EPA Rollbacks Mean More Pollution, Less Justice for Black Communities
For a quarter of a century, a Black neighborhood in Beaumont, Texas, where Chris Jones lives has been the subject of two federal civil rights investigations by the Environmental Protection Agency that explore the role of race in his community's disproportionately high levels of air pollution.
In San Francisco, Kamillah Ealom's neighborhood has been the site of an environmental cleanup for decades, with the government regularly imposing fines on the worst polluters.
And in the Midwest's steel city, Gary, Indiana, Donna Jack and her neighbors have worked with the EPA to put polluters like Gary Works, the nation's largest steel mill, under court-supervised cleanup agreements that threaten businesses with closure if they don't change their ways.
During the presidency of Joe Biden, efforts to address environmental harms in communities of color underwent a significant expansion, offering neighborhoods that advocates said had been long-neglected a semblance of hope — and additional federal dollars — to combat pollution.
But with President Donald Trump's return to office, the future of a national campaign to focus on reducing pollution in Black communities is seriously at risk before its positive impacts could fully take hold. Through the first 60 days of his second term, Trump has dismantled anti-pollution programs, shut down regulatory offices, and begun sweeping rollbacks of environmental protections.
Now, environmentalists say, Black neighborhoods are being left vulnerable to the detrimental effects of industrial emissions, soil contamination, water pollution, and other hazards, while the president promotes an agenda that critics say prioritizes deregulation over public health.
In a little less than two months, advocates say, Trump's actions already threaten to undo much of the work of the EPA during its 55 years of existence.
'EPA is losing the E and the P from its name,' said Marvin Brown, a senior attorney at Earthjustice, one of the nation's largest environmental law organizations. 'It seems like the agency is really giving up on protecting the environment and human health. People will die from the unnecessary amounts of pollution.'
For one activist, Debra Ramirez of Lake Charles, Louisiana, the decimation of the EPA and its regulations comes as no surprise. In the 1990s, her community faced a cluster of cancer cases connected to contamination from a neighboring chemical plant.
'As far as people of color, Black people, we have been through it all our lives, so it's nothing new to us,' she said. 'Now everyone else will feel it, too.'
The Trump administration is rolling back more than 30 major environmental protections. In a statement, Lee Zeldin, the new EPA director, said officials plan to 'unwind' protections against air and water pollution, including limits on emissions from power plants, industrial facilities, and cars. According to EPA analyses, these rules prevented tens of thousands of premature deaths annually and saved Americans and the nation's health care system billions of dollars by limiting hospital and doctor visits.
In addition, the Trump administration has also shut down all environmental justice offices within the EPA, wiping out programs that have existed for decades. Many of those programs were created under Republican President George H.W. Bush to address high pollution levels. Under Biden, those programs had been expanded, with more funding and staff to directly support communities suffering from environmental hazards. The efforts promoted by Biden administration officials helped coordinate federal grants, partnerships, and regulatory actions aimed at reducing pollution in neighborhoods where Black residents have been breathing dirty air for generations.
But now, all of that is gone.
Zeldin, appointed by Trump, justified the cuts under an executive order titled 'Ending Radical and Wasteful Government DEI Programs and Preferencing.' The administration has deliberately lumped environmental justice initiatives into its broader attack on diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts, framing the move as a way to reduce federal oversight.
'We are driving a dagger straight into the heart of the climate change religion,' Zeldin said during his announcement of actions that closely mirror Project 2025.
During the election cycle last year, critics of federal environmental regulations spent $445 million on lobbying Trump and Congress, including $96 million directly to the Trump campaign. Many deregulation advocates, including the American Petroleum Institute, directly called on Trump to repeal these initiatives and rules.
'These actions by Zeldin and Trump to demolish EPA protections, to quote Zeldin, will drive a 'dagger straight into the heart' of our health, drive up medical, energy, and disaster costs, and destroy our future,' said Leslie Fields, the chief federal officer for WE ACT for Environmental Justice, a Black-led national organization based in Harlem.
Read More on the EPA Moves That Got Us Here:
SCOTUS Allows 'Big Business' to Have Greater Say in Federal Regulations
Michael Regan Rebuilt the EPA, but Did It Deliver for Black Communities?
The Court Ruling That Guarantees a Future of Environmental Racism
Biden's EPA Has Resolved Only One Civil Rights Complaint Brought Since 2021
The Trump administration also plans to eliminate the EPA's scientific research arm, and have proposed firing up to 1,155 chemists, biologists, toxicologists, and other scientists. This move would dramatically shrink the EPA workforce and eliminate the Office of Research and Development, which provides scientific backing for policies aimed at clean water, air quality monitoring, and toxic site cleanup. Environmental activists warn that those cuts could severely compromise the EPA's ability to safeguard public health and fulfill its core mission.
Jennifer Orme-Zavaleta, who was an EPA adviser during the first Trump administration, called the move 'a wrecking ball assault' on science.
