EPA Plans to Roll Back Air and Water Protections

Last spring, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency announced its intention to roll back dozens of vital environmental health protections, calling it the “biggest deregulatory action in U.S. history.”

The rollbacks would weaken or eliminate rules mandating reductions in greenhouse gas and other air pollution emissions, including mercury, from power plants. It would also loosen restrictions on wastewater discharges from the plants. Current federal requirements to clean up old coal ash dumps not covered by previous rules could also be eliminated.

And, rather than wait for the normal, deliberate rule-changing process, the EPA announced that coal-burning power plants could get an immediate exemption from many of these rules by simply sending an email to the White House.

The agency has also said it will revisit its own 2009 scientific finding that increasing man-made greenhouse gas emissions endangered public health and welfare. If the agency reverses that finding, it would limit EPA’s legal authority to regulate those emissions.

A 2024 measure that tightened baseline air quality standards for fine particulate matter, known as soot, could also be reversed. EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin also promised to end the Good Neighbor Plan, a policy to reduce cross-state emissions that the EPA previously estimated could prevent 1,300 deaths annually.

The EPA also announced plans to rescind and reconsider limits on four different types of PFAS “forever chemicals” in drinking water, including one commonly known as GenX. The agency is keeping but delaying the Biden administration’s limits on two common types of PFAS.

Zeldin added four new mandates to EPA’s original core mission to protect public health and the environment: help make America more “energy dominant,” shorten the environmental permitting process, restore auto jobs and make the United States the world’s leader in artificial intelligence.

Zeldin also announced significant staffing cuts — saying levels would be reduced to what they were in the 1980s, which could mean the loss of thousands of jobs. The administration fired or reassigned hundreds of EPA staff who worked on protecting members of the public, particularly the most disadvantaged, against discrimination and pollution. The EPA also plans cuts to the Office of Research and Development, which provides scientific analysis about the risks of environmental hazards.

In June, hundreds of EPA employees signed a public letter accusing the Trump administration of politicizing the EPA and ignoring both science and the law by abdicating its statutory responsibilities. More than 140 of the employees who signed their names publicly were notified days later that they were suspended pending an investigation of the letter.