Latest news with #StateImplementationPlans
Yahoo
09-05-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
The EPA Is a Prime Candidate for Reform by the Trump Administration
What's the latest federal agency drawing the scrutiny of the Trump administration for inefficiency, expense, and administrative bloat? It's the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), a federal bureaucracy long infamous for intruding into Americans' lives and making it more difficult and expensive to do business. The EPA's own administrator, Lee Zeldin, says the agency is overdue for reform. If he's open to suggestions, people who have been working on the problem for years have good ideas to offer. "Under the previous administration, EPA's buildings stood largely empty, with headquarters attendance peaking at just over one-third occupancy as the record high attendance day last year," Zeldin wrote in an op-ed for Newsweek published last week. "Agency spending had ballooned from around $8 billion to $10 billion to more than $63 billion. Hundreds of new chemicals remained in regulatory limbo far beyond statutory review timelines, as did more than 12,000 pesticide reviews, and 685 State Implementation Plans to improve air quality around the country." The EPA's faults long precede the Biden White House. But the current administration's openness to change and its efforts to shutter other irrelevant and overbearing federal agencies are encouraging. That's good, because there's a lot of fixing to be done when it comes to the EPA. Writing for the Cato Institute in 2017, Henry I. Miller, a former FDA official, remembered his experiences with the sister agency: "I found the EPA, several of whose major programs I interacted with, to be relentlessly anti-science, anti-technology, and anti-industry. The only thing it seemed to be for was the Europeans' innovation-busting 'precautionary principle,' the view that until a product or activity has been proven safe definitively, it should be banned or at least smothered with regulation." In consequence, he added, the EPA "killed off entire, once-promising sectors of U.S. research and development." Jonathan Adler, a professor at the Case Western Reserve University School of Law, addressed exactly that point in Permitting the Future, a paper published last year. He wrote that "legal requirements adopted at all levels of government for the purpose of ensuring environmental review, facilitating public participation, and limiting environmental harm have become obstacles to continued environmental progress." That is, environmental regulation stands in the way of cleaner technologies that can make the world a better, greener place to live—if bureaucrats get out of the way. Following up on that theme in the December 2024 issue of Reason, Adler argued that to the extent environmental regulation should exist, it ought not be at the federal level: "Today, as environmental concerns butt up against other values, state and local governments have generally shown themselves to be more innovative, and more respectful of private property rights, than their federal counterparts." That doesn't mean states and localities are immune to excess or bad regulation. But Adler suggests that they're less bad and closer to the people they affect. He recommended abolishing the EPA. The Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI) shares such concerns, which are reflected in its Modernizing the EPA: A Blueprint for Congress project, edited by Daren Bakst and Marlo Lewis. "The EPA is supposed to protect the nation's environment, but it has become an agency that uses this mission as a means to regulate major portions of the economy and affect how we live our lives," Bakst and Lewis caution. "The EPA is well known for ignoring the will of Congress, and this problem is only getting worse. The agency also acts as if the only thing that matters is achieving whatever environmental objective it is pursuing, without properly considering the costs and tradeoffs of its actions and the harm it can cause Americans." Like Miller and Adler, Bakst and Lewis write that the EPA fails to properly consider costs and tradeoffs and ignores the role of the states in protecting the environment. While not going as far as Adler's call to pull the plug on the EPA, CEI recommends deep reforms in how the EPA operates to trim its overreach and make it less dangerous to American liberty and prosperity. As did Miller, CEI's contributors suggest that many of the EPA's "scientific" assumptions are junk. They also claim the agency's worst overreach is in the realm of enforcing the Clean Air Act and that in the process of regulating the nation's water, "The EPA, along with the US Army Corps of Engineers…have consistently ignored the role of states and the importance of private property rights." The blueprint's contributors recommend that Congress require the EPA to use accurate climate models, ease permitting, and "require the EPA to abandon the precautionary principle." The EPA should not be allowed to close types of businesses or ban goods. They also want to limit the EPA's use of the linear no-threshold model which assumes there's no safe level of exposure to potentially hazardous substances. Over the course of 232 pages plus endnotes, CEI offers a detailed plan for reforming not just how the EPA wields its authority, but even the philosophical foundations it brings to the job. "Congress should ensure that the EPA is focused on protecting Americans from genuine environmental harms," the blueprint concludes. "This is not merely about limiting the agency's regulatory abuses. It is also about ensuring that the agency is not using funding in a manner not intended by Congress." The best approach, I believe, is the one recommended by Adler: getting rid of the EPA entirely so that a trimmed bureaucracy can't metastasize in the future back to its old malignancy, like an overlooked tumor. An abolished bureaucracy is the least dangerous type of bureaucracy. But if that's too big an ask for Congress and the Trump administration, CEI's Modernizing the EPA offers a good plug-and-play plan for reforming the agency and making it less dangerous. That would still leave a smaller and, hopefully, better-focused bureaucracy in place, but some improvement is better than none. Zeldin and the Trump administration got off to a good start when they redirected the EPA from the trendy social justice ideological pursuits it adopted under the last administration. At that time, the new management announced efforts "to ensure that enforcement does not discriminate based on race and socioeconomic status (as it has under environmental justice initiatives)." If that energy can be brought to reforming the whole EPA or (preferably) abolishing it, the country will be better off. The post The EPA Is a Prime Candidate for Reform by the Trump Administration appeared first on
