President Trump’s new EPA administrator said Wednesday that he is preparing to roll back numerous groundbreaking environmental rules, including programs important to California on climate change and electric vehicles.
“We are driving the dagger straight at the heart of climate change religion,” EPA administrator Lee Zeldin said in a news release.
One of the rules Zeldin plans to overhaul is the agency’s discovery in 2009 that greenhouse gases that warm the planet put public health at risk. Known as “hazard detection” is the legal basis for many climate controls for automobiles, power plants and other sources of air pollution.
Environmental groups said they will fight the rollback.
“Today’s announcement is just the beginning of the process — it’s not the end,” said Jackie Wong, senior vice president of climate and energy at the Natural Resources Defense Council. “Before finalizing any of these actions, the law states that the EPA must propose changes, justify them in science and law, listen to the public and respond to their concerns.”
“It’s pointless to try to deny climate change harming our health and well-being as millions of Americans try to rebuild after a horrific wildfire and a hurricane that burned fuel to the climate,” Wong said.
Overall, Zeldin said he has taken steps to unlock 31 environmental rules, calling it “the most consequential day of deregulation in American history.”
Some of the rules being overhauled limit industrial pollution of mercury and other air toxins, and some protect soot pollution and wetlands that restrict them.
“These actions roll back trillions of dollars with regulatory costs and hidden taxes,” Zeldin said. “As a result, the cost of living for American families will be reduced, and essentials such as buying a car, heating a home, running a business, and more affordable.”
In this week’s memo, Zeldin said he was also closing the Environmental Law Office, where he worked to reduce pollution in poor communities. One of those offices was located in an agency’s local location in San Francisco.
Zeldin said the lawsuit responds to President Trump’s executive order in response to “ends radical and futile government DEI programs and preferences,” according to a memo previously reported by the New York Times and CBS.
Environmental groups said research by the Environmental Law Office helped protect vulnerable communities. This indicates that this study could face higher levels of contamination.
“Ending environmental justice efforts will not help the American people. In a statement, Ben Jeale, executive director of Sierra Club, said: “The Lee Zeldin announcement has only one purpose to enable large-scale polluters to cut corners.”
The EPA established the Bureau of Environmental Justice during the administration of Republican President George H.W. Bush.
It is now known as the Office of Environmental Justice and External Civil Rights, and was significantly expanded in 2022 under then President Biden.
Since becoming an agency manager, Zeldin has cancelled hundreds of grants, including ones to support poor communities.
“Working with Doge to curb unnecessary federal spending, the EPA has saved more than $2 billion in taxpayer money,” Zeldin said Monday of Elon Musk’s so-called government efficiency. “It’s our commitment to being an extraordinary custody of taxes at the EPA.”
Last week, the EPA and the Department of Justice dismissed a lawsuit against the business owners of a neoprene manufacturing plant in Laplace, LA.
The withdrawal of the lawsuit against chemical manufacturers is part of Zeldin’s pledge to end the use of environmental justice “as a tool to advance ideological priorities,” officials said.
In 2023, the Biden administration’s Denka Performance Elastomer claims the plant created an unacceptable risk of cancer in nearby black residents.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
