Lee Zeldin, administrator of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, is slated to go before a Senate panel today to try and defend the indefensible: taking the nation’s environmental guardian off the beat.
That’s what the Trump administration has in mind with its proposal to slash EPA funding nearly 55 percent for the 2026 budget year, the subject of Wednesday’s hearing before the Senate Committee on the Environment and Public Works,
Nobody voted for that. In fact, nearly nine in 10 — 88 percent — want Congress to increase EPA funding, or at least hold it steady.
Few arms of the federal government reach our daily lives quite like the EPA. Its mission is to safeguard the air we breathe and the water we drink, manage hazardous waste, clean up contaminated industrial sites and protect us from toxic chemicals.
It defends the health of every person in this country.
The administration’s reckless assault on the EPA, its professional staff and the tools they need to do their job shows it is wildly out of touch with the people it purports to serve. Congress must step up and put a check on this off-the-rails scheme to sacrifice the environment and the health of our people for the benefit of oil and gas companies and other industrial polluters.
The administration’s proposal would cut EPA staff to levels last seen four decades ago, when there were 25 percent fewer Americans and a smaller and less complex economy than we have today.
These are biologists, chemists and other professionals that our nation depends on to tell the truth about forever chemicals in our drinking water, mercury in our fish and toxic pollution in the air we breathe. Their work is critical to sustaining such natural resources as the Chesapeake Bay, the Great Lakes and the Mississippi River and delta.
Firing the people who do this essential work won’t eliminate those dangers. It will simply blind us to them, impede our ability to confront them and give big polluters more opportunity to break our laws and threaten our health.
Then there are the EPA programs slated for elimination.
It will be interesting, for example to hear how Zeldin defends the elimination of his agency’s popular “Energy Star” program. By providing reliable information that allows buyers to compare the annual energy use of dozens of appliances, the program has helped consumers and businesses save a staggering $500 billion on energy costs since its inception in 1992. That works out to $350 in savings for every dollar spent on the program. Eliminating that program won’t save money.
In addition, new money would be cut by nearly 90 percent for the EPA-administered revolving fund that supports popular grants that states depend on to upgrade drinking water systems and sewage treatment plants. And the agency has eliminated its critical environmental justice work. It’s hard to imagine how the country benefits from ending a decades-long national commitment to help the low-income communities that pay the highest price for toxic pollution and industrial harm.
Slashing EPA funding by roughly $4.5 billion — less than one-tenth of a penny on the dollar of federal spending — isn’t about saving money. The real goal is to hobble the agency that has the authority to say “no” to polluting industries.
That won’t cut costs. It will simply force the rest of us to bear the costs of pollution that others create.
Preventing that pollution more than pays for itself — more than 30 times over, in the case of protecting clean air.
That’s one reason why, since the EPA was created in 1970, the economy has grown an inflation-adjusted 344 percent. Predictable rules of the road encourage investment and innovation, to say nothing of protecting a healthy and productive workforce, consumer base and national quality of life.
If the administration succeeds in hollowing out the EPA, we’ll all pay the price, with dirtier air, more exposure to toxic chemicals, and more polluted rivers, lakes and streams. The costs will be measured in more emergency room visits, more heart disease, more respiratory illness, more lost days at work and more premature deaths.
Nobody campaigned on that last November, and nobody wants it now. It’s time for Congress to listen to the voice of the people and defend the agency we all depend on to protect the environment and public health.
Manish Bapna is president of the Natural Resources Defense Council, an environmental advocacy group with more than 3.3 million supporters nationwide.