Zeldin, advocates say, has made it clear that the EPA's new mission is to lower costs for businesses and consumers. The administrator said, 'These actions will create American jobs' and 'lower [the] cost of living for Americans.' Public health researchers warn that these changes will lead to higher pollution levels, worsening respiratory and cardiovascular diseases in places that were already struggling.
'In nearly every American county, more Black people die from air pollution,' said Fields, of WE ACT. 'Enabling this disparity is environmental racism, and these rollbacks will lead to continued increasing rates of cancer, lung and heart disease, illnesses, and premature death in our communities.'
Funding for grants to help local groups monitor air quality, clean up toxic sites, and fight industrial pollution, have also been cut. Without those programs, communities already hit hardest by environmental hazards are losing a critical lifeline, advocates say.
Read More: Will 'Biden's Billions' Deliver True Environmental Justice?
'The EPA is supposed to take care of any and every American. I don't care if there's only one house facing the impacts, they're supposed to take care of that family with everything they have to make it good for them with concerns to air contamination, water contamination, and soil contamination,' Ramirez said. 'Now it is like we as a people have to put up with this corporate businessman behavior without any pathways.'
Long before drivers reach the outskirts of Gary, they encounter a huge black cloud — the smoke emitted from the stacks of the nation's largest integrated steel mill, Gary Works.
According to the EPA's Environmental Justice Screening online tool to map polluted areas, which has been shut down in the wake of the EPA's environmental rollbacks, Gary's environmental hazards include high levels of exposure to particulate matter, proximity to Superfund sites, and air toxins.
Local environmental activist Donna Jack has seen and felt the effects of that pollution firsthand. Growing up between the Inland Steel mill in East Chicago and living less than a 10-minute drive away from Gary Works, Jack has spent a lifetime between two of the most polluted facilities in the region. She recalls working at Inland Steel's plant in soot-covered clothes to pay her way through college and showering feverishly to get it out of her skin.
'I am a child of the '70s. I've seen every kind of protest you could think of,' the 67-year-old resident said. 'If you live long enough, you will see a lot of it, over and over and over again. We're still fighting the same pollution fights. We're still fighting for the same civil rights. I hate that this generation is having to do what we did all of our lives, and it hasn't changed.'
The same week the EPA announced cuts to its programs, Indiana Gov. Mike Braun issued an executive order to remove environmental considerations in grants and permits, raising alarm among Gary residents and advocates, who warn that the move undermines protections from overburdened communities like Gary and deem them as 'sacrifice cities.'
'They want to make money and with impunity, without any responsibility, and places like Gary are where they like dumping,' Jack said. Instead, she said she wants to 'not be afraid' for the health of future generations, allowing them to run outside on fresh soil and to look up into clear, smokeless skies.
Read More: Toxic Air, Limited Care: The Risks of Pregnancy in Gary
About three blocks from the yellow shotgun home where Chris Jones and his family have lived for decades sits the ExxonMobil Refinery, one of the world's 10 largest facilities. Jones has spent years fighting for his neighborhood's survival in the plant's shadow.
Once a thriving Black community, it has suffered waves of displacement as the plant expanded. But Jones' environmental advocacy isn't only about the state of the land he lives on. Instead, he said, it's about the dignity and humanity of his community.
'We've been here longer than any of these companies,' he said.
With worsening pollution, residents face an impossible choice: stay and suffer or sell and watch history disappear.
Jones said the goal of his work is simple: he said that he wants to be able to sit in his front yard 'and breathe fresh air.' Now, the air that and his neighbors breathes carries a sulfuric stench, sewage spills onto streets, and refinery flares burn for days. In 2022, nearly 10% of his community had cancer, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. With fewer protections, he knows that it might get worse.
Read More: What Happens When a Black Enclave Is Built by Big Oil
For decades, residents in Bayview-Hunters Point have lived next to one of the nation's most contaminated sites, separated from the toxins by just a chain link fence. It is the only San Francisco neighborhood with a population that is more than 10% Black.
The EPA has long funded a long-term clean-up program to remove the chemicals; much of it nuclear waste at military installations dating back to World War II.
Environmentalists said that the EPA's clean-up plan was far from — it intended to pave over the contamination rather than remove it. A group of advocates took the agency to court over its proposal.
But the community now faces the prospect of not having any remediation efforts take place at all: The Trump administration recently rescinded much of the $1 billion funding allocated by the Biden administration for removing toxic waste.
Read More: The Last Black Neighborhood in San Francisco
Kamillah Ealom, who leads the environmental organization All Things Bayview, said it can be difficult to not feel a sense of helplessness.
'Our lives are capped off at 65 years old. So we're constantly going to funerals. I'm constantly giving rides to the emergency room,' Ealom said, referring to the premature deaths and health ailments among her neighbors — which they attribute to the lingering environmental waste in the community. 'But they mask it and blame it on us, so they can overlook the cancer, the environment, the respiratory issues, and the industrialized sites and redlining that's pushing us here.'
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