States W. Deepest Cuts To Environmental Protection Programs 2010-24: MS - 71%; SD - 61%; AL - 49%; TX - 33%; MT - 32%
Fewer inspections, weaker enforcement and less oversight: Deep cuts to state budgets and at the Environmental Protection Agency are preventing regulators from fully protecting the public from pollution, according to a report released today by the Environmental Integrity Project. The financial crisis at these agencies is occurring amid the expansion of the fossil fuel, plastics and petrochemical industries, said EIP Executive Director Jen Duggan. When states have fewer resources, Duggan said, “those protections, those rights that every American has under our environmental laws, are not being realized.”
President Trump’s budget proposal would decimate 2026 spending at the EPA by 55 percent, or $4.2 billion, according to the report. House Republicans are recommending cutting it by a quarter, while the Senate Appropriations Committee voted for a reduction of just 5 percent. If enacted, these reductions would exacerbate the EPA’s financial plight. Over the last 15 years, the agency’s budget has been slashed by 40 percent, Duggan said, and its workforce by 18 percent. Since Trump began his second term, more than 3,000 EPA workers have retired or have been terminated as part of the administration’s gutting of the agency. The upshot of these cuts is that states have to pick up the slack, which is central to EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin’s vision for the agency. In March, on the day he announced “the biggest deregulatory action in history,” Zeldin said he intended to “give power back to the states.”
However, the Trump administration has proposed eliminating most EPA grants to the states, undercutting their agencies’ ability to wield that power. Texas lawmakers have cut by a third the budget for the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality over the last decade, accounting for inflation, the EIP report says. The agency has also struggled to retain employees; 30 percent of its workforce has less than two years of experience, and half have less than five years.
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States with the deepest budget cuts to environmental agencies from 2010–2024, according to the report, are:
Mississippi—71 percent
South Dakota—61 percent
Alabama—49 percent
Texas—33 percent
Montana—32 percent
North Carolina is among the states whose budgets have contracted in the past 15 years. While the EIP report said the state Department of Environmental Quality’s budget had declined 32 percent from 2010-2014, an agency restructuring in 2015 makes quantifying the depth of the reductions difficult.
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https://insideclimatenews.org/news/10122025/epa-environmental-program-cuts/
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