Last week, President Donald Trump said that Environmental Protection Agency administrator Lee Zeldin aimed to slash the EPA’s staff, claiming that target to be at 65 percent of workers. Hours later, the White House walked this back, clarifying that it intended a mere 65 percent reduction in the EPA’s budget.
The Trump administration said that these reductions will streamline efficiency through eliminating “fraudulent” and “wasteful” spending by the EPA. After all, the EPA — whose reason for existence is to protect Americans’ health and environment — should be operating at peak productivity.
Despite these assertions, cuts to the EPA’s budget will only exacerbate environmental crises, burdening state environmental regulatory agencies with implementing federal environmental policy. This will have cascading consequences for environmental policy across the country and especially in North Carolina’s unique political landscape.
Environmental policy hasn’t always been this politicized. In 1970, Republican Richard Nixon’s administration created the EPA with broad bipartisan support following a series of environmental crises; even amid the extreme political turmoil of America during the 1960s and '70s, Americans agreed that a federal agency protecting the environment was a necessary investment in collective public health.
The EPA and state environmental regulatory agencies work together to enforce environmental policies with clear a delegation of tasks. The EPA determines policies that are necessary to protect Americans’ health, and the states are entrusted with knowing how to best implement those stringent policies for their residents’ specific social, economic and political contexts.
North Carolina is at the forefront of unique environmental challenges. For the past decade, Republicans have maintained a majority in the House of Representatives and the state Senate. Since 2017, Democrats have occupied the governor’s seat. Despite this tumultuous political makeup, our government is aware of and actively mitigating environmental crises that affect the state, a remnant of the bipartisan cooperation of the Nixon administration.
One environmental issue that North Carolina is acutely affected by is contamination by per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances over the federal limit. The drinking water of over 2.5 million North Carolinians is tainted by these "forever chemicals" linked to adverse health effects. With funding from the General Assembly, the N.C. Department of Environmental Quality has taken aggressive action to mitigate the impacts of PFAS on the state.
In April 2024, the EPA passed legislation mandating “Maximum Contaminant Levels” for six of the most toxic PFAS compounds, establishing a federal threshold for PFAS contamination across the country. This legislation expedited North Carolina’s regulatory process, allowing the state to simply focus on implementing these standards, thus increasing efficiency. The baseline provided by the federal government is essential for states, and when it's taken away, we have to reckon with that loss not just in itself, but also in regard to how state regulations build off it.
Environmental policy isn’t a states’ rights issue, and a reduction in the EPA’s budget presents a threat to the environmental health of Americans in every state, not just North Carolina. Pollution is not localized, for example. Contamination in California can easily appear across state lines in Florida, where policymakers are differently equipped to protect residents. The environment requires collaborative approaches between federal and state governments to safeguard public and environmental health.
