The future health of the USA’s environment has been put in danger as over 1,000 scientists at the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) will be laid off in line with president Trump’s demands, which are being fraudulently enforced, according to agency representatives.
Recent documents have revealed the EPA plans to fire more than 75% of its research staff with as many as 1,155 chemists, biologists, toxicologists and other scientists up for losing their jobs. Democratic staff on the house committee on science, space and technology reviewed the documents to make the revelation.
As reported in the New York Times, EPA administrator Lee Zeldin wants to cut back staff involved with monitoring air and water quality, responding to natural disasters and lead abatement to shrink the organisation’s budget by 65% in line with demands from the Trump administration and the Department of Government Efficiency.
A group of current and former EPA employees has responded to the documents with an open letter. The authors of the letter, which was hosted on Environmental Health News, asked to remain anonymous “due to concerns about retaliation”.
The letter states: “The Trump administration is making accusations of fraud, waste and abuse associated with federal environmental justice programs under the Inflation Reduction Act as justification for firing federal workers and defunding critical environmental programs.
“But the real waste, fraud, and abuse would be to strip away these funds from the American people.”
The authors of the letter blame the layoffs on the stripping of funds being made available to grants that have already been passed through Congress.
It continues: “The Trump administration recently paused many […] environmental justice programs that fund community-led projects like air, water, and soil testing, training and workforce development, construction or cleanup projects, gardens and tree planting and preparing and responding to natural disasters. Other examples of the EPA’s environmental justice programs include providing safe shelters during and after hurricanes, land cleanups to reduce communities’ exposure to harmful pollutants, and providing water filters to protect residents from lead in drinking water.
“This administration has halted funds, claiming ‘the objectives of the awards are no longer consistent with EPA funding priorities’.
“In reality, these funds were approved by Congress, and these grants remain in alignment with the agency’s mission to protect human health and the environment.
“Even though there are court orders to unfreeze billions of dollars in federal grants, the Trump administration continues to withhold this critical money from the people who need it most.
“We cannot stand by and allow this to happen.”
The EPA came under intense fire last week when it revealed a list of 31 regulations planned to be scaled back or repealed, in which Zeldin remarked was the “greatest day of deregulation our nation (US) has seen”.
The 31 regulations included those around limiting harmful air pollution from cars and power plants and protection of water quality in rivers and streams.
Swathe of layoffs
The move is another fresh swathe of layoffs engineered by Trump and Musk, the last of which saw mass layoffs within a number of infrastructure bodies in February.
One of the many bodies that was affected, the Department of Energy, lost around 1,000 federal workers all on their probation.
Over 300 of those workers were said to be employed within the National Nuclear Security Administration’s (NNSA’s) workforce of 1,800. However, department officials contended this saying the number was roughly 50 that were laid off.
Reports then suggested a number of the fired staff members at the NNSA were recalled to their jobs a day later.
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