Goal 2 of the Environmental Protection Agency’s 2018-2022 Stategic Plan is “Cooperative Federalism: Rebalance the power between Washington and the states to create tangible environmental results for the American people.” Translation: How can we cut the EPA budget even further than it has been over the past decade and turn over more of its functions to the states where industries know they have an advantage in getting their way regarding relaxed enforcement of environmental protections.
The write-up underpinning that goal is brimful of buzzwordy mush. In addition to “cooperative federalism, there’s “transparency” and “shared responsibility,” with the EPA working together with the states and tribes “in a spirit of trust, collaboration, and partnership.” In most cases, however, as a new study from the Environmental Integrity Project found, the bottom line in transferring more EPA tasks to the states—as the rightist ideologues who laid out goals in the plan were well aware—means cuts in funding, which means cuts in enforcement, which means environmental damage going unaddressed.
This isn’t theory. Corbin Hiar at EnergyWire writes:
"The Trump administration has been trying to roll back EPA's authority and funding by arguing that the states will pick up the slack and keep our air and water clean," said Eric Schaeffer, EIP's executive director.
"This is just a shell game, however," said Schaeffer, the former director of civil enforcement at EPA. "Neither EPA nor states have the funding they need to meet their responsibilities under the Clean Air Act, Clean Water Act, and other laws that protect the public's health and our environment from dangerous pollution."
In the new study, titled “The Thin Green Line: Cuts to State Pollution Control Agencies Threaten Public Health,” the EIP found that 30 states have chopped staffing in their environmental agencies by 10% or more, 16 of them by more than 20%. This follows what’s been happening at the federal level for a very long time. In the first three years of the Reagan administration, cuts in the EPA budget and staff cuts were combined. The George W. Bush administration worked to undermine policy based firmly on science, and according to the American Journal of Public Health, “The [Trump regime] combines both these strategies and operates in a political context more favorable to its designs on the EPA. [...] Wealthy donors, think tanks, and fossil fuel and chemical industries have become more influential in pushing deregulation.”
In 2008, the EPA’s budget for key programs in 2008 was $5.3 billion and the workforce 16,916 full-time equivalents; in 2018, the budget was $4.5 billion and the workforce 14,217 FTEs. Funding for enforcement programs was cut 17% over this period, with enforcement staffing down 10%.
Under the circumstances, with Donald Trump still keen on whacking 30% more out the EPA budget, one might think that maybe transferring EPA tasks to the states would improve matters. But with the exception of a few states, it wouldn’t be. Over the 10-year period, California, for instance, raised the state EPA’s budget by 75%, and hired an additional 1,255 pollution-control employees. Elsewhere, it is another story. Some examples of cuts over the 2008-2018 period:
-
Louisiana: Environmental protection programs by an inflation-adjusted 34.8%, and a 30% drop in Department of Environmental Quality workers.
-
Texas: 35% funding cuts for the Commission on Environmental Quality at the same time the state’s overall budget rose by 41%.
-
North Carolina “is home to 2,246 factory hog farms housing 9.7 million pigs that produce 10 billion gallons of manure annually — 500 times the waste produced by the population of Washington, D.C.," the EIP reported stated. "The hog waste lagoons often spill into rivers because of higher storm surges caused by sea-level rise and climate change." The inflation-adjusted environmental programs budget was more than $116.5 million in 2008, 33.7%, more than its budget last year. The overall state budget grew 8% during the same period. It also lost 35% of its environmental regulators.
-
New York: The Department of Environmental Conservation has seen its budget cut by 31% over the past decade, with the workforce reduced by 29%.
In the 47 states for which data were available, EIP found cuts totaling more than 4,400 positions in environmental protections. But if California’s environmental workforce gains are removed, staff cuts in the remaining states total 5,705 positions for an average reduction of 14%.