Changes to the EJ policy include thee following:
The final environmental justice (EJ) policy was published on January 3, 2026. With the new policy, DEP altered the criteria for identifying EJ Areas so that the census block groups that meet either one of the following criteria are considered EJ Areas:
- Census block groups with a PennEnviroScreen score equal to or above the 80th percentile score.
- Census block groups lacking overall scores due to data gaps, but with the highest 5 percent of PennEnviroScreen Pollution Burden Scores.
This expands the area covered by the EJ policy, meaning more projects will likely need to comply with the final EJ policy’s enhanced public participation requirements. You can determine whether specific locations qualify as EJ Areas by using the DEP’s PennEnviroScreen mapping tool.
DEP also released an updated version of it PennEnviroScreen Methodology Documentation, which includes a number of minor updates to DEP’s PennEnviroScreen methodology.
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