The Environmental Protection Agency has largely recovered from many of the staff exits and budget cuts that occurred during the Trump administration and, in some ways, has swiftly rebounded.
It has banned toxic pesticides, strengthened chemical safety protections and imposed strong climate regulations. Enforcement of pollution laws, which had plummeted under the Trump years, is starting to climb back up.
But with next week’s election looming, the agency charged with protecting the environment faces more uncertainty than at any other time since its creation more than 50 years ago. Perhaps like few other federal agencies, the E.P.A. has been targeted by former President Donald J. Trump and his allies for a wholesale makeover.
If she wins the presidential race, Vice President Kamala Harris is expected to keep the E.P.A. on course, with a likely focus on fighting climate change and cleaning up the pollution that disproportionately burdens poor communities.
But if Mr. Trump returns to the White House, his allies have said they will do a more methodical job of reversing climate policies than they did in his first term, when they rolled back more than 100 environmental policies and regulations they said were hampering the economy, only to watch from the sidelines as President Biden restored most of them.
“Everything that we did in terms of paring back and reining in the already-bloated agency is undone,” said Mandy Gunasekara, who served as chief of staff at the E.P.A. during the Trump administration.
A second Trump administration would “tear down and rebuild” the structure of the E.P.A., said Ms. Gunasekara, a leading candidate to run the agency if Mr. Trump is elected.
Ms. Gunasekara wrote the section on the E.P.A. for Project 2025, a conservative blueprint for the next Republican administration. The Trump campaign has disavowed Project 2025, despite the fact that it was written by former Trump administration officials, and many of its recommendations align with Mr. Trump’s positions. The blueprint recommends slashing the E.P.A.’s budget, ousting career staff, eliminating scientific advisers that review the agency’s work and closing programs that focus on minority communities with heavily polluted air and water.
A wholesale restructuring of the E.P.A. would come just as the agency is hitting its stride on a number of fronts, despite recent Supreme Court decisions limiting the agency’s powers.
“E.P.A. is extremely strong right now,” Michael S. Regan, the agency’s administrator, said in a recent interview reflecting on what he described as a four-year effort to rebuild. “It was very clear that the previous administration strategically attempted to break down the agency in a way that it couldn’t fulfill its mission and goals, and it attacked the morale and the confidence of many of the employees that decided to remain.”
Mr. Regan described an agency that is “climbing back,” buoyed by new laws that have given the E.P.A. billions of dollars and new authority to reduce air pollution and advance clean energy.
Making moves on pesticides and chemicals
In August, the E.P.A. took an action not seen in 40 years: It issued an emergency order to take the herbicide dimethyl tetrachloroterephthalate, better known as Dacthal, off the market.
The agency first raised health concerns about Dacthal in 1995 and made multiple requests over the years for information about its health risks from its manufacturer, which sold it for use on crops like broccoli, cabbage and onions.
But it was the E.P.A. under the Biden administration that decided it posed an imminent danger, particularly to pregnant women, who could experience changes in fetal thyroid hormone levels resulting in babies with low birth weight, impaired brain development, lower IQ and impaired motor skills.
Since 2021, the E.P.A. banned or proposed to ban 10 other toxic substances, including asbestos; trichloroethylene or TCE, an industrial solvent used in glues, spot removers and metal cleaners, that can cause cancer; and chlorpyrifos, a pesticide widely used since 1965 on fruits and vegetables that has been linked to neurological damage in children. (A federal appeals court sent the chlorpyrifos ban back to the E.P.A. for re-evaluation, saying a prior court ruling ordering the E.P.A. to either find a safe use for chlorpyrifos or ban it contributed to a rushed decision.)
The agency also issued the first-ever limits in drinking water of PFAS, the “forever” chemicals linked to cancer and other health problems that are present in the tap water of hundreds of millions of Americans. Chemical and manufacturing groups have sued, arguing the E.P.A. exceeded its authority.
This muscular regulation of pesticides went beyond any actions taken under the Trump and even Obama administrations.
Chris Jahn, the president of the American Chemistry Council, a trade group, said the industry has seen a ninefold increase in “economically significant regulations” under Mr. Biden that were driving up costs for manufacturers.
While the E.P.A. has been cracking down on some chemicals, it has also failed to meet deadlines and requirements under the Toxic Substances Control Act, which was overhauled in 2016.
Under those reforms, Congress directed the agency to evaluate the safety of chemicals already on the market, starting with a first batch of 10, by a certain date. The E.P.A. was also directed to evaluate the health risks of every new chemical proposed by a manufacturer and complete it within 90 days. The increased workload came without additional staff or resources. When Mr. Trump took control shortly after, his administration worked to weaken the agency’s chemicals office.
“They have absolutely worked around the clock ever since the Biden administration came in,” said Betsy Southerland, a former director of science and technology in the E.P.A. Office of Water. She called the agency’s pace “incredibly impressive” considering it got its first increase in staff and funding in 2023. The E.P.A. still has not fully replaced the more than 800 staffers who left the agency under the Trump administration.