Yahoo
03-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin announces significant agency reorganization
On the same day that the Trump administration is proposing billions of dollars in cuts to renewable energy, environmental and climate programs, Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lee Zeldin announced a significant reorganization of his agency. "EPA is creating the first-of-its-kind Office of State Air Partnerships within the Office of Air and Radiation. This office will be focused on working with, not against, state, local and tribal air permitting agencies to improve processing of State Implementation Plans and resolving air permitting concerns," Zeldin said in a video posted to YouTube. MORE: These are the biggest 'anti-environment' policies enacted in Trump's 1st 100 days, according to experts Zeldin said the EPA is also creating an Office of Clean Air program that "will align statutory obligations and mission essential functions based on centers of expertise to ensure more transparency and harmony in regulatory development." Further, the agency is making changes to its Office of Water and creating a new Office of Applied Science and Environmental Solutions, which Zeldin says will "prioritize research and put science at the forefront of the agency's rule makings and technical assistance to states." Zeldin says the EPA will add more than 130 new employees to address the backlog of new chemicals and pesticides waiting for a review and "elevate" the issues of emergency response, cybersecurity, water reuse and conservation. On Monday, the agency announced a new initiative to address contamination by PFAS, which are also known as forever chemicals. During his remarks, Zeldin said the new EPA structure would help the agency better understand how the chemicals impact human health and the environment. MORE: EPA takes aim at water, air and toxics protections as part of massive deregulation campaign The restructuring moves come on the same day the Trump administration released its 2026 fiscal year budget. The administration's budget cuts $15 billion from the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, a Biden administration initiative that provided funds for carbon capture and renewable energy projects. The budget also calls for slashing $6 billion for EV chargers. The budget proposal also calls for cutting grants to environmental organizations and eliminating the EPA's Environmental Justice Program, a division that enforced civil rights laws and ensured that all people received the same level of environmental protection. Sierra Club legislative director Melinda Pierce wrote in a statement, "This budget outline would dangerously slash funding to protect our air and water, disinvest in the clean energy manufacturing boom that has powered our economic recovery, and raise costs for working families who are already struggling to get by amidst the chaos and uncertainty that this administration has created in just three short months." MORE: These are the impacts some scientists fear most from EPA deregulation Zeldin said the reorganization would save more than $300 million a year and that the agency's goal is to reduce staffing to match the level of Ronald Reagan's presidency. "EPA will strive to accomplish all this while fulfilling our commitment to the rule of law, advancing cooperative federalism, and being good stewards of your hard-earned tax dollars," Zeldin said in his remarks. EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin announces significant agency reorganization originally appeared on
02-05-2025
- Business
EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin announces significant agency reorganization
On the same day that the Trump administration is proposing billions of dollars in cuts to renewable energy, environmental and climate programs, Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lee Zeldin announced a significant reorganization of his agency. "EPA is creating the first-of-its-kind Office of State Air Partnerships within the Office of Air and Radiation. This office will be focused on working with, not against, state, local and tribal air permitting agencies to improve processing of State Implementation Plans and resolving air permitting concerns," Zeldin said in a video posted to YouTube. Zeldin said the EPA is also creating an Office of Clean Air program that "will align statutory obligations and mission essential functions based on centers of expertise to ensure more transparency and harmony in regulatory development." Further, the agency is making changes to its Office of Water and creating a new Office of Applied Science and Environmental Solutions, which Zeldin says will "prioritize research and put science at the forefront of the agency's rule makings and technical assistance to states." Zeldin says the EPA will add more than 130 new employees to address the backlog of new chemicals and pesticides waiting for a review and "elevate" the issues of emergency response, cybersecurity, water reuse and conservation. On Monday, the agency announced a new initiative to address contamination by PFAS, which are also known as forever chemicals. During his remarks, Zeldin said the new EPA structure would help the agency better understand how the chemicals impact human health and the environment. The restructuring moves come on the same day the Trump administration released its 2026 fiscal year budget. The administration's budget cuts $15 billion from the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, a Biden administration initiative that provided funds for carbon capture and renewable energy projects. The budget also calls for slashing $6 billion for EV chargers. The budget proposal also calls for cutting grants to environmental organizations and eliminating the EPA's Environmental Justice Program, a division that enforced civil rights laws and ensured that all people received the same level of environmental protection. Sierra Club legislative director Melinda Pierce wrote in a statement, "This budget outline would dangerously slash funding to protect our air and water, disinvest in the clean energy manufacturing boom that has powered our economic recovery, and raise costs for working families who are already struggling to get by amidst the chaos and uncertainty that this administration has created in just three short months." Zeldin said the reorganization would save more than $300 million a year and that the agency's goal is to reduce staffing to match the level of Ronald Reagan's presidency. "EPA will strive to accomplish all this while fulfilling our commitment to the rule of law, advancing cooperative federalism, and being good stewards of your hard-earned tax dollars," Zeldin said in his remarks.
