By Steven Cohen, Ph.D., Director of the M.S. in Sustainability Management program, School of Professional Studies
In an outstanding piece of in-depth research and reporting, two New York Times reporters documented the impact of less than two years of EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin’s effort to transform the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) into the Environmental Destruction Agency (EDA). Many top environmental scientists have fled, regulations have been gutted, and enforcement is nonexistent. Over a half century of progress has been set back by self-dealing and self-centered business leaders who place short-term profit over the public’s health, and a President, along with his appointees, who have enabled these companies to poison parts of our country. According to Times reporters Eric Lipton and Maxine Joselow:
“In total, since taking office again, Mr. Trump exempted 202 facilities in 39 states and Puerto Rico from clean-air regulations that were going into effect. Some were among the country’s worst industrial polluters, including chemical manufacturers, copper smelters and coal-burning power plants. About 3.3 million people live within three miles of at least one affected facility… The exemptions represent the biggest presidential intervention in enforcement of the Clean Air Act in the half-century since President Richard M. Nixon signed the bedrock environmental law. And that is only one of the ways the Trump administration is dismantling a variety of federal environmental protections. Before Mr. Trump’s return, the chemical industry was losing its fight to block or at least delay tougher E.P.A. requirements to reduce toxic emissions. It had pleaded with agency officials, filed lawsuits and appealed to Congress. But officials and the courts had largely rejected the industry’s claims of undue expense and regulatory overreach. Now, Mr. Trump is prioritizing the economic interests of corporations and easing costs for polluting industries, and their immense clout is striking. The president’s exemptions were good for two years, with the possibility of an extension. The reprieve for the companies gave Mr. Trump time to stock the Environmental Protection Agency with appointees who had lobbied for the industries they now regulate. Those officials then quickly went to work from the inside to gut the rules altogether. Mr. Trump has taken an expansive view of executive power in his second term. On the environmental front, he has unilaterally shredded regulations, withheld science funding appropriated by Congress and ordered coal plants that planned to shutter to continue running. Even so, his evisceration of the new Clean Air Act rules stands out.”
These unprecedented and ill-advised licenses to pollute can be resisted by states and environmental advocates. Under our federal system and the Clean Air Act itself, states can protect themselves against the corrupt, self-dealing, and industry-dominated Environmental Destruction Agency. Environmental advocates might wish to inform the investment community of the environmental risks they will be exposed to if they invest in companies that are poisoning the air. States are also far from powerless. To begin with, Section 116 of the Clean Air Act explicitly preserves state authority to adopt and enforce pollution limits more stringent than federal requirements. For chemical plants and other stationary industrial facilities, federal standards ordinarily establish a minimum level of protection. A state can establish additional emissions limits, monitoring requirements, and pollution-control obligations by state law. The presidential exemptions at issue in the Times article concern compliance with some of the federal hazardous-air-pollution standards under Section 112 of the Clean Air Act. An exemption from those federal standards does not, by itself, eliminate a state’s regulatory requirements.
While states can resist the federal government, often they do not. Some elected officials share the Administration’s anti-regulatory ideology, and in some cases industry influence on policy and political donations may prevent action. Some states have laws that ensure their regulations do not exceed federal requirements, and others simply fear that regulatory enforcement will cause industries to move to a more permissive state. Finally, some states don’t have the resources and tax base to fund effective regulation. Inspectors, lawyers, and scientists cost money and are needed to develop and enforce rules. Some states rely on federal funding for this work, and it is easy to imagine that this administration would retaliate against states working against its will. A deeper problem is that air pollution does not stop at a state’s border. Even if you can control local pollution, only the federal government can regulate pollution that crosses state lines.
