THE SET-UP: It’s probably money. That’s a reliable default answer for most of the environmental questions we’ll be asking over the next four years. For example, the Trump Administration just backed away from “a rule requiring large companies to disclose their greenhouse gas emissions and any plans to reduce them.”
The Washington Post points out that the rule has been a “primary target of fossil fuel companies since its approval by … the Biden administration nearly a year ago.” WaPo also notes:
Trump courted the oil and gas industry and asked its executives to come up with $1 billion for his campaign. Giving such a sum would be a “deal,” Trump told them at an April 2024 meeting at Mar-a-Lago, because of his stands on taxes and regulation.
[Harold] Hamm, the billionaire founder of Continental Resources, immediately started calling other oil executives, encouraging them to attend fundraisers and donate, The Washington Post reported at the time. A month later, [Kelcy] Warren, the billionaire behind Energy Transfer, co-hosted a fundraiser in Houston, where attendance cost $250,000 per person. By that time, Warren had donated at least $800,000 to the Trump campaign.
It’s pretty straightforward. In the era of Citizens United, some perfectly legal quid pro quo promises a good return on investment. Trump got money he could launder through campaign spending at one of his properties and oil executives got the regulatory relief they covet (far more than they want to drill, baby, drill, btw) and everybody who doesn’t care about the environment is happy.
But what does Rep. Gary Palmer (R-AL) and Rep. Andrew Clyde (R-GA) get in exchange for derailing a rule to reduce lead in drinking water? Clyde’s largest contributor was the House Freedom Fund, which is basically the campaign slush fund for the Freedom Caucus. He also got some money from “Adv Digital Cable” and “National Assn of Realtors.” No smoking gun there.
As for Palmer, his top donors were Ard Contracting (they pour concrete), the American Israel Public Affairs Cmte (AIPAC) and Pilot Catastrophe Services (yeah, they clean up catastrophes). Nothing there screams “ka-ching!” There isn’t any cash from the lead industry or from an interest group that, for some reason, wants to “slow children’s development and cause learning and behavioral problems.”
So, absent greed or a quid pro quo from the “leaded water lobby,” I have to suspect that Palmer and Clyde are cruel and indifferent to the terrible consequences of lead poisoning.
In other words, they are assholes. - jp
TITLE: An EPA Rule Will Reduce Lead in Drinking Water—Unless This Effort to Block It Succeeds
https://insideclimatenews.org/news/13022025/epa-rule-to-reduce-drinking-water-lead-potential-reversal/
EXCERPTS: A landmark Environmental Protection Agency rule enacted at the end of last year sought to address the lead crisis—which threatens the health of millions of Americans—by tightening limitations on toxic lead and copper in drinking water. But that might not be the final word.
U.S. Rep. Gary Palmer (R-Ala.) introduced a resolution last month to block it and forever bar the EPA from writing a substantially similar rule again. To do so, he’s relying on the Congressional Review Act, a mechanism that allows Congress to vote to permanently reverse a rule finalized late in a previous session. On Wednesday, U.S. Rep. Andrew Clyde (R-Ga.) introduced the same resolution, alongside a dozen other CRA resolutions.
EPA’s action, finalized last October, lowered the allowance for lead in drinking water and beefed up requirements for lead service line replacement.
In a statement about his CRA resolutions, Clyde said: “This past November, the American people overwhelmingly rejected the Biden-Harris Administration’s destructive policies. As President Trump works rapidly to get our country back on track, Congress must do the same by swiftly overturning costly, misguided Biden-era regulations.”
Palmer’s office did not respond to requests for comment about his resolution.
Lead in drinking water can lead to cardiovascular problems, including high blood pressure and hypertension, decreased kidney function and damage to reproductive health. Lead is particularly dangerous to children and infants, for whom even low levels of lead exposure have been linked to nervous system damage, learning disabilities, cognitive impairment, shortened attention span and impaired hearing. Severe lead poisoning can cause fatigue, vomiting, coma, convulsions and even death in children and babies, and lead exposure during pregnancy can hinder fetus development and lead to premature birth.
