WASHINGTON – The nation’s environmental watchdog is still reeling from the exodus of more than 1,200 scientists and engineers during the Trump administration. The chief pharmacist said his staff would not be overworked. The enforcement team is prosecuting fewer polluters than at any time in the past two decades.
And now this: The stressed-out, overstretched Environmental Protection Agency is scrambling to write nearly half of the most complex laws and regulations that are essential to President Biden’s agenda.
The new laws must be implemented in the next 18 months – lightning speed in the governing countries – or they can be canceled by Congress or a new administration.
The rules have already been delayed months past the EPA’s self-imposed deadline, raising concerns from congressional aides and environmental groups. “It’s fair to say we’re not where we hoped,” said Miles Keogh, executive director of the National Association of Clean Air Agencies, which represents many state and local regulators.
As the EPA’s workforce has shrunk, the workload has only grown, the agency and its critics say.
Workers are “working themselves to death,” said Betsy Southerland, the EPA’s former chief scientist. “They are under more pressure than they have ever been.”
Biden administration officials insist that the agency has delivered more protections than any previous administration and drafted a number of new policies, including the creation of a high-level office that focuses first on addressing racial tensions when it comes to natural disasters.
The director of the agency, Michael S. Regan, promised that the new rules being drafted by his staff will be known by the spring. Officials of the agency said that the EPA has been working hard to recruit people and has purchased programs that have helped identify job seekers, especially from universities.
The Biden Administration’s Environmental Agenda
- Limits on Soot: The Biden administration wants to tighten limits on the pollution of the deadly air, also known as soot, which causes thousands of deaths each year.
- Search Methods: The National Park Service wants to stop hunters on some Alaska state lands from showering black bears with donuts and wolves that come to kill puppies.
- Wind Power: The United States will need thousands of wind farms to meet President Biden’s goals. Rural areas have land, but have they taken it?
- Mail Trucks: During the Biden administration’s victory, the United States Postal Service said it would spend about $10 billion to build one of the nation’s largest electric vehicles.
“The organization is moving faster and faster than ever,” said Dan Utech, Mr. Regan, he said in his voice. He said the accomplishments have come “despite declining staffing levels, ongoing funding challenges and past leadership that left the agency neglected and scientifically compromised.”
The EPA is at an unusual time. The 2021 bipartisan construction and climate legislation passed last year begins to throw $90 billion to the agency over the next 10 years to implement climate projects such as $1.5 billion to develop new technologies for monitoring and reduce methane emissions from oil and gas wells, $5 billion to states to buy buses low-income students and $3 billion to reduce port pollution. For the first time, the EPA has “a little bit of travel money,” Regan joked to staff at a recent meeting.
But experts say they worry that the EPA’s regulatory and regulatory efforts are taking a backseat to providing aid.
“The EPA is a regulatory agency, and I’m concerned that the huge amount of money that they have to oversee and control could undermine the regulatory work that the regulations are supposed to do,” said Eric Schaeffer, executive director of the Environmental Integrity Project. a group of guards.
And time is running out.
Mr. Biden wants to cut greenhouse gas emissions in the United States by about half this decade to prevent climate change. Experts say that despite the new climate law, the president will not be able to achieve his goal without new laws designed to reduce carbon dioxide emissions and other pollutants from electricity, cars and trucks.
The process from drafting a law to implementing it can take months, and these delays could mean some laws are not finalized until next year. Under the Congressional Review Act, lawmakers can withdraw any law within 60 days of the law being passed by a majority vote. So any final legislation passed by the end of 2024 could be overturned by Republicans if they retain control of the House and gain seats in the Senate in the November 2024 elections.
In addition, Biden’s climate change legislation is also expected to face legal challenges. If a new administration is elected in 2024, they may choose not to defend the law in court.
