[co-author: Madison Dipman]
On November 21, 2024, the U.S. EPA released a new draft framework – the Interim Framework for Advancing Consideration of Cumulative Impacts – intended to provide EPA’s employees with guidance for how they should consider “cumulative impacts” of pollution in their programmatic work and engage with local communities on these issues.
EPA defines cumulative impacts as the totality of exposures to different types of environmental stressors and their effects on health, well-being, and quality of life outcomes. A cumulative impacts assessment evaluates these exposures—which may include stressors not considered in EPA’s traditional risk assessment paradigm—and their interactions and effects to inform environmental decision-making.
The new framework was not developed in a vacuum. Since the early days of the Biden-Harris Administration, the President and EPA have specifically highlighted the importance of cumulative impacts. For example, under Executive Order No. 14096 (“Revitalizing Our Nation’s Commitment to Environmental Justice for All”), President Biden called on agencies to advance environmental justice by addressing “disproportionate and adverse human health and environmental effects and hazards, including … cumulative impacts of environmental and other burdens.” And the U.S. EPA stated in its 2022–2026 Strategic Plan that the “EPA must make significant and urgent progress in fundamentally grounding its work in addressing disproportionality, which includes understanding of and reacting to issues of cumulative impacts and cumulative risks, and rapidly advance its ability to conduct analyses that identify disproportionate impacts.”
Last week’s Interim Framework outlines goals, principles, and initial guidance for EPA staff and decision-makers to engage with local communities and incorporate consideration of cumulative impacts into EPA decisions. The framework principles include:
- Centering cumulative impacts work on improving human health, quality of life, and the environment in all communities.
- Focusing on the disproportionate and adverse burden of cumulative impacts.
- Applying a fit-for-purpose approach to assessing and addressing cumulative impacts.
- Engaging communities and incorporating their lived experience.
- Using available data and information to make decisions and take action.
- Operationalizing and integrating ways to consider and address cumulative impacts.
Under the framework, companies can expect EPA to incorporate these cumulative impacts principles into program-specific and cross-program, community-focused processes. EPA outlines how it might tailor the consideration of cumulative impacts to match the needs of a range of specific decisions from place-based to national in scope. These decisions may relate to standard setting, permitting, rulemaking, cleanup, funding, state program oversight, and initiation of administrative or judicial actions.
The framework, however, is not a mandate for EPA to perform a cumulative impacts analysis for every permitting or rulemaking decision. In fact, EPA acknowledges it is not always feasible or appropriate to conduct a stand-alone cumulative impacts assessment. Rather, it is a commitment to integrate cumulative impacts into EPA’s processes and programs, “as appropriate, feasible, and consistent with applicable law.”
Moreover, in compliance with a permanent injunction issued by the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Louisiana on August 22, 2024, EPA has stated that it will not require any cumulative-impact-analysis requirements in the State of Louisiana.
It remains to be seen how cumulative impacts will be considered in the upcoming Trump-Vance Administration. The framework does not address when it is relevant or consistent with law to use a cumulative impacts approach. These policy decisions remain the responsibility of EPA’s programs. Nor does the framework provide detailed instructions on how to consider cumulative impacts in specific contexts.
Finally, EPA recognizes that approaches for applying cumulative impacts analysis are often developed at a local, rather than at a national, level. As a result, “EPA anticipates that ongoing efforts to address cumulative impacts will be focused on the local scale with the goal of further development to the national scale over time.” Companies should pay attention to national developments but also prepare for state agencies to take the lead in developing and enforcing cumulative impacts assessment.
The EPA is accepting public feedback on the draft framework until February 19, 2025. We will continue to follow the Interim Framework, its implementation, and future developments in this space.
