by Willy Blackmore
Since taking office a few months ago, Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lee Zeldin has worked to recoup or cancel billions of dollars in federal grants because they are linked to environmental justice — the concept that, because pollution and climate change disproportionately harms Black and brown communities, those communities need extra government help.
But a group of Senate Democrats believe that, in clawing back that money, Zeldin and the Trump administration is knowingly and intentionally breaking the law.
The nine Democrats who sit on the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works have been investigating the EPA’s move to cut $1.5 billion in grants funded through the Inflation Reduction Act, President Joe Biden’s signature law intended to mitigate climate change. The Democrats sent a letter to Zeldin last Monday demanding additional information on the grants, and on the staffing cuts the agency has made in offices focused on environmental justice.
The money, the Democrats argue, is intended for communities and organizations working on environmental issues in marginalized, mostly minority communities.
Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, a Rhode Island Democrat, told the Associated Press that the “illegal” moves by Zeldin “violates a series of congressional appropriations laws, contractual agreements, and multiple court orders.”
But it also will have a real-world effect, Whitehouse said, by undermining “essential programs aimed at eliminating childhood lead poisoning, reducing toxic air pollution, and mitigating health risks from heat and wildfires,” Whitehouse
Zeldin’s cuts are part of President Donald Trump’s ongoing crusade against government programs and initiatives that seem related to racial diversity, equity and inclusion. Earlier this month, he issued a memo declaring the EPA will close 10 of its Environmental Justice Divisions in regions around the country.
The closures dovetailed with an announcement that the agency will end all “diversity, equity and inclusion and environmental justice offices and positions.”
In its investigation, the Democratic senators obtained both a list detailing some 400 grants, along with emails from an EPA counsel that said the agency committed a “significant error” in cancelling them. According to the emails, the EPA contracts for the grants can’t be cancelled due to a change in agency priorities.
The EPA grant list only includes short descriptions of what the money was awarded for, but a review of the document indicates that, among other priorities, the grants were significantly funding work in communities vulnerable to extreme weather events fueled by climate change.
Childhood Lead Action Project received $500,000 for a “community-based lead poisoning prevention project;” The Bronx Is Blooming, a project that supports urban forestry, received $150,000 for its workforce development program; United Congregations of Metro received around $500,000 to monitor air pollution in and around East St. Louis, Ill; and the Louisiana Bucket Brigade, one of the key environmental justice organizations working in the River Parishes won a $500,000 grant.
“The vast majority of the targeted grant awards were made using funds appropriated by Congress with a statutory mandate that they be distributed to disadvantaged communities,” the senators wrote in the letter. There has yet to be a response.
EPA efforts to specifically address disproportionate pollution in Black and brown communities effectively ground to a halt last year, due to a red-state lawsuit challenging the EPA’s method for investigating civil rights-related pollution cases.
Source: Seattle Medium
