TRUMP TO CUT EPA BUDGET & STAFF BY >20% IN 2017

…EPA Headquarters in Washington DC

 

“Basically, the EPA direction is to reduce enforcement, which is already pretty strained,” said Eric Shaeffer, former head of the EPA’s Office of Regulatory Enforcement.

 

Hope you aren’t expecting to have the clean water and clean air you have today during Trump's administration.

 

I say this because the Trump administration has proposed deep cuts to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) budget that would reduce the agency’s staff by >20% in the first year and it would eliminate thousands of EPA jobs and dozens of clean-up programs.

 

This administration is taking EPA financing and transferring it to increase defense spending at the expense of the agency and other discretionary funding,  The Trump plan spells out exactly how this new approach will affect long-standing federal programs and they will have a direct impact on Americans’ everyday lives.

“The administration’s 2018 budget blueprint will prioritize rebuilding the military and making critical investments in the nation’s security,” the document says. “It will also identify the savings and efficiencies needed to keep the nation on a responsible fiscal path.”

 

The funding level proposed says it, “highlights the trade-offs and choices inherent in pursuing these goals”.  This could have a significant negative impact on the EPA. Its annual budget would drop from $8.2 billion a year to $6.1 billion. And since most of that funding already goes to states and localities in the form of grants, such cuts could have an even greater effect on the EPA’s core functions.

 

Even though President Trump says he cares strongly about clean air and clean water, no other federal department or agency is as much in Trump’s target cross-hairs. 

 

If you recall, as a candidate, Trump vowed to get rid of the EPA “in almost every form,” leaving only “little tidbits” intact. The man he chose to lead the agency, former Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt, Pruitt had sued the EPA more than a dozen times, challenging its legal authority to regulate such things as mercury pollution, smog and carbon emissions from oil and coal fired power plants.

 

As proposed, the EPA’s staff would be slashed by 3000 employees. Those grants to states, and their air and water programs, would be cut by 30%. The massive Chesapeake Bay Cleanup Project would receive only $5 million in the next fiscal year.  The current funding is $73 million.

 

In addition, 38 separate EPA programs would be eliminated entirely.

 

Major grants to clean up “brownfields”, or abandoned industrial sites, would be gone.  They also zero out: the radon program, climate change initiatives and needed funding for Alaskan native villages.

 

The agency’s Office of Research and Development would lose up to 42% of its budget, according the administration’s plans. And the budget document eliminates funding altogether for the office’s “contribution to the US Global Change Research Program”.  This was a climate initiative that GOP President George H.W. Bush launched in 1989.

 

The budget is so committed that it says that the staff reductions would in many cases be done by “buying out the individuals”.  In other words, the position would be eliminated to never be opened again.  Others would just be laid-off or fired on the spot.  Multiple individuals at the White house confirmed this as did the Office of Management and Budget.

 

The budget document acknowledges that the cuts “will create many challenges” for the EPA, but it suggests that “by looking ahead and focusing on clean water, clean air and other core responsibilities, rather than activities that are not required by law, EPA will be able to effectively achieve its mission.”

 

In other words, if there are other issues of pollution that do not involve water or air, the US government will just tell the states to take care of their problems, even if the issue covers more than one state and even if the states don’t have any funds to deal with the issue.

 

There is still a slight possibility for saving some of these programs as all the budget cuts would have to be approved through the congressional appropriations process.  The cuts would probably face resistance from some lawmakers. Rep. Mike Simpson (R-ID), a former chairman of the House Appropriations subcommittee on interior, environment and related agencies, said he did not think Congress would approve such steep cuts in EPA funding.  “There’s not that much in the EPA, for crying out loud,” he said, noting that the Republicans had already reduced the agency’s budget dramatically in recent years.

 

Jennifer Hing, a spokeswoman for the House Appropriations Committee, said in an email that the panel “will carefully look at the budget proposal once it is sent to Congress.”

 

Needless to say, the EPA also would not comment on the budget proposal. But its new administrator cautioned this week that the particulars of the budget remain in flux.

 

As details of the blueprint emerged, environmental advocates and the EPA’s most recent administrator blasted the White House proposal.

 

“This budget is a fantasy if the administration believes it will preserve EPA’s mission to protect public health,” Gina McCarthy, who served as the agency’s leader from 2013 through the end of the Obama administration, said in a statement Wednesday.  “It ignores the need to invest in science and to implement the law,” she said. “It ignores the lessons of history that led to EPA’s creation 46 years ago. And it ignores the American people calling for its continued support.”

 

S. William Becker, executive director of the National Association of Clean Air Agencies, said in an email that the proposed budget would devastate critical federal financial support for communities across the country.  “These cuts, if enacted by Congress, will rip the heart and soul out of the national air pollution control program and jeopardize the health and welfare of tens of millions of people around the country,” Becker said.

 

“Basically, the direction is to reduce enforcement, which is already pretty strained,” said Eric Shaeffer, head of the Environmental Integrity Project, an advocacy group, and a former head of the EPA’s Office of Regulatory Enforcement. He noted that state programs are often “woefully underfunded” and at the mercy of state politics and pressure from large and well  financed companies that hate the EPA.

Environmental justice activists are particularly alarmed at what they may face with the new administration.

 

On the South Side of Chicago, is a neighborhood example where a Ms. Cheryl Johnson lives.  The area is known as “the toxic doughnut” because of 200 leaking underground storage tanks and 50 landfills.

 

The EPA office has given People for Community Recovery, for which Johnson is the executive director, and other organizations money to conduct technical assessment of local facilities and provide training to educate residents. And, as Johnson added, it also has provided a place where residents could appeal to force local polluters to come into compliance with federal standards.

 

Losing that resource “would devastate a community like mine,” she said. It would be “like putting us in a chamber, to be disposed of.”

 

Unfortunately, with this administration, people in situations like Ms. Johnson's all over the country will be devastated as long as this president and his billionaire cabinet are running the show.

 

Copyright G.Ater  2017