Others say that four years in, the Biden administration cannot shift blame for blown deadlines. “Things are not getting done which need to get done,” said Robert Sussman, a former deputy administrator and senior policy counsel to the E.P.A. administrator in the Obama administration. “It’s a bad situation.”
Lags in enforcement
Enforcement actions on environmental laws dropped to historic lows during the Trump administration. Penalties against corporate polluters were the lowest in over a decade as were inspections of industrial sites. The likelihood that a violator would face federal criminal prosecution was lower than any time in the previous three decades, according to agency data.
But the Biden administration has lagged even further. The Trump administration opened 661 investigations, resulting in 504 criminal charges. To date, the Biden administration has overseen 439 investigations, resulting in 334 criminal charges.
Agency officials blame a drop in enforcement officers that began under the Trump administration and point out that it took Congress two years to confirm President Biden’s choice of David M. Uhlmann as the E.P.A.’s top enforcement officer.
The E.P.A. has been making up lost ground, officials said. In 2023, the agency opened 199 investigations — more than in the past seven years with the exception of 2020 — and expects to surpass that figure this year.
The Biden administration trails the Obama administration in terms of civil penalties lodged against polluters. Last year, the agency pursued 1,751 civil enforcement actions, which is the highest level since 2018 but nowhere near the peak of nearly 2,500 actions during the Obama administration. The Trump administration averaged about 1,760 civil enforcement cases per year.
Enforcement under the Biden administration has focused on limits on the pollution that is driving climate change.
In a landmark case in March, the agency charged a California man accused of smuggling canisters of hydrofluorocarbons, potent greenhouse gasses known as HFCs, into the United States. HFCs are used in refrigeration and air conditioning; imports of the gas without authorization were banned in 2022.
The E.P.A. has also cracked down on leaks of methane — another greenhouse gas — from oil and gas wells, something that did not take place under the Trump administration. In July, Marathon Oil agreed to a $241.5 million settlement to resolve federal allegations that it unlawfully emitted methane and other pollutants from oil and gas facilities in North Dakota. It included the largest-ever fine for alleged violations of the Clean Air Act.
The E.P.A. has sought to reduce pollution in minority and low-income communities, with mixed results.
In 2022, the agency began investigating whether Louisiana had violated civil rights laws by permitting scores of industrial facilities to operate in and around St. John the Baptist Parish, a predominantly Black community with elevated levels of cancer, respiratory problems and premature deaths. Title VI of the 1964 Civil Rights Act allows the E.P.A. to investigate whether state programs that receive federal money are discriminating on the basis of race, color or national origin.
Louisiana sued the E.P.A., which closed the investigation. But the state still pursued the case, winning a ruling in August in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Louisiana that prevents the government from stopping Louisiana from granting permits for multiple polluting facilities in minority and low-income communities. The state is now seeking to make the ban apply nationwide.
Mr. Regan said he felt the E.P.A. had “pushed as hard as we could go” and did not regret closing the civil rights investigation. He said the agency has sought other ways to reduce pollution levels in marginalized communities.
He pointed to a rule finalized this year requiring about 200 chemical plants to slash emissions of two likely carcinogens, ethylene oxide, which is used to sterilize medical devices, and chloroprene, which is used to make rubber in footwear. They are considered a top health concern in an area of Louisiana so dense with petrochemical and refinery plants that it is known as Cancer Alley.
“Sometimes you move two steps and have to take one step backward,” Mr. Regan said.
Doling out I.R.A. money
The 2022 Inflation Reduction Act, the largest climate investment in U.S. history, handed the E.P.A. a new mission. For the first time, the agency would not just regulate pollution, but would also help businesses and communities deploy clean energy to cut their emissions.
The law gave the E.P.A. $27 billion to finance carbon-cutting projects, as well as $3 billion to clean up diesel pollution around ports; $1.5 billion to reduce methane emissions from the oil and gas sector and nearly $1 billion to help school districts buy electric buses.
Republicans have characterized money that goes to communities to curb emissions as a “greendoggle.” Mr. Trump has promised to repeal the climate law and claw back any unused subsidies and grants.
But Mr. Regan said more than 90 percent of the money the E.P.A. oversees from the climate law has been allocated and is “in the bloodstream of the economy.”
He described how the agency has crafted new regulations that form the backbone of the Biden administration’s climate agenda, including limits on the pollution from power plants and tailpipes.
“This isn’t an agency that’s been in a crouched position,” Mr. Regan said.
It’s unclear how many of those regulations will survive legal challenges in a federal judiciary that has been remade by Mr. Trump, who appointed more than 200 federal judges, including three Supreme Court justices who helped write a string of recent decisions to restrict the government’s authority to regulate climate, air and water pollution.
Jeffrey Holmstead, a lawyer who served in the E.P.A. during the administrations of George W. Bush and George H.W. Bush and now represents electric utilities, said he believes many of those regulations may be overturned.
“They’ve been very productive in terms of the number of rules that they put out,” Mr. Holmstead said. “On issues that they care about, they’ve done a lot. I think it remains to be seen how enduring they’ll be.”
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