Mike Ludwig
A new lawsuit
is challenging the Trump administration’s removal of environmental justice maps
and datasets.
Marti
Blake looks out her front window at the smokestack of the Cheswick
coal-fired power plant in Springdale, Pennsylvania, on October 27, 2017.
Blake says the amount of sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxide and coal
particles originating from the plant has impacted her health as well as
those in the surrounding area. Robert Nickelsberg / Getty Images
Despite the
self-imposed chaos disrupting the federal government, public health watchdogs
say the Trump administration’s strategy for axing pollution protections on
behalf of its allies in wealthy industries is more sophisticated than what was
seen during the president’s first term. Advocates for communities overburdened
by industrial pollution and the impacts of climate change say years of progress
toward cleaner air, water and corporate accountability are at stake.
Under orders
from President Donald Trump, Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)
Administrator Lee Zeldin is simultaneously moving to rescind Biden-era rules
meant to protect the public from toxic pollution while inviting hundreds of
petrochemical manufacturers and the dirtiest coal-burning power plants to apply
for sweeping “presidential exemptions” from meeting updated pollution limits
for up to two years, after which they can be renewed.
Handing out
regulatory exemptions to polluters provides the Trump EPA time to dismantle
years of regulatory work toward limiting emissions of hazardous toxins such as
mercury and cancer-causing benzene before private companies face requirements
to invest in pollution controls that protect public health.
Meanwhile, the
Trump administration has made it harder for regulators, policy makers, advocacy
groups and residents living in the shadow of industry to track health threats
from pollution and examine local impacts of energy, infrastructure and disaster
relief policies by deleting key datasets and interactive maps from federal
agency websites.
“No joke, they
are trying to erase the [connection] between pollution and its outcomes on the
ground,” said Jane Williams, executive director of the California Communities
Against Toxics (CCAT), in an interview. “It’s a very concerted effort by big
industry, and it’s not just at EPA, it’s at the Centers for Disease Control and
the Department of Health and Human Services too.”
On April 14,
CCAT and multiple watchdog groups filed a lawsuit in federal court challenging
the removal of multiple online datasets and webtools, including EPA’s EJScreen,
an interactive environmental justice mapping tool that allowed the public to
analyze the impact of specific pollutants on local areas alongside demographic
information. Public health groups scraped EJScreen data to recreate the tool on
separate websites, but without fresh data from the EPA, the map will soon
become outdated.
Since 2015,
watchdog groups along with concerned residents, academics, environmental
activists and regulators have used EJScreen to examine and confront
environmental racism in areas where Black, Brown and lower-income communities
have long been overburdened by pollution and outdated infrastructure. EPA used
the tool to prioritize grants and enforcement resources for underserved
communities in need of relief.
The Trump
administration also deleted the Council on Environmental Quality’s Climate and
Environmental Justice Screening Tool (CEJST), which the Biden administration
set up to map out areas vulnerable to pollution and climate impacts such as
flooding and wildfires. The webtool was created under an executive order signed
by President Joe Biden that pledged to direct 40 percent of benefits from
federal climate investments to underserved communities but was quickly
rescinded by Trump. Both EJScreen and CEJST were used extensively by policy
makers, academics, journalists and environmental justice activists fighting
pollution in their own backyards, according to the lawsuit.
The lawsuit
also challenges the removal of Department of Energy’s Low-Income Energy
Affordability Data Tool and Community Benefits Plan Map, used for illustrating
inequities in home energy costs and availability; the Department of
Transportation’s Equitable Transportation Community Explorer that mapped out
access to various modes of transport; and the Federal Emergency Management
Agency’s Future Risk Index, which tracked the risk of natural disasters across
the country.
The webtools
and the data behind them helped watchdogs protect public health when the
government fell short, the lawsuit argues. For example, the Union of Concerned
Scientists, one of the plaintiffs in the lawsuit, used the data tools to
investigate commercial sterilizers that emit ethylene oxide, an invisible gas
that causes cancer and acute respiratory disorders. The group found that
companies sterilizing medical equipment and dried food products in the U.S. are
disproportionately polluting Black and Brown neighborhoods, low-income areas
and non-English language speaking communities.
On April 16,
news outlets Grist and El Paso Matters published a joint investigation into the
dangers posed by ethylene oxide leaking from sterilization warehouses that
operate near residential areas across the country.
Gretchen
Goldman, president of the Union of Concerned Scientists, said the public has a
right to access data and webtools that were funded by taxpayers.
“From vital
information for communities about their exposure to harmful pollution, to data
that help local governments build resilience to extreme weather events, the
public deserves access to federal datasets,” Goldman said in a statement this
week. “Removing government datasets is tantamount to theft.”
The lawsuit
challenges the removal of the data sets and webtools under longstanding federal
laws that require agencies to notify the public before making regulatory
changes or cutting off access to major sources of public information on what
the government does.
