Title: How EPA Cuts Are Affecting NYC

[MUSIC]

Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer on WNYC. We continue in the Health and Climate Tuesday section of the show, discussing the many policy changes being made in those areas for this Tuesday, May 6th, Day 107 of the Trump administration, we set aside this block as a scheduled thing, for those of you who don't know, to make sure the big changes in those areas don't get lost in the crush of headlines about other things that might seem more pressing on any given day.

Here's an example. Did you know that back on Day 1, January 20th, Inauguration Day itself, President Trump canceled a whole list of previous executive orders that had aimed to promote environmental justice? Ending environmental justice programs was a big enough priority to make the cut on Day 1. Are you ready for some of these? He rescinded a Biden one explicitly called Revitalizing Our Nation's Commitment to Environmental Justice for All. That's gone.

He rescinded another Biden one that "prioritized overburdened and underserved communities, low-income communities, communities of color, and tribal and Indigenous communities" for environmental law enforcement. Trump rescinded an executive order issued by President Clinton in 1994 called Federal Actions to Address Environmental Justice in Minority Populations and Low-Income Populations. Trump rescinded those on his inauguration day and issued one of his own.

As summarized by the business law firm O'Melveny, "Trump's executive order, one, calls for the termination of all environmental justice offices and positions in the federal government; two, requires the office of Management and Budget to prepare a list of all existing federal environmental justice positions, committees, programs, services, activities, budgets, and expenditures; and three, requires all federal agencies to assess the operational impact and cost of existing environmental justice policies and programs and recommend actions to eliminate such policies and programs."

After that, specific agencies in the executive branch followed up. In February, Attorney General Pam Bondi issued an order rescinding a Biden Justice Department memo called Actions to Advance Environmental Justice and another one called Comprehensive Environmental Justice Enforcement Strategy. Bondi wrote that the rescissions were to "ensure the evenhanded administration of justice." In March, the EPA eliminated its Office of Environmental Justice and External Civil Rights, and I could go on.

Did any of those things make the news? Maybe somewhat, but not much. We see that anything called an environmental justice program has been canceled as a high enough priority that these orders I just read from kept coming in January and February, and March. The question we'll ask now is, how are those cancellations and firings affecting New York? The nonprofit news site City Limits has been trying to answer that question.

They now have an article called "As EPA's Environmental Justice Employees Lose Their Jobs, New York Community Groups Pay a Price." With us now is City Limits' climate and environment reporter, Mariana Simões. Hi, Mariana. Thanks for coming on with us again. Welcome back to WNYC.

Mariana Simões: Hi, Brian. Always happy to be here. Thanks for having City Limits on the show.

Brian Lehrer: Sure. That's quite a list I just read from of cancellations and rescissions, isn't it?

Mariana Simões: Right. It's a long list and, like you said, a lot of it got lost in the shuffle of the news, sadly.

Brian Lehrer: We'll keep doing these Health and Climate Tuesdays. Your article notes that it was only in 2022, that recently, that the EPA's Region 2 office, the one that covers New York, launched its Environmental Justice Division. What did they start doing that the EPA hadn't been doing before? I noted in the intro that there had been a Clinton executive order that's more than 30 years old now, called Federal Actions to Address Environmental Justice in Minority Populations and Low-Income Populations. What was new from the EPA for environmental justice in New York as recently as 2022?

Mariana Simões: That's right. Well, before the Environmental Justice Office was created in 2022, the EPA was only doing community outreach in areas that had been designated Federal Superfund Sites. That means it was contaminated by something like an oil spill or toxic waste, and they did have a person dedicated to going out and doing outreach in these areas, but they were limited to the jurisdiction of that site. They created the environmental justice offices with the idea that they could expand their reach to community groups that they hadn't heard from.

Brian Lehrer: You give an example of a contaminated lot on Melrose Avenue in the South Bronx next door to a community garden that the EPA got action on when residents couldn't get action from the state in the past. Can you say a little of what happened there?

Mariana Simões: Sure. City Limits had already been reporting on this site. It's a site in the South Bronx, next to a community garden called the Rainbow Garden of Life and Health on Melrose Avenue. This location is being looked after by the state's Department of Conservation. It's called the DEC, and they are responsible for cleaning up a lot next to this community garden that is a designated browsnfield site.

