EPA administrator Lee Zeldin is visiting New England this week, and some staffers in the agency’s regional office in Boston say they’re not thrilled to see him.
As President Trump’s pick to lead the Environmental Protection Agency, Zeldin has overseen efforts to downsize its workforce and scale back the scope of its regulatory authority. Earlier this week, the EPA announced plans to revoke the legal basis for its ability to combat climate change.
The actions haven’t been well received by many EPA staffers, and Zeldin’s arrival in Boston wasn’t warmly met by some.
“Some folks were called into meetings with the administrator and other folks were happy that they were not called into such meetings,” said Lilly Simmons, president of AFGE local 3428, the union representing about four hundred employees who work for EPA’s New England region. “It’s really hard to keep a straight face when your boss is deregulating everything — you know, saying that climate change is a bad religion and saying that we can’t interact with our state partners.”
The EPA’s press office declined a request for an interview with Zeldin.
The EPA announced its plan on Tuesday to revoke its so-called “endangerment finding,” which serves as the legal basis behind the agency’s regulation of climate-changing greenhouse gas emissions. The determination has been in place since 2009, allowing the agency to set emissions standards for vehicles.
“With this proposal, the Trump EPA is proposing to end sixteen years of uncertainty for automakers and American consumers,” Zeldin said in a press release Tuesday announcing the move. “In our work so far, many stakeholders have told me that the Obama and Biden EPAs twisted the law, ignored precedent, and warped science to achieve their preferred ends and stick American families with hundreds of billions of dollars in hidden taxes every single year.”
In a meeting Wednesday with about 30 EPA regional staffers, Zeldin said one of his goals was to end the “ping-ponging back and forth” of regulations and policies from one administration and the next, according to an EPA employee who was present.
That message felt at odds with the “endangerment finding” announcement earlier in this week, the EPA employee said.
“So that felt disingenuous to say that he didn’t want ‘ping ponging,’ when his administration is trying to ‘ping pong’ something that hasn’t been moved since it was enacted,” said the employee, who spoke with GBH on condition that their name not be used.
Besides his visit to the Boston office, Zeldin is visiting Superfund sites around New England this week, as well as the agency’s lab in Chelmsford, according to several staffers. But his visit is more low-key than those of prior administrators.
“This is clearly a visit where, he’s doing it in a way that means the fewest EPA employees know that he is there, where he’s going, why he’s going, etc.,” the EPA employee who was in the meeting said. “It’s really just bizarrely shrouded in secrecy.”
At Wednesday’s meeting, Zeldin spoke appreciatively of the work that EPA staff are doing, the employee said. But the EPA employee added those words felt at odds with the agency’s actions, which have included placing nearly 140 staffers on paid leave across the agency, pending an investigation into their signing on to a letter of dissent over the agency’s focus on deregulation.
Those staffers received notification on Wednesday that their paid administrative leave was, for a second time, being extended for two weeks, according to one of the five New England employees currently on leave.
“They say the investigation is still ongoing, but I can’t imagine why it’s taking them this long,” the staffer said, on condition that their name not be used. “And I’m frustrated. I could have been getting work done in support of the agency’s mission these past four weeks, but instead I’m being paid to sit at home and wait for them to finish this unnecessary investigation.”
The EPA press office did not respond to an inquiry regarding why administrative leave has been extended for those employees.
Some of the Boston EPA workers still on paid leave had been working on Superfund sites in New England.
“An important role of EPA personnel is to ensure that money being allocated for Superfund spending is being used appropriately by contractors and other personnel,” said the EPA employee who attended the meeting, who is not among those on leave. “And so if there’s no EPA oversight over the project, then there’s no guarantee something won’t be missed that will end up costing the agency money.”
The employee said Zeldin also spoke with staffers Wednesday about the larger role he thinks Congress should play in determining environmental regulations.
Last month, the Supreme Court ended the so-called “Chevron doctrine,” which said if a law is vague, courts would defer to the expertise of government agencies on how it should be applied. For decades, the EPA has relied on that deference as it determined how best to apply vaguely written legislation like the Clean Air Act.
“Lee Zeldin said he wanted Congress to write what EPA should and shouldn’t do, instead of EPA making determinations based on the laws,” the EPA employee said of Wednesday’s discussion.
Relying on Congress could hamstring their efforts, the staffer said, because environmental laws aren’t written with enough specificity to be effectively and uniformly enforced.
“We need specifics,” the EPA staffer said. “We need details to make sure that we’re applying the law consistently across the country. And it was shocking he was basically telling us to our face that he didn’t believe in Chevron doctrine, he didn’t believe in, essentially, the Executive branch being able to make determination on their own. It’s just ridiculous.”
For months, EPA staffers have described a demoralized workforce in the Boston office trying to continue their work in the face of changing directives from leadership that at times has been openly hostile to the agency’s mission. In addition to the letter of dissent, dozens of employees from the agency’s Boston office openly rallied in protest in March.
“It’s really confusing for everyone every day, whether or not you can work on certain projects,” said Simmons. “Since January, I’ve probably had three meetings where we were told to do something, or not do something that we would normally do. And just for context, we usually do not have such requests from political leaders in our day-to-day work.”
In her 20 years with the agency, Simmons said they usually see the administrator in person about once a year, and it’s generally a festive event.
“They do a meet-and-greet tour. Everybody takes pictures. They’re very happy to see the administrator,” she said. “And it’s not like that this week.”
