EPA Senior Advisor for Environmental Justice Called Private Ownership of Land An ‘Illusion’

Robin Morris Collin, who was appointed by EPA Administrator Michael Regan to be his senior adviser to “advance environmental justice and civil rights in communities,” once claimed in a coauthored a paper with her husband that “private ownership of land” is an “illusion.”

In February, Regan announced that the “nationally recognized” Morris Collin would work with him as the “EPA’s Senior Advisor to the Administrator for Environmental Justice.”

Morris Collin would advise Regan as “the agency works to advance environmental justice and civil rights in communities that continue to suffer from disproportionately high pollution levels, including low-income communities and communities of color.”

The EPA’s press release of the announcement touted her prior positions in organizations that allowed her to work on environmental justice on the local, state, and federal levels, along with being one of the first “U.S. law professors to teach sustainability courses in a U.S. law school” in addition to serving as the founding chair on the State of Oregon’s Environmental Justice Task Force.

However, in 2005 Morris Collin and her husband, Robert Collin, who’s known as a prolific writer, co-authored a paper that called “private ownership of land” an “illusion.” The article noted that “the illusion of private ownership of land allowed the privileged to feel unconnected to the consequences of their conduct towards the living systems of which those lands are a part.”

“Privileged societies and persons who are disenfranchised, especially societies based upon natural resource consumption, will view any attempt at regulation as an intrusion on their property and freedom,” their paper added. “But, land as private property, like other natural resources, may have to be subordinated to the common good.”

Morris Collin and her husband also claimed that “the power of skin color over the psyche and behavior of Americans influences all public policy, program planning, and implementation” and advocated for “urgently needed environmental reparations.”

Her views have relevance, as she is supported to help advise the EPA administrator and work to “advance environmental justice and civil rights” in areas that “suffer from disproportionately high pollution levels, including low-income communities and communities of color,” as she previously called the “private ownership of land” an “illusion.”

In April 2022, it was reported that the EPA was spending funds from the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan on environmental justice grant projects that had little to do with the pandemic, which in 2021 included a grant to a non-profit for a project that included “tree walks” to “increase awareness and dialogue surrounding inequitable tree canopy cover.”

Fox News reported that the EPA was accepting new applications this year for the department’s Environmental Justice Small Grants Program, which used cash from the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan and “had virtually little to do with addressing the impact of the pandemic.”

The report noted that the grant program announced that it would be using over a million dollars from the pandemic relief plan to  award grants to “federally recognized tribal governments to establish or modify public participation programs where fair treatment and meaningful participation priorities have been impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic.”

Fox News noted that one of the nonprofits that received one of the grants was a Massachusetts-based organization called Speak for the Trees. The organization reportedly used part of the grant money from “projects” such as “storytelling” and “tree walks,” as well as other techniques aimed to “increase awareness and dialogue surrounding inequitable tree canopy cover and its implications on the health of residents living in [environmental justice] communities.”

Jacob Bliss is a reporter for Breitbart News. Write to him at jbliss@breitbart.com or follow him on Twitter @JacobMBliss.