Newsweek
02-05-2025
- Business
- Newsweek
Lee Zeldin: Making the EPA Efficient—and Exceptional
The Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) mission has always been protecting human health and the environment for Americans everywhere. Clean air, land, and water are the foundation for the statutory obligations that allow EPA to carry out its work. EPA must efficiently and exceptionally accomplish this while Powering the Great American Comeback. President Donald Trump was elected to implement common sense policies that deliver on the top concerns of the American people, and at EPA, we're unveiling the next phase of organizational improvements to better deliver on this mandate. Under the previous administration, EPA's buildings stood largely empty, with headquarters attendance peaking at just over one-third occupancy as the record high attendance day last year. Agency spending had ballooned from around $8 billion to $10 billion to more than $63 billion. Hundreds of new chemicals remained in regulatory limbo far beyond statutory review timelines, as did more than 12,000 pesticide reviews, and 685 State Implementation Plans to improve air quality around the country. EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin, accompanied by Education Secretary Linda McMahon (R), speaks during a Cabinet meeting at the White House on April 30. EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin, accompanied by Education Secretary Linda McMahon (R), speaks during a Cabinet meeting at the White House on April Trump, we are making the government work most effectively for the American people. We've already delivered more than $22 billion in savings directly to American taxpayers through cancelled grants and contracts. This new phase of EPA's reorganization efforts is anticipated to result in more than $300 million in additional annual savings for taxpayers by fiscal year 2026. When the agency's larger, comprehensive effort to restructure its organization is finalized, EPA's employment levels will resemble those during President Ronald Reagan's administration. EPA is improving its structure by integrating scientific staff directly into our program offices instead of siloed in the Office of Research and Development, which will better ensure that research directly advances statutory obligations and mission-essential functions. In the administrator's office, there will be a new Office of Applied Science and Environmental Solutions, which will elevate research efforts, put science at the forefront of the agency's rulemaking, and enhance technical assistance service for states and local partners. In the Office of Air and Radiation, we're establishing the first-ever Office of State Air Partnerships to improve coordination with state, local, and tribal air permitting agencies. This collaborative approach will resolve permitting concerns more efficiently and ensure EPA is working with states, not against them, to advance our shared mission. Alongside this, the new Office of Clean Air Programs will align statutory obligations and essential functions with centers of expertise to create greater transparency in our regulatory work. Similar improvements in the Office of Water will better connect regulation development and policy with underlying science. This will allow us to prioritize critical issues, including cybersecurity, emergency response, and water reuse to ensure these current, pressing challenges receive appropriate resources. The Office of Chemical Safety and Pollution Prevention will gain more than 130 scientific, bioinformatic, technical, and information technology experts to address the substantial backlog of new chemical and pesticide reviews from the previous administration. This influx of expertise will accelerate our ability to evaluate risk exposure while also allowing us to gain the tools needed to advance new priorities like a PFAS (chemicals that persist in the environment and may cause negative health affects) testing strategy—an issue I've championed since my days in Congress. This reorganization is a promise to the American people that EPA is bolstering our commitment to transparency, cooperative federalism and all our statutory obligations to enhance our ability to protect human health and the environment. The American people deserve an EPA that effectively balances environmental protection with economic prosperity. Through this reorganization, we're positioning the agency to do just that. EPA will adhere to the rule of law, advance policies that deliver real results for Americans, be a good steward of taxpayer dollars and Power the Great American Comeback while ensuring cleaner air, land and water for all Americans. This is just the beginning as we do our part to transform the EPA into a more efficient and effective agency that will provide a cleaner planet for generations to come. Lee Zeldin is the 17th administrator of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. He served in the New York State Senate from 2011-2014 and later represented New York's 1st Congressional District in the U.S. House of Representatives from 2015-2023. The views expressed in this article are the writer's own.