Unfortunately, the folks who live in the community said that they were unable to really get in touch with the DEC office. They had been trying since 2021 to get their attention and sit down and have a conversation about creating a schedule for this cleanup. Also, I do want to note that these folks, when we wrote about this last year, they claimed that they didn't even know that the lot was contaminated until 2021, when they found out about it by looking through the DEC's website.

They were sort of in the dark about what was going on, and they really just wanted to get in touch with local authorities to figure out a way forward. Then the EPA stepped into the mix. They reached out to the EPA's-- I believe it was the DEC office first and they said, "We have a division for this in New York, and they can help you," and that's exactly what they did." They got in touch with Lisa Garcia, who was the administrator for the EPA's New York Office at the time.

She reached out to the DEC and said, "You know what, we'll do a tour of the site, and we'll check it out for ourselves." After that happened, the folks at Melrose Avenue said that the DEC finally chimed in and said, "You know what, we'll do our own tour of the site, and we'll come meet with you in person," and that took place in March of this year.

Brian Lehrer: That was a case of the federal EPA pressuring the New York State DEC, Department of Environmental Conservation, to do something. Do you know if there's a reason the state environmental office would be less committed than Washington seemed to be?

Mariana Simões: I think that they have a lot going on. There's probably a short staff that's dealing with a lot of issues around the City. These brownfield sites are everywhere. The one in the South Bronx is just one of several that are spread throughout the City. I think it helps when you have more authorities looking into things. As I understand it from speaking to Lisa Garcia at the EPA, that was the role that the Environmental Justice Division tried to play was sort of add one more voice to the mix to be like, "Hey, these guys aren't getting enough attention. Maybe we should do something about this."

I wouldn't say that the DEC wasn't committed to helping out. I think it just created an extra layer of outreach possibility for people in these communities, and the EPA stepped in and played that role.

Brian Lehrer: A listener who, I think, judging from their body of texts, is maybe a skeptic of environmental justice programs, writes a very simple one-line question. "Please explain what environmental justice means." That's fair enough. What do you think President Clinton or President Obama, or President Biden would have meant with their environmental justice executive orders? What do you think President Trump is objecting to about the term "environmental justice" that he ordered that it be removed from all federal programs and websites?

Mariana Simões: Well, I will give you a quote here from the head of the EPA, Lee Zeldin, and his understanding of what environmental justice means. He said on X recently about terminating the division. These were his words. He said, "Instead of directly helping communities in need, the left has lined the pockets of their allies in the name of environmental justice." The claim is that this phrase or this terminology is being used to just pump money into leftist groups.

In reality, the term, which, as you noted, was created way back when, it was used to simply refer to creating, I suppose, a focus or treatment of environmental issues that actually reached low-income communities. It actually reached people that were sort of disproportionately burdened by environmental problems, and when the Trump administration issued their executive order, they sort of cast this wide blanket over terms that they felt were just used by the left.

That included DEI, which is Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion, and the executive order he issued was originally just for DEI, but then environmental justice got sort of put into the mix there, and then the trickle effect happened. It ended up impacting folks who are in the most vulnerable communities.

Brian Lehrer: Is part of the implication from that Zeldin line, he's really suggesting that it's corruption, right? That they're funneling money to groups that are on the left without them actually doing anything. I don't know if they provided any evidence of corruption, but I think the other way or another way that Trump and his allies would put it is, there shouldn't be special rights, right? There shouldn't be special treatment for people based on race or low-income status or marginalized communities, as we usually use that term, right?

That it's a form of discrimination. To me, it's like the people who push back on the phrase Black Lives Matter by saying All Lives Matter. Well, of course, all lives matter. That's the point. It's that Black lives have been valued less than other lives by hundreds of years of policies and private sector behaviors, so Black Lives Matter is how you get to All Lives Matter, and same with environmental justice, targeting marginalized communities.

I'm sure the advocates would say, there is so much history of the people in those communities having their lives and health robbed by pollution, so much more than in wealthier and Whiter ones, just ask Robert Moses. Environmental justice is not anti-White or anti-rich. It's aiming for a single standard of protection. It should be obvious, in my opinion, but I guess to some people it's not, or they just twist it for their own purposes.

Mariana Simões: Right, I think there is a lot of that. These were just programs created to address issues in these marginalized communities. As you said, these folks were left out of the discussion for a long time, and I think the example with the South Bronx Community Garden shows that, because they just weren't brought to the table to discuss the contamination that was happening next door, right? The whole point of these programs was really just to have folks that are in that position access, have a seat at the table, if you will.

