See #1:
Abel Danger Mischief Makers - Mistress of the Revels - 'Man-In-The-Middle' Attacks (Revised)
See #2:
Marine links Obama’s DMORT Region V to Fresh Kills Pig Farm and Snuff Film Live
Prequel:
#1615: Marine Links Starnet Harper Access Graphics (SHAG) to Con Air Marcy’s JABS and JonBenét
Media Coverage of Starnet Raid - August 20, 1999
THE MOST VIVID MEMORY UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA ANTHROPOLOGY DOCTORAL STUDENT HEATHER WALSH-HANEY HAS OF HER ASSIGNMENT IDENTIFYING HUMAN REMAINS FROM THE WORLD TRADE
CENTER ATTACKS AT A STATEN ISLAND LANDFILL IS OF A HUGE AMERICAN FLAG WAVING OVER THE GREEN ARMY TENTS ERECTED ATOP THE LANDFILL.
Walsh-Haney says the flag, which survived the assault on the towers to later fly at the 2002 Superbowl and Winter Olympics, inspired the workers sifting through the enormous amounts of rubble gathered from Ground Zero and brought to the landfill for processing. University of Florida graduate student Walsh-Haney was one of those workers.
“I learned that I could handle that travesty emotionally; I could handle the pressure,” Walsh-Haney says. “And I was proud to help the nation.” As members of the federal Disaster Mortuary Operational Response Team (DMORT), Walsh-Haney and UF anthropology Professors Anthony Falsetti and Michael Warren were called to New York within hours of the attacks to help identifying victims’ remains.
Walsh-Haney recalls being in a meeting with Falsetti and a Gainesville police officer when word came that a plane had crashed into the World Trade Center. As they watched events unfold, the pair realized their DMORT team would likely be mobilized. Forensic anthropologists are often deployed following a mass fatality as part of the DMORT program, which is managed by the United States Public Health Service.
That evening, Walsh-Haney was contacted by her DMORT team leader and told to be ready to leave the next day at 6 a.m. for a two-week minimum stay in New York. She scrambled to clear her schedule and pull together her gear, which included a laptop computer, field manual, calipers, camera, film, dental probes and hand lens.
By the next night, Walsh-Haney was sleeping on a cot in a Stewart Air Force Base airplane hanger in Newburg, New York, with hundreds of Army reservists. The following evening she settled in at the La Guardia Marriott command center and awaited orders.
Impatient to use the forensic skills she has learned at UF, Walsh-Haney asked to be reassigned from administrative duties at the DMORT command center to work in a scientific capacity. The next day she began grueling, 12-hour shifts at the Fresh Kills Landfill, sifting through debris from the buildings, searching for remains that could be cataloged for human testing. She and Warren worked alongside officers from the New York City and Nassau County police and the New York Port Authority, as well as [Kristine Marcy’s SES] federal agents.”
“Overview
The Federal Interagency Working Group on Environmental Justice (EJ IWG) was established in 1994 under Executive Order (EO) 12898 PDF (6 pp, 123K). The role of the EJ IWG is to guide, support and enhance federal environmental justice and community-based activities. The EJ IWG is comprised of 17 federal agencies and White House offices.
As one of its outreach efforts, the EJ IWG, has created a directory of member agencies (PDF) (52 pp, 886K) and a guide of community-based resources (PDF) (126 pp, 3MB) to assist communities with accessing information about federal agencies and their programs as a part of the ongoing effort to improve community participation in federal programs.
EJ IWG Members
Below is a list of the EJ IWG member agencies and links to their environmental justice websites, where you can find agency strategies and progress reports. For EPA's strategy and progress report, please refer to Plan EJ 2014.
Environmental Protection Agency (Chair)
White House Offices”
“In compliance with the August 2011 Memorandum of Understanding on Environmental Justice and Executive Order 12898 (MOU), USDA released a final Environmental Justice Strategic Plan: 2012 to 2014 on February 7, 2012 (Strategic Plan), which identifies new and updated goals and performance measures beyond what USDA identified in a 1995 EJ strategy it adopted in response to E.O. 12898.[65] In the same week, it also released its first annual implementation progress report report (Progress Report), as the MOU also required.[66] The Secretary's message accompanying the Strategic Plan described two immediate tasks: 1) each agency within USDA is required to identify a point of contact for EJ issues, at the Senior Executive Service (SES) level; and 2) each agency must develop its own EJ strategy prior to April 15, 2012, and begin implementing it as soon as possible.[67] As of May 2012, it did not appear that such strategies had been made public, although sub-agencies provided internal reports to the USDA's EJ steering committee on April 9, 2012, according to Holmes. The Secretary's message contained strong language that, "Given that USDA programs touch almost every American every day, the Department is well positioned to help in [the environmental justice] effort."[67] USDA has determined that it can achieve the requirements of the Executive Order by integrating EJ into its programs, rather than implementing new and costly programs.[68] The agency took this same approach in an EJ strategy it adopted in 1995.[69] In some areas, such as agricultural chemicals and effects to migrant workers, USDA reviews its practices in order to evaluate potential disproportionate, adverse impacts on EJ communities, according to Blake Velde, Senior Environmental Scientist with the USDA Hazardous Materials Management Division.[70] Generally, however, USDA believes its existing technical and financial assistance programs provide solutions to environmental inequity, such as its initiatives on education, food deserts, and economic development in impacted communities, and ensuring access to environmental benefits is the focus of USDA's EJ efforts.
Natural Resources and Environment (NRE) Under Secretary Harris Sherman is the political appointee generally responsible for USDA's EJ strategy, with Patrick Holmes, a senior staffer to the Under Secretary, playing a coordinating role. Although USDA has no staff dedicated solely to EJ, its sub-agencies have many offices dedicated to civil rights compliance, outreach and communication and environmental review whose responsibilities incorporate EJ issues.[71] The Strategic Plan was developed with the input of an Environmental Justice Working Group, made up of staff and leadership representing the USDA's seven mission areas and the SES-level contacts, which were appointed in early 2012, serve as a steering committee for the agency's efforts.[71] The Strategic Plan is organized according to six goals, which were purposefully left broad, and lists specific objectives and agency performance measures under each goal. The details and specific implementation of many of these programs and the performance measures are left to the departments and sub-agencies to develop.[72] The six goals are to:
Ensure USDA programs provide opportunities for EJ communities.
Provide targeted training and capacity-building to EJ communities.
Expand public participation in agency activities, to enhance the "credibility and public trust" of the USDA.
Ensure USDA's activities do not have disproportionately high and adverse human health impacts, and resolve environmental justice issues and complaints.
Increase the awareness of EJ issues among USDA employees.
Update and/or Develop Departmental and Agency Regulations on EJ.
The Strategic Plan also lists existing programs that either currently support the goal, or are expected to in the future. According to Holmes, some of the challenges of the Strategic Plan process have stemmed from the diverse programs and missions that the agency serves, limitations on staff time, and budgets.[73]”
Happy Googling
Links:
PresidentialField Mandate
Abel Danger Blog
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