Employees at the Environmental Protection Agency’s Office of Environmental Justice were told in a telephone meeting this week that some of them could soon be placed on administrative leave, according to four people familiar with the matter.
The move was seen as the first step in President Trump’s widely expected plan to do away with the office. On his first day back in the White House, he signed an executive order to eliminate all government programs on environmental justice, which are aimed at protecting poor and minority communities from disproportionate harm from pollution.
The people familiar with the meeting, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they feared retaliation, said that it included the office’s roughly 100 staff members who report to E.P.A. headquarters in Washington. They were told by Theresa Segovia, the agency’s acting assistant administrator of environmental justice, that the agency was “moving forward with complying” with that executive order, the people said.
The steps involved would mirror those recently taken to place federal workers in diversity, equity and inclusion programs on administrative leave, the people said.
The E.P.A. employees on the call were not told which or how many people would be placed on leave, but were told that staff members would be notified individually. The people said they expected that the notifications were “imminent.”
Many of the agency’s additional 100 or so environmental justice employees who work in its regional offices around the country are expected to be the next in line to be placed on administrative leave, said these people.
An online screening and mapping tool used by the environmental justice office, called “EJScreen” had been taken down as of Thursday morning.
Earlier this week, the E.P.A. notified about 1,100 career employees who had been hired in the past year and had probationary status that they could be “fired immediately.” That number appeared likely to include a large number of employees of the office of environmental justice, which was created in 2022 under the Biden administration.
Asked to confirm the plan to put employees on leave, Molly Vaseliou, an agency spokeswoman, responded by email: “If we have something to announce, we’ll let you know.”
Mr. Trump’s advisers have proposed plans to dismantle other parts of the E.P.A., which is charged with protecting the nation’s public health by regulating pollution that harms the air, water and climate.
The agency’s Office of Environmental Justice grew out of decades of efforts within the agency to incorporate civil rights with environmental protection.
The office’s work has focused in part on ensuring that air, water and chemical safety regulations, many of which affect the profits of electric utilities, automakers and other big companies, are inscribed with provisions that try to mitigate the impact of environmental damage to poorer and minority communities. It is also charged with enforcing portions of the Civil Rights Act.
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