Yahoo
01-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Opinion - 100 days in, Trump's EPA is powering the great American comeback
It has been just over 100 days since President Trump was sworn into office, with a promise to deliver for the American people. In that time, the Environmental Protection Agency has followed the president's lead as he brings common sense and the will of the American people to the forefront of every policy decision made. Not only is the EPA Powering the Great American Comeback, by unleashing American energy, lowering costs for hardworking Americans, bringing back American auto jobs, advancing cooperative federalism, and making the United States the AI capital of the world, the Trump EPA is doing what many thought impossible: ensuring America has the cleanest air, land and water on the planet while also supporting economic growth. Many on the left have propelled their radical agenda using extreme climate alarmism to justify policy actions that favored and subsidized preferred individuals and entities while impeding others and driving costs up for Americans. Under Trump, EPA is rejecting the false choice between environmental stewardship and economic prosperity. These goals reinforce each other when approached with commonsense policies rather than ideological agendas. One of the core elements of EPA's mission is protecting air quality. Since Jan. 20, EPA has approved 25 State Implementation Plans — 16 of which were backlogged from the previous administration — ensuring environmental requirements take effect faster. At our southern border, EPA addressed air quality challenges by providing funding for air filters and hydrogen sulfide monitoring to address sulfur odors from the Tijuana River. In our skies, when unregulated geoengineering startup Make Sunsets began launching toxic sulfur dioxide into the atmosphere for 'cooling credits,' EPA demanded immediate answers to protect U.S. air. The agency has bolstered its commitment to ensuring clean land across the nation. In 100 days, EPA has fully cleared, or cleared portions of, four Superfund sites. In addition, it has supported redevelopment at 21 Superfund sites across 13 states. Through the Brownfields program, the agency boosted property values and created new economic opportunities with 27 sites now ready for anticipated use. At the West Lake Landfill Superfund site in St. Louis, Mo., residents have long endured radioactive waste in their community. After visiting the site with Sen. Josh Hawley and hearing from community members, the importance of an expedited cleanup was clear. I tasked our experts to find a way to do so, and was able to announce that EPA reduced the cleanup timeline for West Lake Landfill and impacted sites by two years. Los Angeles experienced catastrophic wildfires earlier this year. At Trump's direction, EPA completed its largest wildfire response in agency history, clearing more than 13,000 properties of hazardous materials in just 28 days. Water is an extremely valuable resource, and its preservation is critical for human health and our economy. EPA updated water quality standards for 38 miles of the Delaware River to protect critical fish species, approved a comprehensive plan to further restore and protect the Long Island Sound over the next decade, and developed a cutting-edge method to detect 40 different PFAS compounds in surface water, groundwater and wastewater — a critical tool in addressing these emerging contaminants. In addition, I recently traveled to our southern border to announce immediate actions to end decades of raw sewage flowing into our country from Tijuana, Mexico. EPA's expedited review processes for new chemicals and pesticides is supporting American agriculture and industry while ensuring products are safe for human health and the environment. And the agency's enforcement actions have reduced pollution by 15 million pounds while securing $296 million for cleanups to address over 700,000 cubic yards of contamination. EPA is proving environmental protection can drive economic growth. Our rapid approval of backlogged permits is giving businesses the certainty they need while ensuring proper environmental safeguards. Superfund cleanups are returning valuable land to productive use, creating jobs and revitalizing communities that have been left behind. This paradigm represents the cornerstone of EPA's environmental policy in the Trump administration: protection that empowers rather than restricts, regulation that clarifies rather than complicates, and an approach that recognizes the environment and economy as partners rather than adversaries. In just 100 days, Trump's EPA has demonstrated what's possible when environmental policy focuses on results rather than rhetoric. It remains committed to ensuring every American has access to clean air, clean water and clean land while powering the Great American Comeback — and we're just getting started. Lee Zeldin is the 17th administrator of the United States Environmental Protection Agency. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