Despite these constraints, the New York Times’ excellent reporting on the federal government failed to mention that some of the states have acted and continue to act to control the facilities within their borders. The article’s three main case studies are in Texas, Pennsylvania, and Virginia. The political power structure in each of these three states varies. Texas (for now) is completely Republican; Pennsylvania has a Democratic governor, Democratic House, and Republican Senate; and Virginia is completely Democratic. One path open to states and mentioned by the article is state enforcement of the older pollution permits. Enforcing the now-discarded more stringent Biden-era federal rules would probably require state regulatory or legislative action. This would be feasible in some states. Louisiana and, to a lesser extent, Texas are wholly owned subsidiaries of the petrochemical industry, and inaction is the order of the day. However, in Pennsylvania, Allegheny County’s Health Department regulates air pollution and has pursued enforcement of the pre-Biden rules. In January 2024, the county announced a multimillion-dollar settlement with U.S. Steel over pollution following a fire in 2018. In Virginia, state regulators have responded to the incident described in the Times piece. According to an article this past June by Patrick Larsen of VPM News:
“Sterilization Services of Virginia, a facility in Eastern Henrico County that uses a chemical called ethylene oxide [EtO] to sterilize medical equipment, violated its annual emissions limit in less than one day in April. As a result, it is facing approximately $50,000 in fines from state regulators and new operating requirements. Community members and environmental groups say they want stricter penalties…According to the state Department of Environmental Quality’s proposed consent order — the legally binding document detailing Sterilization Services’ permit violations and DEQ’s enforcement actions — on April 9, 2026, a faulty check valve on the facility’s roof leaked 580 pounds of EtO. This exceeded the plant’s EtO emissions permit, which allows for 400 pounds emitted per year, and only 0.8 pounds per hour… A 2024 Environmental Protection Agency rule would have required stricter emissions standards for the Henrico facility and dozens of others across the country by April 2026. That changed when President Donald Trump began his second term in the White House — his administration offered 40 facilities, including Sterilization Services, a two-year extension.”
Before Lee Zeldin created the Environmental Destruction Agency, states relied on the federal Environmental Protection Agency for leadership, scientific expertise, and grant funding. Now the states are increasingly on their own, as are the victims of corporations that emit poisons from their facilities. I wonder why anyone would consider companies that emit poisons from their facilities to be competently managed? All these companies filing for regulatory relief are claiming they are incapable of monitoring or controlling their toxic releases. Or that it is too expensive to do. It reminds me of the auto companies who decades ago said that requiring seat belts would put them at a competitive disadvantage or that the technology of the catalytic converter was not yet available or was too costly. The regulation of automobiles resulted in these companies constantly improving auto technologies to create the modern, largely computer-controlled, and far less mechanical vehicles we all drive today. Regulation didn’t harm companies but encouraged them to innovate. When the engineers finished their regulatory tasks, they moved on to modernize many of the technologies that today’s car owners rely on (those rear-view cameras and beeping safety sensors come to mind). The move away from auto regulation is leaving the innovation of electric vehicles to China, where government has subsidized their development. I wonder which investors would be interested in investing their funds in a company managed by incompetents so unimaginative that they can’t figure out a way to make petrochemicals without poisoning people.
I imagine that these corporate leaders must have interesting dinner table conversations when they explain to their children that, to make money, they must poison people too poor to escape exposure. Toxic pollution is not a victimless crime. People get sick and die from it. The corporate leaders that run these companies and the government regulators that enable their immoral behavior should be ashamed of themselves. Politics operates in cycles, and I suspect that the destruction of America’s system of environmental protection will eventually be rebuilt. But we will have lost time and lives that need not have been wasted.
Views and opinions expressed here are those of the authors, and do not necessarily reflect the official position of Columbia School of Professional Studies or Columbia University.
About the Program
The Columbia University M.S. in Sustainability Management program offered by the School of Professional Studies in partnership with the Climate School provides students cutting-edge policy and management tools they can use to help public and private organizations and governments address environmental impacts and risks, pollution control, and remediation to achieve sustainability. The program is customized for working professionals and is offered as both a full- and part-time course of study.