Brian Lehrer: Listeners, if you're just joining us, my guest is Mariana Simões from the local nonprofit news organization City Limits, talking about her article, "As EPA's Environmental Justice employees Lose Their Jobs, New York Community Groups Pay a Price." Listeners, does anyone have a story from your experience in your community or from your work on environmental justice and injustice in the past, or attempts to provide more environmental justice and more equal risk of dangerous environmental exposures through environmental justice programs?

212-433-WNYC, if you have anything that would help us report this story. 212-433-9692. Anyone who's a newly laid-off former EPA worker, we haven't really even gotten to the lay-off part of this yet, or a member of a community environmental justice group that's now being defunded, want to help report this story? 212-433-WNYC, call or text 212-433-9692, or anyone who agrees with eliminating environmental justice programs and wants to make that case, or anyone with a question for our guest, Mariana Simões, reporter for City Limits, who wrote the article.

Can you describe the cuts that are taking place from these executive orders? Your article starts with 450 people being told they're losing their jobs on the eve of Earth Day. Who are those people, and what's the larger context?

Mariana Simões: The breakdown is, there are 200 employees that are going to lose their jobs and 175 staffers that are getting reassigned to other offices, and that's going to go into effect on July 31st. Now, a lot of people are scared to talk about this. Frankly, I reached out to the employees at Region 2 and spoke to some on the condition of anonymity, and the general sense there is that people in other departments and other areas are also afraid that they're just going to come into work one day and find out that they're also being let go.

The decisions are being made way above them, and they really don't hear about it. Even their supervisors don't hear about it until the day that they happen. A lot of folks were just, as you said, a day before Earth Day, they got a notification that night that for Region 2, almost 40 employees in the Environmental Justice Office were going to be affected by these cuts. There's almost a quarter of these 40 that received a letter saying that they would be on the chopping block.

Brian Lehrer: You don't know, I assume, if they did this on the eve of Earth Day specifically to give Earth Day a punch in the nose or if it was just a coincidence of how the timing of the rollouts went.

Mariana Simões: Well, Brian, that's a great question, because I asked myself that question a lot, because when I was looking at the coverage online, I didn't see anybody mention Earth Day, and I thought, "This is so symbolic. This happened on the eve of Earth Day. That needs to be the beginning of my article," and I realized that maybe this was calculated.

The administration did not show any attention to that. They also didn't mention Earth Day at all in their own communications, even in a positive sense to celebrate Earth Day. There was very little on that. There was nothing on that in the EPA X feed. My apologies, I still think of it as Twitter. Yes, so really, it was almost as if Earth Day didn't really happen this year.

Brian Lehrer: A couple of people are calling to say what environmental justice is in even more detail. Cynthia in Newark is one of those people. Hi, Cynthia, you're on WNYC. Thank you for calling.

Cynthia: Hi. Hi. Thanks for taking my call, and I was the environmental justice organizer in my community of Newark, East Ward, Ironbound, for seven years, and I'm also formerly chair of the Newark Environmental Commission, which is all volunteers, residents. Certainly, the history of what we call EJ goes way back. All of Newark, I should say, is designated by the EPA as an environmental justice community.

The entire city, although two of the wards, the east and the southeast, where I live, are far, far more polluted. We've had ongoing communication with the EPA, and especially right now, as we're trying to get, have been trying for 14 years to get the Superfund cleanup of the Passaic River, which is the fourth most polluted river in the state. "Environmental justice" as a term and a number of principles were developed in a meeting in, I believe, 1991, where that concept grew out of the Civil Rights Movement.

That was all leaders of color that were at that meeting, and some of them are still active, who said, "Our communities are polluted. This is the next step." I interpret this as an extension of the dislike of what they call the EI. "Environmental justice" was a term coined and put forward by mainly people of color, and that's what's going on. It's actually really devastating. Certainly, funds have been turned back, and that started a while ago. Our EPA folks in Region 2, we love them and have been working with them for a long time. It's very concerning on every level.

Brian Lehrer: Cynthia, thank you very much. I think Rich in the Bronx has something similar. Rich, you're on WNYC. Hello.

