The Erosion of EPA Enforcement Under Trump Creates a Public Health Risk

It’s been a tumultuous couple of weeks for the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). The agency followed through on its plan to rescind the 2009 Endangerment Finding and all the rules and decisions based on it. This action means the federal government no longer considers carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases — which result from burning fossil fuels like coal, oil, and gas — a threat to public health and welfare, which goes against the government’s own thorough review of existing scientific research and all the evidence that has been added since 2009.

On top of that, legal actions initiated by the Department of Justice on behalf of the EPA against alleged polluters have sharply decreased, according to a new reportfrom the Environmental Integrity Project. The report found only 16 such legal actions, a 76 percent drop from the number taken during the Biden administration’s first year. But that’s not the only metric by which the EPA’s work has declined under Trump. EPA’s Enforcement Compliance and History Online (ECHO) database shows how little the EPA enforces its own regulations.

In particular, data for compliance and enforcement activities conducted under the 1976 Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA) for hazardous waste handlers show a large gap in the number of formal actions taken between Biden and Trump (see figure below).

Unlike the Clean Air Act and Clean Water Act, in which EPA delegates a lot of authority to state agencies, RCRA gave EPA the authority to control hazardous waste “from cradle to grave.” This is why in the figure below, states are consistent in the number and percentage of actions they take across administrations. That is because EPA is supposed to lead the way on enforcement. If you look at the states as the control group and the administration as the experimental group, this starts to make sense.

So what is considered hazardous waste? Title 40 of the US Code of Federal Regulations lists everything from petroleum refinery wastewater treatment sludges and the output of pesticide manufacturing to discarded commercial chemical products. These wastes share common traits: they are flammable, corrosive, unstable (meaning they react with other chemicals or water to produce gases or potentially explode), and toxic. Mixed waste contains all those components and radioactive materials. Hazardous waste that is improperly disposed of poses a serious risk to public health and the environment. Contamination of water sources can lead to severe outcomes, including elevated cancer rates, lethal effects on both humans and wildlife, and toxicity to vegetation.

The EPA or state EPA offices can take informal and formal actions against facilities to enforce compliance. Informal actions are less serious and often involve a written warning, while formal actions are usually reserved for more serious violations and may include penalties. Examples of formal actions include court orders or administrative orders with a compliance schedule. The figure above shows that the Biden administration issued far more formal actions than the Trump administration in its first term and the first year of the second term. Not only that, the data show that the Biden administration took more than 3,200 formal and informal actions against alleged polluters, almost double the number Trump took in his first term (1,823).

While the Trump administration claims that taking these recent actions — reversing the endangerment finding, reducing regulations for companies, etc.—will save consumers money, the truth is that these moves will have a very real cost in terms of public health and environmental degradation. Findings in just the last five years have linked fossil fuel emissions to respiratory illnesses such as asthma and premature birth rates. There is also plenty of research showing that facilities that generate hazardous waste are often located in or near marginalized neighborhoods. Communities of color are disproportionately affected by environmental hazards, according to the EPA’s own data. Black Americans, for example, are 75 percent more likely to reside in “fenceline communities” — areas situated near hazardous waste sites and polluting facilities.

Regulations are not created arbitrarily by politicians and policymakers. They are based on scientific evidence and real examples of companies putting profits over public safety. When the evidence is ignored, the true price of “savings” is measured in public health crises and disproportionate harm to the nation’s most vulnerable communities. Instead of “Make America Healthy Again,” these actions are more likely to “Make America Sick Again,” and the public shouldn’t stand for it.

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