After ending all DEI-related initiatives, EPA chief Lee Zeldin folded 10 regional offices set up to help Black and brown communities deal with race, pollution and the effects of climate change.
Marking the official end to climate justice programs, EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin closed 10 regional offices that had just received $3 billion from President Joe Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act. Zeldin’s move likely means more problems for Black and brown communities like Cancer Alley, a mostly Black Louisiana enclave surrounded by chemical plants and oil refineries. Credit: Getty Images
Overview:
Under President Joe Biden, the EPA received funding for regional offices that was intended to right environmental wrongs caused by polluters choosing to dump harmful waste in or aruond Black communities.
The Environmental Protection Agency’s very brief era of environmental justice is over.
Just days after EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin issued a memo declaring the immediate end of all “diversity, equity and inclusion and environmental justice offices and positions,” the agency announced it will close 10 of its Environmental Justice Divisions in regions around the country.
Advocates say the moves are troubling signs of an impending rollback of government efforts to address racial disparities in environmental policy.
The sweeping cuts are the latest in Zeldin’s war against environmental justice at the EPA, which had received $3 billion for that work through President Joe Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act. The new policies also align with President Donald Trump’s disdain for federal initiatives that touch on racial diversity, equity and inclusion.
But EPA efforts to specifically address disproportionate pollution in Black and brown communities ground to a halt last year, due to a red-state lawsuit challenging the EPA’s method for investigating civil rights-related pollution cases.
Both the lawsuit, filed by the state of Louisiana, and Zeldin’s memos have several parallels in how they discuss — and, critics say, fundamentally misunderstand — the role of race in environmental regulation.
Zeldin’s supporters say removing race from the agency’s work allows it to refocus on its core mission. But critics argue that Zeldin has undermined the agency’s statutory responsibility to help communities of color who have suffered disproportionate harm.
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