Rich: Hi. How are you doing? I grew up in the Bronx, and I remember when I was a kid, I would see hazardous waste trucks driving through my community, and I would always say to myself, "I don't see these in Manhattan. I don't see these in the suburbs." I think another way to think about environmental justice is simply racial justice. When I first heard about this concept, it was with climate change and how it was affecting Brown countries mostly that were low-lying and how the sea levels were rising faster in places where people lived on the coast.

I think people need to get more comfortable, not literally, but comfortable at least saying that this is a Nazi administration. They literally want to increase numbers of White people in the country, encouraging White women to have more babies. Then they want to decrease numbers of people of color. At the very worst, it's literally about killing people of color. You can see that with cuts to PEPFAR. You can see that with cuts to USAID. Someone, I think, earlier mentioned stopping medical trials in Africa with RFK.

Brian Lehrer: That was prior to the Trump administration, but yes.

Rich: Oh, okay, right. Oh, okay. Sorry about that. Just in general, when you see Steve Bannon and Elon Musk throwing up a Nazi symbol, that's not a random gesture. Pete Hegseth has White nationalist tattoos. Trump said he's a Christian nationalist. I think people need to deal with the ugly reality that we're dealing with a serious Nazi White supremacist administration. It sounds extreme, but it's true, and it is extreme, and we need to be able to stomach that.

Brian Lehrer: I know I usually say we don't have to go all the way to the label of Nazi. Nazi was a particular thing in a particular country, in a particular context, and I don't know that they're really trying to kill people of color, but you make a fair point that the withdrawal of funds and services from USAID is being pretty well-documented now to be killing people of color in multiple countries around the world.

It does seem, when they're pushing more procreation in the United States, that they seem to have, even if they don't put it this way, mostly White people in mind because they're trying to deport as many immigrants as they can, who are generally the people who have a higher birth rate than people who grew up in the United States, so I certainly see where you're going with all of that. I just always feel like I need to respond when the word "Nazi" is used. I hear the arguments you're making. Rich, thank you very much for your call. I really appreciate it.

Rich: Thank you.

Brian Lehrer: When he talks about, back to the specific topic, Mariana, the waste trucks that he used to see in the Bronx and things like that, you quote an EPA employee here in New York, Suzanne Englot, who says she's not about to lose her job, but told you it feels really hard to do anything right now. Do you have more on that? Is something holding back the EPA employees still on the job from carrying out programs or enforcement in the City, or in environmental justice contexts specifically?

Mariana Simões: I think what's happening is that people are frozen in place. They're scared. There's just general chaos happening on a daily basis. All the employees were told they had to go back to the office when a lot of them were working remotely, so some of them are facing three-hour commutes every day. There is psychological pressure that the administration is putting on the employees because, essentially, they want them to quit.

I'm saying this because they have said this through communications that they've sent to EPA employees, that were shared with me. They have been actively asking people to quit. I think just that general vibe of being scared, of being under constant psychological pressure, is causing people to not really do their jobs properly. I think that's what's at stake here, and that's sad because that means that other programs, other departments, other areas are suffering as well, and the American people, in the end, are paying the price of this generalized chaos.

Brian Lehrer: Your article says Englot works enforcing the regulation of waste and toxic substances in our area, just the kind of thing that Rich from the Bronx was calling about, that work hasn't been shut down. Because I guess the Trump argument would be if those waste and toxic substances issues exist more in low-income or other marginalized communities in our area, that's where EPA will concentrate its work.

If those issues happen to be in other communities, the government shouldn't be saying to prioritize the low-income, marginalized communities anyway. How might any of the people doing environmental justice work, how might Ms. Englot from EPA, who's still on the job, see that?

Mariana Simões: Well, there are areas that they just can't cut, for example, the Superfund cleanup sites that I mentioned, they are required by law. They have to continue work on those things. What the EPA employees told me is that everything that is related to the enforcement of the law, which is what Ms. Englot works in, she's actually an environmental lawyer, those things, for now, they just can't be cut.

I guess the workforce can be reduced significantly, but they can't end that program or that department altogether, because they're required to do it by law. Those things are, I suppose, safe for now, but again, going back to what I was saying, if you have employees that are unhappy that are scared, the work isn't going to be done to the maximum of its capacity; it's going to be affected in some way. That's, I think, the sad part of all this.