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A recent report from Evergreen, an environmental watchdog group, found that the EPA was behind schedule on nine environmental regulations, including limits on mercury and other toxic substances, ozone standards, and reducing the storage of coal ash to avoid. waste and contamination. Worryingly, climate advocates said, the agency has yet to issue regulations to limit greenhouse gas emissions from new power plants and existing gas-fired power plants — measures that energy analysts say would be needed to phase out fossil fuels. part by 2035 as Mr. Biden has vowed to do.
In a recent interview, Regan said his agency has been reviewing its management plans. Millions of dollars now available through climate change legislation to make it cheaper and easier for workers and automakers to move away from fossil fuels will prompt the agency to consider whether to set tougher emissions targets than before, he said. This could move the energy and transportation sectors of the economy even further away from fossil fuels. He said that making legal and financial approvals for these laws will take time but it is about to be completed.
“This spring, you’ll see a number of things the EPA has done,” said Regan.
Despite the billions allocated to the climate program, the EPA is underfunded and understaffed when it comes to its other duties, including enforcing environmental regulations and testing chemicals to ensure they do not pose a significant risk to public health or the environment.
The nonpartisan Environmental Integrity Project recently found that federal environmental enforcement is declining under Mr. Biden. EPA lawsuits against polluters fell sharply in 2022, with 72 such enforcement cases settled in court. That’s fewer than during the Trump administration, which has fought industry restrictions but has closed about 94 enforcement cases a year. The Obama administration averaged 210 per year, the report found. EPA officials said they are focusing on protecting the most polluted areas by increasing inspections and pursuing serious violations.
Companies regulated by the EPA are also upset, saying the agency is taking too long to determine whether new and existing chemicals pose a significant risk to the environment or human health.
The American Chemistry Council, which represents companies such as Dow, DuPont and ExxonMobil Chemical, is frustrated by the “continued delays and lack of transparency in how the funds are being used,” said Kimberly Wise White, vice president of regulatory and scientific affairs. to the sales team.
Michal Freedhoff, who heads the EPA’s chemicals group, told Congress recently that the agency’s chemical safety office is failing to fulfill its mandate and missing “too many regulatory opportunities.” He said that after the 2016 law greatly expanded the agency’s duties, the EPA under Trump’s leadership did not seek the help from Congress that was needed to carry out the work.
In fact, Mr. Trump tries every year to cut the EPA budget by 30 percent. Top scientists and other experts left the agency as the Trump administration eliminated scientific advisory groups, ignored scientific evidence and weakened protections against pollution.
“They defeated the EPA staff, a lot of people lost hope,” said Senator Tom Carper, Democrat of Delaware and chairman of the Environmental and Public Works Committee, which oversees the EPA.
The result is that the EPA’s Office of Chemical Safety is lagging behind, Ms. Freedhoff told Congress. Attracting and retaining employees has been difficult because of the workload, he said.
Mr. Carper said that he was “not patient,” especially with the delay in the legislation, and he said this to Mr. Regan.
EPA is hiring and, over the past two years, has increased its payroll by 3 percent, to 14,844 employees. But that has resulted in the number of workers slightly higher than when Ronald Reagan was president.
The EPA’s workforce peaked in 2004 during the George W. Bush administration, when there were 17,611 employees, according to the agency. These rates ebbed and flowed a bit, but they began to drop sharply during the Obama administration amid Republican control of the House and Senate.
When Trump entered the White House, the EPA had 15,408 employees. The following year it dropped to 14,172 employees, a level that remained stable until the Biden administration.
It was last month that the agency received the largest budget increase in years, $576 million, for compliance and compliance, as well as clean air, water and toxic chemicals programs.
Max Stier, head of the Partnership for Public Service, a non-partisan organization that seeks to improve government efficiency, said the EPA faced a “challenge” to implement the long list of proposed regulations and expansions that Biden had promised. to ensure that the money from the new climate law is used properly.
“You have an organization that was disillusioned at the beginning, that has suffered from years of dysfunction and now you have other requirements that require you to have new skills,” he said. “They have to strengthen their power, and this will not happen suddenly.”
