In his first official cabinet meeting of his second term, President Trump on Wednesday indicated that the Environmental Protection Agency, the arm of the federal government essential to protecting our health and environment, is among the top targets for the next wave of major work force reductions. Mr. Trump said about 65 percent of the roughly 15,000 people working there could be fired.
As former E.P.A. heads under both Republican and Democratic administrations, we fear that such cuts would render the agency incapable of protecting Americans from grave threats in our air, water and land.
While there are opportunities to make the agency more efficient and better at enforcing laws, Americans across every state, city and local community would suffer the effects of deep staff cuts. E.P.A. public servants defend us and the environment from harmful pollution every day, not in hopes of attention or bigger paychecks, or to execute the wishes, wants or needs of billionaires looking to play on a bigger stage. They do it for all Americans and because of laws such as the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act and the Safe Drinking Water Act. This is an agency that sets standards and regulations according to science, and the laws and funding approved by Congress.
When the next catastrophe that spews pollutants into the air or contaminants into our drinking water or food supply arrives, who will deal with the emergency and its aftermath?
After wildfires devastated Maui in 2023, E.P.A. emergency workers partnered with people on the ground to minimize residents’ exposure to dangerous air. After the train derailment in East Palestine, Ohio, the E.P.A. was on the scene monitoring contaminated air, water and soil, managing the cleanup and holding the railway company Norfolk Southern responsible for unlawfully discharging pollutants and hazardous substances. When states and cities suffer from floods, wildfires and oil spills, they rely on the E.P.A. to act fast so that harm to humans is mitigated, and small businesses and local tourism can quickly recover.
Most of E.P.A.’s work happens behind the scenes, like when one of its enforcement teams raided a warehouse in Colorado full of mislabeled oil barrels that had been prepared for a landfill and discovered they contained nuclear waste. When acid rain was contaminating forests and water bodies throughout the Northeast, E.P.A. staff members located the sources and reduced the pollution. Asbestos, lead and copper in the water went undetected before agency scientists tested it. Without this arm of the executive branch, most of these problems would never have been remedied. Threats like these will recur, but if Mr. Trump guts the agency, no one will be there to step in.
A vacuum is what led to the E.P.A.’s creation in the first place — by President Richard Nixon, in 1970. In the years since, the agency has implemented major legislation that Congress passed to clean up our land, water and air. Between 1970 and 2019, E.P.A. cut emissions of common air pollutants by 77 percent, while private sector jobs grew 223 percent and our gross domestic product grew almost 300 percent. One analysis of the Clean Air Act estimated that its many benefits, such as fewer premature deaths, heart attacks, emergency room visits, and lost school and work days, exceeded its costs by more than 30 to one.
The E.P.A. does not act in isolation. Every year, more than $4 billion, about 40 percent of the agency’s funding, goes to states, local governments, tribal nations and other entities. The administration should not interfere with these long-held partnerships. Abandoning them will have ripple effects on businesses that clean up pollution, and will slow down communities working to strengthen grid reliability and invest in clean energy. It will harm our ability to replace dirty school buses with ones that don’t pollute, switch out lead pipes, stop “forever chemicals” from entering our drinking water, tackle our nation’s most contaminated lands and focus resources on communities most in need.
We are at a pivotal moment in our country’s history that demands all of us to work together and make our country stronger. We can’t do this by gutting the very agencies we need to keep us safe.
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