Trump said cuts are coming to the EPA. Experts warn Georgians could suffer

On Wednesday, during the first Cabinet meeting of his second term, Trump revealed EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin “thinks he’s going to be cutting 65 or so percent of the people.” In line with earlier pledges to eliminate bureaucratic red tape, Trump also claimed the agency would “speed up” its processes. After his initial remarks, White House officials sought to clarify that Trump’s 65% figure was in reference to the EPA’s budget, not necessarily its workforce.

Credit: Stephen B. Morton for The Atlanta Journal Constitution

Credit: Stephen B. Morton for The Atlanta Journal Constitution

Georgia is one of eight states in the EPA’s Region 4, which encompasses most of the Southeastern U.S. and is one of the agency’s largest. The EPA works closely with its state partners to enforce the nation’s bedrock environmental laws. That includes the Clean Water Act, the Clean Air Act and the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act, which governs disposal of solid and hazardous waste, along with many others.

Gutting the agency’s workforce or budget would not remove those laws and other federal rules — that would require congressional action or for the EPA to finalize new rules, a process that can take years. But experts say the depth of cuts Trump’s team seems to have in mind would significantly hamper enforcement.

“If you have a law on the books that says you can’t commit murder and then you go fire the police department, then that’s going to have an impact,” said Gil Rogers, the director of the Georgia office of the Southern Environmental Law Center.

The EPA is also involved in the permitting many businesses need to operate in Georgia, and works closely with state regulators at the Georgia Environmental Protection Division. It’s possible staffing cuts at the federal level could slow the approvals companies need to build new facilities or expand existing ones.

In a statement, an EPA spokesperson said Trump and Zeldin are in “lock step in creating a more efficient and effective federal government.”

“In his first term, President Trump advanced conservation and environmental stewardship while promoting economic growth for families across the country and will continue to do so this term,” the spokesperson added.

Cleaning up legacy pollutants

The EPA also leads the remediation Georgia’s Superfund sites, a classification for the country’s most polluted sites. These properties, often abandoned, require long-term and expensive cleanups.

One of those, the Westside Lead Superfund Site, is spread over close to 2,100 properties in the historically Black neighborhoods of English Avenue and Vine City west of downtown Atlanta. In 2018, Emory professor Eri Saikawa and her students discovered soil in the area was loaded with high levels of lead, which can damage the brain and nervous system, especially in children. The pollution was likely left behind by metal foundries once common on Atlanta’s Westside.

Rosario Hernandez, the executive director of Historic Westside Gardens, was one of the first to have lead detected in her yard. The EPA replaced her polluted soil with clean material and replanted the yard, as they’ve done on more than 300 other properties so far, according to the agency’s latest count.

Credit: Steve Schaefer

Credit: Steve Schaefer

Hernandez, a retired teacher, said it took intensive collaboration with the EPA to build trust with residents hesitant to allow federal employees to test their soil. She worries that relationships built over years of engagement could now be disrupted.

“It would be a great disappointment if the funding they have was cut, because the work they’re doing is helping us and keeping us healthy,” Hernandez said.

The city of Brunswick on Georgia’s coast has four Superfund sites of its own, the most of any city in the state, that are in varying stages of cleanup. The pollution was left behind by heavy industry decades ago and the businesses responsible have shut down.

Credit: Stephen B. Morton for The Atlanta Journal Constitution

Credit: Stephen B. Morton for The Atlanta Journal Constitution

Alice Keyes, vice president of coastal conservation at the environmental nonprofit One Hundred Miles, said EPA action is the only way these legacy contaminants will get remediated and for those responsible to be held accountable.

“It’s the EPA’s responsibility and without them, we will continue to be forgotten,” Keyes said.

Cuts come as new regulations roll out

The agency’s regional staff had already been roiled by workforce reductions even before Trump alluded to new cuts this week.

On Valentine’s Day, 50 of the region’s 140 “probationary” workers — a term for staff with less than a year of agency employment — were abruptly laid off, according to the local chapter of the American Federation of Government Employees, the union that represents many EPA staff. The dismissals were part of sweeping layoffs that have been executed by the Elon Musk-led Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE.

Even with its workforce likely to shrink, the EPA is still trying to implement new regulations.

Among the most significant are the first-ever drinking water limits on per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS, a class of human-made compounds often dubbed “forever chemicals.” The chemicals, which have been linked to serious health conditions, are found in high levels in water systems across Georgia. But the pollution is most acute in northwest Georgia, the epicenter of the state’s carpet and flooring industry, which has used PFAS in products for decades.

Water utilities are making plans to comply with the new standards, which are set to kick in by 2029. The EPA under former President Joe Biden made billions in federal funding available to help water systems meet the new standards, but the cost for many — including in Georgia — is likely to run into the tens of millions of dollars and strain local budgets.

The American Chemistry Council, which represents some companies that manufacture PFAS used in Georgia, has criticized the new drinking water rules.

Asked about potential workforce and budget reductions at the EPA, ACC President and CEO Chris Jahn said his members “support EPA having the resources, technical staff and subject matter expertise needed for the agency to meet its statutory requirements.”