EPA Cuts Will Fall Heavily on North Carolina
The US EPA was created in 1970 by Richard Nixon as an “autonomous regulatory body to oversee the enforcement of environmental policy.” The first Administrator, William Ruckelshaus, took the oath of office on December 4 of that year. Since then, the EPA has been at the forefront of environmental protection in the US: the banning of DDT (which you can thank for the return of eagles and ospreys from near extinction); the banning of lead in gasoline per a 1990 amendment to the Clean Air Act (which led to a dramatic decrease in children’s blood lead levels and consequent increase in IQ); reduction of acid rain and air pollution; dramatic improvements in drinking water quality; and being the first to classify secondhand cigarette smoke as a pollutant likely to cause cancer.
For almost all of EPA’s history, its mission, as stated on its website, has been “to protect human health and the environment”. As of this writing, that is still officially its mission; however, Lee Zeldin, the new US EPA Administrator, has said that “his agency’s mission is to ‘lower the cost of buying a car, heating a home and running a business’.” Basically, Trump’s EPA will do this by shifting the ‘cost – benefit’ evaluation of regulations so that business costs will be weighted more heavily than environmental and health costs. Trump’s EPA will deny that climate change and the disparate distribution of adverse health effects of pollution (“environmental injustice”) will even merit government intervention. Through the elimination of EPA’s environmental justice offices, North Carolinians would see a sad end to efforts to address environmental justice, efforts that began in our state in response to the dumping of polychlorinated biphenyl-contaminated soil in a landfill in Warren County.
On May 1, 2025, Inside Climate News reported that the majority of Trump’s $2.4 billion in proposed cuts to funds appropriated under the Inflation Reduction Act were for environmental justice grants targeting disadvantaged communities. The North Carolina share of the total is about $176 million, intended for activities like replacing lead pipe water service lines, restoring wetlands to improve downstream water quality, and monitoring and reducing pollution in the air, land, and water of underserved communities.
NC, like the rest of the country, depends on EPA for services that will now be lost, curtailed, or unreliable. One of those is the Energy Star program, which saves Americans over $40 billion a year in energy costs. Also, polluters have already been invited to request an exemption from provisions of the Clean Air Act by sending an email to a special email address. On top of repealing environmental regulations, the Trump Administration seeks in the President’s proposed discretionary budget for 2026 to make massive cuts to renewable energy and research. Through its draconian reorganization plans, it will eliminate EPA’s Office of Research and Development (ORD), which has a large presence in the Research Triangle.
Some effects of this elimination are not so easily quantified. EPA’s ORD has been at the forefront of environmental research since it was established by Congress in 1978. ORD has labs and centers all over the country, but by far the largest concentration of ORD employees is in Research Triangle Park, North Carolina. Since its establishment, ORD scientists (among whose number this author, now retired, is proud to count himself) have been on the forefront of research into improving air and water quality monitoring, improving methods for environmental chemical risk assessment, evaluating safety of specific chemicals, and investigating mechanisms of toxicity of specific compounds to aid in identifying human health hazards.
ORD scientists carried out early work clarifying the toxicity of PFOA and PFOS, two “forever chemicals” that have polluted North Carolina waters. At this point, the fate of ORD is uncertain: reabsorption, extreme reduction, total elimination? Many researchers, faced with job loss, have accepted buy-out offers and have left, while others are interviewing for a limited number of poorly-described positions in other EPA Offices. The loss of ORD would be a major blow to the ability of EPA to make scientifically supported decisions and would destroy its leadership role in international environmental research.
It would also have a measurable effect on the local economy. In April 2025, there were an estimated 2,000 Federal employees, students, contractors, and grantees staffing ORD in RTP and the associated facility in Chapel Hill at the University of North Carolina. If they were all cut, the direct loss to income in the area would be $260 million annually, which translates to a loss to the local economy of around $400 million because of multiplier effects.
It is too early for a rigorous assessment of how all this will affect North Carolina, though North Carolina will likely be strongly affected. Some of the cuts carried out by DOGE may be reversed by the courts or by Congress. On May 9, 2025, United States District Judge Susan Illston issued a temporary restraining order (TRO) against reductions in force and reorganizations. Other lawsuits seek to free up grant funds frozen by the Trump administration, and some have already succeeded.
The US EPA is the victim of a perfect storm of enemies who have come together in this administration: a President of, at best, mediocre intelligence who fears people with technical expertise and competence; radical anti-regulators who oppose any form of government regulation; white nationalists who object to any effort to correct the effects of past racism; business interests looking to improve their bottom lines. The effects of crippling EPA would be stark and would increase disease, particularly for already disadvantaged populations and stall the development of scientific tools to better evaluate environmental degradation.
For More Information:
Christofer Frey and Jennifer Orme-Zavaleta talk about ORD cuts on the WUNC radio program “Due South”
Eliminating EPA’s ORD is a BAD idea. Thoughts of a recent ORD leader.
