Environmental experts, however, including current and former EPA officials, say Zeldin’s slash-and-burn approach is not in fact a countermeasure to needless initiatives that benefit liberal hubs but, rather, an alarming rollback of environmental protection efforts that will almost certainly harm President Donald Trump’s own voters. “It’s practically inevitable” that more people will get sick from reduced regulation and the loss of funding, a current EPA staffer said, speaking on the condition of anonymity since they were not authorized to discuss policy changes.
After the EPA announced its cuts last month, data scientists affiliated with the Public Environmental Data Partners posted a map of recent environmental justice grants, showing tens of millions of dollars earmarked for red states. That includes $1 million designated to reduce “the number of children exposed to lead” in Mobile County, Alabama, and $19.9 million to create “resilience hubs” in southwest Florida that would serve as cooling centers during heat emergencies and would otherwise aid with disaster planning.
There are scores of other examples, including improving flood preparedness in Pennsylvania, addressing chronic dumping in distressed communities in Tennessee, and improving air quality monitoring in Louisiana.
A current EPA employee expressed bewilderment at the way the Trump administration has politicized these initiatives. The employee said Zeldin has characterized environmental justice grants as something the Biden administration used as “an excuse to hand out funds to left-wing activists. And that’s just not what happened.”
Now, she said, employees are terrified about the agency’s direction. Already, many environmental justice employees have been placed on leave, an agency source said, and more cuts are expected. “People are so terrorized, so paranoid,” Orme-Zavaleta said.
In addition to slashing environmental justice initiatives, Zeldin’s team is expected to dismantle or gut the agency’s Office of Research and Development, according to multiple current and former staffers. The New York Times previously reported on the cuts last month.
Scientists at the ORD helped uncover the link between PFAS—better known as “forever chemicals”—and potentially deadly health issues, said urban ecologist Jonathan Behrens. “Without this work, we would have never known the harm posed by these compounds,” including possibly altering childhood development and hormone levels and increasing the risk of certain cancers, he said.
Many Americans don’t understand the complexity of water systems or the potential health consequences of excess pollution, said Amanda DelVecchia, assistant professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Algal blooms caused by agricultural runoff and other factors are linked to hepatotoxins and neurotoxins, while high nitrates in drinking water can impact “infants’ ability to transport oxygen in their blood,” she said. “The pressures are constantly getting worse, and we don’t even fully understand the health impacts or the sources of some contaminants.” She’s worried about this research being “on the chopping block right now.”
“I don’t know how many people still remember what our environment was like in the ’60s, leading up to 1970 in the creation of EPA, but we had conditions where a brown haze of smog would be hanging over cities,” said Orme-Zavaleta. It may take years for the effects of the cuts to manifest, she noted, but that doesn’t mean the impact won’t be disastrous.
Despite some public blowback, she said, many Americans don’t seem to appreciate the seismic implications of the EPA cuts both for public health and for the legal system. “More people in this country understand rules of engagement for sporting events than they do for rules of engagement for democracy,” Ruhl said. “And with what’s happening today, we are seeing a significant amount of action that is not following the rule of law.”
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