The Trump administration is poised to close the Environmental Protection Agency’s Office of Environmental Justice after more than 100 employees were placed on administrative leave on Thursday. Advocates and former EPA officials say the imminent closure will likely have lasting harmful impacts on Black, brown, and poor communities.
According to the New York Times, the agency placed 168 workers from the environmental justice office on administrative leave who report to the EPA’s headquarters in Washington, D.C., in compliance with President Donald Trump’s executive order to eliminate all environmental justice programs.
The office, created in 2022 by President Joe Biden, was the culmination of years-long work by the EPA to address the disproportionate impact of environmental harms on minority and poor communities through a civil rights framework.
“The EPA’s environmental justice office was created to challenge the historic pattern of pollution disproportionately affecting low-income communities and communities of color. Its work is based on robust research that identifies communities most affected by pollution,” said Chitra Kumar, managing director of the climate and energy program at the Union of Concerned Scientists.
Kumar, who also worked as a former policy official for the EPA’s Office of Environmental Justice and External Civil Rights, said Trump’s decision to eliminate staff dedicated to the goal of keeping vulnerable communities safe from environmental pollution and other adverse effects of climate change is “disappointing.” She added, “Everyone in the United States deserves clean air and clean water.”
Dorien Paul Blythers, former deputy chief of staff for operations at EPA during the Biden-Harris administration, explained to theGrio that without the environmental justice office, which was created to “leverage” the Civil Rights Act of 1964 through enforcement of non-discrimination laws to protect public health, “there’s no one stopping states from letting corporations dump toxic waste in poor, working-class communities.”
Referencing the years-long lead pipe crisis in Flint, Michigan, that began in 2014 and the 2022 water crisis in Jackson, Mississippi, Blythers exclaimed, “How many times do we have to prove that clean water and air isn’t a given when you’re Black in America?”
The latest actions at EPA come as the Trump administration makes good on the president’s campaign promise to root out all things he and his advisors consider diversity, equity, and inclusion, also known as DEI. They argue that DEI policies discriminate against those not being considered based on their race, sex, or disability and do not prioritize merit. However, the work of the EPA’s environmental justice office is based on hard data.
According to the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health, Blacks and Hispanics are exposed to “particulate matter—fine inhalable particles like dust and soot released by burning fossil fuels—at a rate more than 50% higher than whites.” Oftentimes, Black and brown communities — which are also disproportionately poor — are exposed to environmental harms based on their zip codes and proximity to chemical and waste plants.
Blythers said the Trump administration’s targeting of environmental justice isn’t based on policy and is a deliberate attack on communities of color.
“This is environmental Jim Crow that we’re experiencing. This is environmental racism, and the construct of racism appears at the core of this administration and the executive orders and actions that they’ve taken,” he told theGrio. The former EPA official added, “This is all a charade and a mask to put over what is a really ugly and racist set of policies that are meant to dismantle our communities.”
Blythers continued, “If you’re Black, if you’re Brown, if you’re poor, if your paycheck is small, they’re coming for you, for your air, for your water and your health.”
As environmental justice advocates and communities brace for what’s to come, Kumar of the Union of Concerned Scientists said it’s imperative that state and federal officials “demand” that “federal funds are directed to the communities across the country that need them the most.”
Blythers said that as the Trump administration dismantles civil rights protections for Black communities, particularly related to the environment, Black Americans may have to turn within the community for protection.
“Black folks have always found ways to take care of ourselves. We’ve been boiling water since we were on plantations,” he said. “But when we think about that in the context of 2025, it’s going to be incumbent on us and the institutions that represent us, and keep us safe in a ‘For Us, By Us’ fashion to do everything we can to protect our own public health.”
He added, “We will no longer be able to rely on government and the institutions that were supposed to protect us in the first place.”