Under Trump’s
flurry of executive orders, federal agencies have also deleted references to
“climate change,” “environmental justice” and diversity initiatives from
federal agencies websites. While critics argue some of the language and
initiatives scrubbed from the internet were more of a window dressing than
real-world reforms, plenty of critical public health information was lost in
the mix.
Williams said
EJScreen in particular was a vital tool for advocates pushing for tougher
pollution protections during the Biden and Obama administrations, when
environmental groups spent years in courtrooms and regulatory hearings fighting
for more resources for communities overburdened by toxins. Williams likened the
Trump administration’s censorship to “book burning.”
“[EJScreen]
gives the government tools to say, these are the most impacted communities, so
where do we focus enforcement and resources,” Williams said. “When you wipe out
the tools, and you wipe out the ability for government to do stuff like that,
you permanently enshrine an underclass…preventing them from knowing or doing
anything about the situation, or the government.”
Asked whether
public access to the data and tools would be restored after content edits to
comply with Trump’s executive orders, an EPA spokesperson said the agency was
unable to comment on pending litigation.
“EPA is working
to diligently implement President Trump’s executive orders, including the
‘Ending Radical and Wasteful Government DEI Programs and Preferencing,’ as well
as subsequent associated implementation memos,” the spokesperson said in an
email.
While it took
down environmental justice maps and datasets, the EPA published a new webpage
inviting fossil fuel and chemical companies to apply for presidential
exemptions to pollution limits. Historically, such exemptions are issued in
rare cases when the necessary pollution control technology is not available,
and compliance would pose a threat to national security, according to Grace
Smith, a senior attorney at the Environmental Defense Fund.
“This exemption
is really meant for one-off circumstances,” Smith told the Environmental
Defense Fund’s outlet Vital Signs.
Dubbed the
“polluters’ portal” by critics, the EPA recently set up a new webpage with
step-by-step instructions to apply for two-year waivers from nine major EPA
pollution protections that Williams and other advocates spent years fighting to
put in place. The rules include tougher limits on dangerous pollution from
smokestacks and chemical plants, new emission standards for cars and trucks for
reducing asthma and lung disease, and a historic rule designed to update water
systems and protect children from lead in drinking water. At least 530
industrial facilities are eligible to apply for the exemptions, according to
the Environmental Defense Fund.
The EPA quietly
announced that a list of nearly 70 aging coal-burning power plants received a
presidential exemption from rules requiring reductions of harmful pollutants
including mercury, arsenic, benzene and fine particulate matter that lodges in
human lungs. Trump signed a “presidential proclamation” on April 8 granting the
coal plants the exemption, part of a larger but vague plan to bring back a
dying industry responsible for climate-warming air pollution and waste pits
that contaminate groundwater.
Technology for
removing pollutants from smokestacks has existed for years, but aging coal
plants, mostly in red states, have dragged their feet and are now considered
among the dirtiest sources of power in the nation. Thanks to the availability
of cheap fracked gas, utilities would likely shutter the plants before
installing pollution controls. With the exemptions, Trump is once again
gleefully throwing the coal industry a lifeline.
Additionally,
the American Chemistry Council and the American Fuel & Petrochemical
Manufacturers, two industry groups representing hundreds of oil and gas
refineries and chemical plants, are reportedly seeking a blanket exemption for
more than 200 facilities from historic EPA rules designed to limit emissions of
toxic pollutants such as ethylene oxide and chloroprene, which are both linked
to an increased risk of cancer.
Residents and
activists living near these facilities fought for the limits on ethylene oxide
and chloroprene for years, and activists in Louisiana’s infamous “Cancer Alley”
celebrated a victory when the EPA announced the final standards in 2024. The
Mississippi River corridor between Baton Rouge and Louisiana is packed with
petrochemical plants built around historically Black communities dating back to
the end of slavery. An investigation by ProPublica found that in certain areas
of Cancer Alley the risk of developing cancer is 47 times higher than what the
EPA deems acceptable.
One of the
plants covered by the new pollution limits operates near a majority-Black
elementary school in Reserve, Louisiana. After years of protests and litigation
over pollution and elevated cancer rates, the EPA filed a historic civil rights
lawsuit in 2023 alleging the company is exposing the surrounding majority-Black
community to an unacceptable risk of cancer.
Last month, the
Trump administration dropped the landmark lawsuit against Denka. The local
school board voted to shut down the elementary school and move it away from the
Denka plant last year. Williams now wonders if the school will have enough
funding for the move now that the Trump administration is attempting to
dismantle the Department of Education.
“How does
everything that happened in the last 100 days affect those kids who go to that
school?” Williams said, adding that the Trump administration has also
undermined voting rights and federal efforts to support disadvantaged public
school students.
Besides the
coal plants already approved by presidential proclamation, the EPA has not made
requests for exemptions from its pollution rules public, according to the
Environmental Defense Fund. The group says it filed a Freedom of Information
Act request for all records related to the EPA exemption portal, including the
names of companies, and pledges to take the matter to court if necessary.
“With this
invitation to apply for exemptions, they have opened it up in a way where you
can tell that they will be rubber stamping whatever comes their way,” Smith
said.
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