The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is reportedly planning to cut all environmental justice offices, according to a memo from agency administrator Lee Zeldin.
In the internal memo, reviewed by The New York Times, Zeldin wrote that he was directing “the reorganization and elimination” of environmental justice offices in all 10 regional EPA branches, in addition to the office in Washington D.C. First established under former President George H.W. Bush, the environmental justice offices have been criticized for the “unchecked waste of taxpayer funds,” and grants that were funneled to far-left organizations.
The offices’ mission was to “protect overburdened and underserved communities from the harm caused by environmental crimes, pollution, and climate change,” according to its website that has since been scrubbed from the internet.
In a March 2 letter, the EPA referred the “financial mismanagement, conflicts of interest, and oversight failures with the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund (GGRF),” to the EPA Acting Inspector General for further investigation. This comes after finding that there were “astonishing sums of tax dollars awarded to unqualified recipients, and severe deficiencies in regulatory oversight under the prior administration” to the tune of $20 billion.
The EPA’s environmental justice offices were also expanded under former President Joe Biden, when the Office of Environmental Justice and External Civil Rights Office was launched in September of 2022. The office was created to “enhance the agency’s ability to infuse equity, civil rights, and environmental justice principles and priorities into all EPA practices, policies, and programs,” according to an EPA press release. Billions of dollars were also earmarked for the EPA’s climate and environmental justice initiatives through Biden’s signature climate bill, the Inflation Reduction Act. […]
— Read More: dailycaller.com