Regulatory efforts to eliminate lead from everyday sources like gasoline and paint have contributed to significantly decreased levels of lead in children in recent decades, but exposure is still an acute problem: A 2021 study found that about half of the U.S. population was exposed to high levels of lead contamination during their childhood.
Given the severe implications for human health, government efforts to prioritize safe drinking water are broadly popular across party lines. A National Resources Defense Council poll from 2022 found that 91 percent of Americans support requiring lead pipe replacement within 10 years, a key anchor of the Biden-era rule.
If one of the new resolutions becomes law, it would reverse the 2024 Lead and Copper Rule Improvements (LCRI)—the latest iteration of the first lead and copper drinking water regulations, enacted in 1991—and reinstate the revisions enacted at the end of Trump’s first term.
The LCRI, finalized in October 2024, was heralded by environmentalists as a step forward, although it came with limitations: The law does not require water utilities to pay in full for lead service line replacements, which could lead to unaffordable costs for low-income homeowners or neglect from landlords. The rule also made exceptions for certain cities like Chicago, which has the most lead service lines of any city in the country, allowing it about 20 years to replace all its lead service lines, a timeline that disproportionately impacts the city’s Black and brown residents.
Still, the LCRI faced some pushback from water utilities that expressed concern over the costs associated with faster replacement of service lines.
The American Water Works Association, a lobbying group for water utilities, filed a legal petition in federal court challenging the rule in December, arguing that although it supports the goal of replacing all lead service lines, the implementation of the LCRI is “not feasible.” AWWA cited logistical and financial concerns, and said that the cost of replacing lead service lines nationwide could pose affordability challenges to low-income households.
States and water utilities looking to comply with the new regulations can seek support from the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, which opened up more than $26 billion to assist with lead line replacements, including $15 billion specifically allocated for replacing the service lines that connect directly to homes and other buildings. But the Trump administration has attempted to freeze these funds, part of a wide-ranging pause on spending that experts have called unconstitutional and federal judges have issued orders to halt.
TITLE: Trump’s DEI Purge Sweeps Up Race-Neutral Environmental Justice Program
https://prospect.org/environment/2025-02-14-trumps-dei-purge-sweeps-up-race-neutral-environmental-justice-program/
EXCERPTS: The Trump administration’s sweeping reversals of Biden-era policies and the mass confusion caused by its vague orders to freeze swaths of obligated federal funds have … left many in the lurch, from small rural farmers and other business owners, to Christian aid groups, to Americans in low-income communities.
Among the casualties is a little-known Biden program called Justice40, which advocates have described as a historically ambitious federal initiative that established the first “whole-of-government” effort aimed at environmental justice.
Justice40 directed all federal agencies to prioritize poor, underserved communities that are overburdened by pollution or potential climate change impacts when investing federal money into energy efficiency, water and waste infrastructure, sustainable housing, and more. The program provided guidelines for federal spending, rather than actual funds.
The Justice40 initiative was focused entirely on low-income and underresourced communities, explicitly excluding any consideration of race.
The overarching goal was to deliver 40 percent of the benefits of federal investments—like those in the bipartisan infrastructure law and the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA)—to the disadvantaged and low-income communities that need them the most. Unlike other federal initiatives, some of the central grant programs that fell under the Justice40 umbrella directed funds specifically to grassroots organizations that have a real track record and relationships within a particular community, in addition to a record of successful, on-the-ground work over the years.
The initiative was behind a $30 million grant to Savannah, Georgia, to repair a canal and improve storm water systems in neighborhoods that had been experiencing repeated flooding for years, for example. A recently announced $20 million EPA grant funded partnerships between universities, local governments, and nonprofits in Virginia to upgrade child care facilities, water, and telecommunications infrastructure, as well as funding career development in the energy sector. And Justice40 was behind a Department of Housing and Urban Development program that has provided more than $1 billion for renovations in senior housing and low-income communities, like the Pleasant Valley Apartments in Dickinson, North Dakota, which received more than $3 million last year for things like energy-efficient windows and better insulation to deal with the state’s dangerously cold winters.