Brian Lehrer: One other example from your article, and then one closing thought on the big picture, and then we're out of time. My guest is Mariana Simões, who wrote an article for the New York City-oriented nonprofit news organization City Limits, "As EPA's Environmental Justice Employees Lose Their Jobs, New York Community Groups Pay a Price." We've talked a lot on this show about how the Trump administration is removing data from federal websites and ending data collection related to public health.

An example of that in your article is that the EPA removed, from the Internet, an interactive map called EJScreen for Environmental Justice Screening. What would I have seen on that map that I can't even see on a federal website anymore?

Mariana Simões: That map basically helped people look up their own communities and figure out how they were being impacted by an environmental issue or an environmental hazard in the area. It was simply an interactive tool so that people could have an idea of "How am I being affected by all this?" It was very puzzling to folks who work at the EPA why this got taken down, and again, it goes back to because it has environmental justice in the title, right?

This map was being worked on in partnership with Harvard University, and when it got taken down, the research team that did that decided that they were going to put it back up. You can actually see that if you go on to Harvard's website, which is linked in my article @citylimits.org. They are working on getting it back up and getting that database up and running so that folks can have access to it again. I don't know exactly when that will be, but it's sad that this government tool is no longer available to the public right now.

Brian Lehrer: Oh, I'm going to take one more caller, a call that just came in, Syrah in Queens, because it looks like she's having an environmental justice event for kids that has not been canceled. Is that right? Do I have that right? Hi, Syrah, you're on WNYC.

Syrah: Yes. Hi, Brian. Hi. Thank you so much for allowing me to say this. I think I really want to be clear about what environmental justice is. It's the fair and meaningful involvement of all people, regardless of race, color, national origin, income, with respect to the development of, excuse me, implementation, enforcement of environmental laws and regulations, and policies. In 1991, the first National People of Color Environmental Leadership Summit happened in DC because Black and Brown communities were disproportionately affected by these issues, right?

Dumping in their communities, toxic waste facilities, pollution, hazardous industrial practices, right? I think it's important to understand that this was disproportionately affecting Black and Brown communities. That's why environmental justice came to part.

Brian Lehrer: Syrah, I'm going to jump in only because the segment's about to end, and I want you to be able to say what you called in about that you're doing right now.

Syrah: Yes, yes, yes. We're hosting. This is our 7th Annual Pen PALs Youth Justice Forum, being hosted at Boricua College on May 21st. We're basically bringing together high school and college students across New York City to come up with real solutions for New York City's environmental challenges. They are working on air pollution, water pollution, inadequate access to transportation, unsafe homes, and food.

They are being supported by mentors who are actually working in the field, and on May 21, they get a chance to actually talk about their solutions, present them, and then the winning group will get a chance to actually implement those solutions into New York City, with the help of stakeholders. I've already been in talks with so many different leaderships across New York City. The organization's National Clean Water Collective.

You can actually find more about that on our Instagram page. If you go to our bio, there's a link there. It's called the Future on the Line because right now, the future is on the line. I think it's important for us to note that Martin Luther King started when he was 17 years old to do this work, so if we engage our youth at a young age, they'll get a chance to really know that they can make an impact and make it happen for all of us. This is not just about youth; it's about an intergenerational mix of people.

Brian Lehrer: Did you use to get federal funding at all?

Syrah: No. We get most of our funding from private foundations and organizations, thankfully. That has not been a challenge for us. Yes, it's really unfortunate what's happening right now.

Brian Lehrer: Syrah, thank you for your call. Last thing, and we just have a minute, Mariana, the larger goal of the administration on climate, as your article reminds us and as our listeners know, is to basically end all climate policies and promote more use of fossil fuels. Does anything you cover in this specific article relate to that or more the disproportionate downstream effects of all kinds of pollution on low-income communities and communities of color, but without referring to the energy piece in that way? 30 seconds.

Mariana Simões: The Trump administration has said that the moves they're going to do in the EPA from now on are going to be towards powering the Great American Comeback. This comeback essentially means accomplishing goals like restoring American energy dominance, which in Trump's speak really means developing more oil and gas. It's strange because the EPA's mission was to protect the environment.

It's almost like they are changing the mission and making it about producing energy or doing something more economic-oriented that the EPA it's not really in its jurisdiction to do. We will see now, moving forward, what that really means in practice, but as of now, it means dismantling a lot of what the EPA has done in the past.

Brian Lehrer: Mariana Simões, climate environment reporter for City Limits, thanks for joining us.

Mariana Simões: Thank you, Brian.

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