President Donald Trump has significantly reduced staffing within a civil rights office of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency currently investigating dozens of complaints, including two involving the placement of industrial swine and poultry operations in predominantly nonwhite communities.
The EPA has placed 168 employees on leave within the Office of Environmental Justice and External Civil Rights to comply with Trump’s executive order ending diversity, equity and inclusion programs, the EPA said in a statement to Investigate Midwest.
An office employee, who spoke to Investigate Midwest on the condition of anonymity for fear of retribution from the administration and EPA leadership, said the decision was announced at an all-staff meeting Wednesday afternoon.
“This administration will set environmental justice efforts back substantially,” the employee said.
The Office of Environmental Justice and External Civil Rights is responsible for investigating complaints of discrimination based on age, race, gender and other protected statuses under civil rights laws as it relates to environmental and public health harms.
EPA spokesperson Molly Vaseliou said the agency is working diligently to implement the new executive orders and memos.
“Career staff made determinations on which Office of Environmental Justice employees had statutory duties or core mission functions. As such, 168 staffers were placed on administrative leave as their function did not relate to the agency’s statutory duties or grant work. EPA is in the process of evaluating new structure and organization to ensure we are meeting our mission of protecting human health and the environment for all Americans,” Vaseliou said in a statement.
Jen Duggan, executive director of the environmental watchdog organization Environmental Integrity Project, said in a statement that the administration’s chaotic attack on EPA and the Office of Environmental Justice and External Civil Rights will expose Americans across the country to more deadly pollution.
“EPA rules save American lives and dramatically reduce health care costs,” she said. “People suffering from the highest pollution burdens in our country deserve protection — not the billion-dollar corporations that profit by using our public resources as their private dumping ground.”
There are currently 34 open complaints on the office’s docket.
Two of the complaints are against the North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality for permitting industrial swine and poultry operations in predominantly Black and Hispanic communities.
A complaint submitted in 2023 by local residents, enrolled members of Lumbee tribe of North Carolina, and the environmental advocacy nonprofit Friends of the Earth alleges that the state’s environmental agency allowed an “explosion” of new poultry litter facilities in counties that disproportionately harm Native American, Black, and Latino residents.
Another open complaint, filed in 2021, in North Carolina, revolves around the long-standing issue of waste from industrial hog farms polluting air and water. The complaint alleges that the agency neglected to take long-standing air and water pollution in the communities of color into account when issuing permits for biogas operations.
These farms have faced scrutiny from environmental advocates and local residents for their reliance on biogas production, a process that converts animal waste into natural gas for sale to power grids, providing producers with an additional revenue stream.
Critics of the fuel’s production say the system props up industrial agriculture, does little to curb methane emissions from animal waste, and incentivizes large-scale farms.
The complaint alleges that the state’s environmental agency did not take into account long-standing air and water pollution from Smithfield Food hog operations when allowing the expansion of biogas permits for a joint venture between Smithfield, the world’s largest pork producer, and Dominion Energy, Inc., a publicly traded energy company headquartered in Virginia.
The North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality did not respond to a request for comment.
Other open complaints include petitions against various state and government agencies for not protecting underserved communities from air, water and soil pollution from chemical companies, oil and gas operations, and landfills.
The office also administers grants and technical assistance to environmental justice communities. Under the Biden administration, the office saw an increase in environmental justice funding and allocated $2 billion to various programs in low-income, rural, military, and Black communities to deal with historic pollution.
The office employee told Investigate Midwest that it was unclear how many staff members would be kept on to fulfill statutory requirements, but staff members fear that communities will be left in the dark with regard to their grant funding and technical assistance.
The office’s online “EJScreen” tool, a public database of demographic and income information of communities living near major industrial polluters and accounts of associated public health concerns, was taken offline on Wednesday.
Office employees have said they worry the administration may start administratively closing cases without due process.
The move to shutter the office comes when the Trump administration has been swiftly freezing, slashing and closing federal agencies, such as the United States Agency for International Development.
Federal agency employees and officials have also been locked out of computer systems, placed on leave and barred from entering offices at the direction of billionaire Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency.
DOGE, which was not approved by Congress and is not an official agency, has gained access to the data and information in the U.S. Treasury Department and Centers for Disease Control, among other agencies, all while encouraging current federal employees to take deferred resignations in efforts to cut spending.
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