3-minute read
What do Lee Zeldin’s EPA rollbacks mean for Americans?
Lee Zeldin announced the Environmental Protection agency would roll back regulations aimed fighting climate change and pollution.
Issue by issue, the Trump administration is tearing down protections most Americans believed were settled: voting rights, reproductive freedom, climate action, LGBTQ+ safety, the separation of church and state. Now they’re coming for clean water, clean air and public health.
Last month, the Environmental Protection Agency, the agency charged with safeguarding our air and water, announced plans to roll back limits on PFAS — forever chemicals that don’t just contaminate water, but embed themselves in our blood, pollute our ecosystems and are linked to cancer, hormonal disorders, developmental harm and long-term health damage for generations. These limits were grounded in years of rigorous scientific review. But under Administrator Lee Zeldin, the EPA is choosing industry over evidence and corporate appeasement over safety.
And then things got worse: Zeldin announced the Trump Administration aims to revoke the “climate endangerment finding” — the 2009 provision that’s the basis for most federal climate laws regulating CO2 emission. If they succeed, all bets are off; federal rules regulating vehicle tailpipe emissions, industrial pollution limits, wastewater discharge and a host of other ills will be on the chopping block.
For Zeldin’s home state, these are catastrophic betrayals.
“For Lee Zeldin to proceed as if that’s stated science, that’s just not how science works, right? That is politics,” said Cornell environmental scientist Prof. Robert Horwath.
PFAS is a dangerous public health threat
Meanwhile, PFAS contamination has been found in sea foam, food, groundwater and almost half of tap water tested. These toxic chemicals are linked to liver damage, kidney cancer, hypertension, pre-eclampsia and a host of other ailments. Rolling back the climate endangerment finding would only compound the public health threat, paving the way for increased pollution and environmental harm of all kinds, which would (among many other impacts) intensify respiratory illnesses, cardiovascular stress and the spread of infectious diseases in vulnerable communities.
But with Trump in the White House and Zeldin at the EPA, it’s open season on public health. The chemical industry has been fighting PFAS limits for years; the fossil fuel industry has been fighting clean energy, too. With claims of “flexibility” and “energy independence,” Zeldin is giving them what they want.
As a New Yorker, I’m not surprised. Zeldin built his political brand on putting polluters before people — trying to overturn the state’s fracking ban, pushing to defund the MTA, and racking up vote after vote against clean air and water. Over a decade ago, Environmental Advocates NY gave him our Oil Slick Award for the worst environmental record in the Legislature. He’s only gotten slicker since.
The legal case for Zeldin’s PFAS safety rollback is shaky. The Safe Drinking Water Act includes an “anti-backsliding” provision that makes reversing health-protective standards legally dubious at best. But these days, legal risk seems to matter less than political loyalty. Big chemical companies are some of this administration’s most loyal donors, giving nearly $1 million to Trump’s inauguration alone. They’re getting what they want — while the rest of us get higher cancer rates and poisoned wells.
Similarly, rolling back the endangerment finding would violate science and common sense. Pretending climate change isn’t happening doesn’t make the increasingly frequent and intense flooding, storms, droughts, and wildfires disappear. And eliminating the government’s authority to do something about them would be disastrous.
Gov. Kathy Hochul and New York must lead
If the EPA won’t protect us, New York must. That’s why Environmental Advocates NY, Riverkeeper and our partners are calling on Gov. Kathy Hochul to act. She should uphold the full PFAS drinking water standards within our state, regardless of what Washington does. She should sign the PFAS bills the legislature passes, like the bill banning PFAS in menstrual products. And she should take action to make sure New York holds companies accountable for their greenhouse gas emissions and the damage they do to our environment, our health and our future.
Americans deserve an EPA that protects people, not polluters.
Instead, we’ve got Lee Zeldin.
And we’ll be living with the consequences long after he’s gone.
Vanessa Fajans-Turner is executive director of Environmental Advocates NY.
Source link
#Lee #Zeldin #roll #PFAS #limits