: Clinton tells all agencies to ease the burden on disadvantaged communities. Impact of hazardous conditions in areas to be documented.

President Clinton on Friday ordered all federal agencies to take steps to lighten what officials called a disproportionate burden on minority communities of pollutants and other environmental hazards.

Clinton signed an executive order requiring federal agencies to “make environmental justice a part of all they do.” Under the order, fair treatment of minority communities would become a factor in decisions ranging from the regulation of pesticides to the prosecution of polluters.

The initiative also sets in motion an unprecedented data-gathering effort across the federal government to document the impact of pollution on minorities.

“Every community must be included in making decisions about their health and environment,” said Vice President Al Gore, who has pressed for the initiative. Under the President’s directive, he added, “we will ensure that disadvantaged populations have an opportunity to participate fully in making health and environmental decisions.”

The initiative, which stems from an earlier promise by the President, has been hailed by groups struggling to counter what they view as a pattern of environmental racism that has befouled minority communities and left them vulnerable to the arrival of new sources of industrial pollution.

But a group of environmental activists meeting in Washington on Friday called on the Administration to do more to rid their communities of pollution. Specifically, they called for a ban on chemicals such as lead and benzene. All have been linked to a variety of illnesses ranging from cancer to nervous disorders to birth defects.

The Clinton Administration is the first to address the issue at such a high level after years of appeals from minority organizations. Benjamin F. Chavis Jr., director of the National Assn. for the Advancement of Colored People, has made environmental justice a priority for his organization.

A 1987 study by Chavis, titled “Toxic Wastes and Race,” established for the first time that communities with large minority populations--even relatively prosperous ones--were far more likely to have hazardous waste facilities and other pollution-producing industries in their midst than were other communities.

A more recent study published by the National Law Journal in 1992 concluded that polluters based in minority areas were treated less severely than those in largely white communities. It also found that toxic cleanup programs under the federal Superfund law took longer and were less complete in minority communities.

Under the initiative, the EPA is expected to gather new data and issue new regulations designed to stem the concentration of heavy industry in areas largely populated by minorities. Last week, the Administration proposed a series of reforms to the Superfund program that would give minority communities a greater voice in cleaning-up Superfund sites in their neighborhoods.

EPA Administrator Carol Browner added that the EPA also will reconsider many of the standards by which exposure to potentially harmful chemicals would be considered safe. Current standards for EPA’s fish advisories, for instance, assume the consumption habits of a middle-class white male. Browner said that new standards would be explored to consider the exposure of minority groups that rely on fishing to subsist and as a result eat large amounts of fish, which can accumulate harmful toxins.

Also on Friday, Atty. Gen. Janet Reno said that the Justice Department will supplement the EPA’s regulatory efforts to ensure that minority communities receive equal protection from polluters.

“What we want to do is to make sure we look at the people most at risk and to make sure that our environmental laws and our civil rights laws are used as vigorously as possible to correct injustice,” said Reno.

In October, the Administration quietly handed minority communities a potentially powerful new tool to fight the introduction of hazardous materials sites in their neighborhoods. The Administration agreed to investigate two separate civil rights complaints from minority communities in Louisiana and Mississippi, which charged that the proposed siting of new plants in their midst was racially biased.

The decision marks the first time that the federal government has encouraged the use of the 1964 Civil Rights Act in community environmental battles, although the nation’s courts traditionally have been wary of such efforts. Clinton Administration officials said that the move is a measure of their commitment to rectify environmental injustices.