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Over the past year, environmental experts who have dedicated their lives to public service have watched the partisan, unilateral destruction of the agency they once helped run.
“What’s happening at the EPA right now is not business as usual,” said Marc Boom, senior director of public affairs for the Environmental Protection Network (EPN), a group of former U.S. Environmental Protection Agency employees, at a press briefing on Tuesday. “It’s a serial shutdown of the agency’s ability to protect public health.”
Boom and other former EPA staff working with EPN, founded in 2017 to counter deregulatory actions under the first Trump administration, held a briefing to outline what’s at stake for communities across the country if Congress approves drastic cuts in the agency’s budget as part of next year’s appropriations bill.
The Trump administration proposed slashing the EPA’s $9 billion budget by 55 percent, but Congress is considering less drastic cuts as part of the Interior, Environment and Related Agencies Appropriations Act.
As lawmakers consider the agency’s budget in the coming weeks, EPN experts said, they face a stark choice: protect Americans from environmental harms or leave them without a watchdog when pollution or chemical accidents occur.
Though both chambers proposed cuts, EPN praised the Senate’s bipartisan proposal as more responsible.
The Senate would reduce the agency’s budget by about 5 percent, while maintaining critical capacity for science, health and safety. It would halt the administration’s steps to close the agency’s Office of Research and Development (ORD); protect funding to states for clean water and sewage projects, brownfields restoration and other programs; and direct the agency to maintain core functions.
The House’s proposed 23 percent cut would slash enforcement funding, hobble critical scientific research capacity and eliminate more than 60 percent of state funding that communities rely on to keep their drinking water safe, Boom said.
“Passing the Senate approach would send a clear message that the serial shutdown of EPA must be reined in, that congressional intent must be followed, and that Americans still expect guardians on the job protecting their health and safety,” said Boom, who as a senior advisor at EPA helped launch a pilot program to support communities transitioning from fossil fuel economies.
As of Thursday night,