President Donald Trump eliminated the Justice40 program on day one of his second term, lumping it alongside programs to address racial inequity that have been targeted in the White House’s campaign against “DEI.” This was despite the fact that the initiative was focused entirely on low-income and underresourced communities, explicitly excluding any consideration of race, and was designed that way to insulate it from the alleged reverse-discrimination arguments that undergird much of Trump’s policy.
Indeed, the decision against considering racial demographics was a point of contention for advocates and a major critique of Justice40, given that decades of research shows that race is in fact the strongest, most consistent predictor of environmental burdens in the U.S. The New York Times’ report on the Biden strategy was even titled “White House Takes Aim at Environmental Racism, but Won’t Mention Race,” which essentially describes the approach endorsed by the U.S. Supreme Court for addressing discrimination and structural inequities.
Moreover, research has shown that the majority of IRA funding is actually going to Republican-led states and GOP districts designated as “disadvantaged,” as opposed to majority-minority communities, Inside Climate News reported last month.
In short, the initiative excluded race, and was instead carefully calibrated to comply with the “color-blind” principles underlying the Supreme Court’s 2023 ruling that outlawed affirmative action. But the Trump administration eliminated it on that very basis nonetheless (and despite the fact that the Court’s ruling is ostensibly limited to college admissions).
A report released last month by the EPA estimated that “over 60% of the funding obligated by the Agency through the end of” 2024 did in fact benefit “disadvantaged communities,” as defined by the Biden administration.
For now, the Justice40 program is dead, and will likely only be revived by a future Democratic president.
TITLE: As Trump administration reforms the EPA, cleanups of America's most toxic sites are uncertain
https://apnews.com/article/trump-superfund-environmental-justice-pollution-c49859705e68f720bb0985f7bea603f7
EXCERPTS: Just over a mile from where Patricia Flores has lived for almost 20 years, a battery smelter plant spewed toxic elements into the environment for nearly a century.
Exide Technologies in southeast Los Angeles polluted thousands of properties with lead and contributed to groundwater contamination with trichloroethylene, or TCE, a cancer-causing chemical.
Since Exide declared bankruptcy in 2020, California has invested more than $770 million to clean the various properties. But much more cleanup is needed, and with Donald Trump’s return to the White House, those efforts are uncertain.
“The groundwater that was found to have TCE is spreading,” said Flores in Spanish. “It’s not just going to affect us – other people will also be impacted by the contamination. And it is worrying that we won’t be added to the priority list for the cleanup to be done.”
Residents, environmental advocates and state and federal lawmakers have urged the Environmental Protection Agency to list Exide as a Superfund site, which would unlock federal resources for long-term, permanent cleanup. Last year, the EPA determined the plant qualifies due to TCE in the groundwater, which advocates worry is tainting drinking water.
But toxic cleanup experts say the Trump administration could make it harder for hazardous sites to get designated, create a backlog, reduce program funding, and loosen contamination standards.
The goal of the Superfund program, begun more than four decades ago, is to clean the nation’s most contaminated sites to protect the environment and people – often in low-income and communities of color. After a site is added to the National Priorities List, crews evaluate the contamination, create a cleanup plan and execute it. Once that happens, the EPA deletes the site from the list, which could then be redeveloped. There are currently 1,341 Superfund sites, according to EPA figures from December.
A backlog of toxic Superfund cleanups grew, even as Trump declared the program a priority while seeking to defund it and the EPA. If Trump seeks to defund the EPA again, it could have big impacts on site cleanups in states with less money. Some states don’t have the staff or economic wherewithal to address these sites themselves, “and so they need the federal government as a partner to do it,” said Michael Blumenthal, co-chair of McGlinchey Stafford’s environmental law group, who has represented Superfund cases.
Trump has already moved to oust career staff at EPA and other agencies, removed scientific advisers and closed an office that helps minority communities disproportionately struggling with pollution.