West Virginia Republican Sen. Shelley Moore Capito objected last month to EPA’s decision to block a $1 million grant addressing toxic pollution in the Mountain State, according to an email exchange made public this week.
The Trump administration has been freezing and canceling hundreds of EPA grants aimed at solving environmental challenges in low-income communities. Administrator Lee Zeldin has characterized agency grant programs tied to environmental justice as wasteful giveaways to leftist groups and Biden-era “pet projects.”
But others say EPA’s environmental justice programs have been helping fix serious pollution problems and are core to the agency’s mission of protecting human health and the environment. In some cases, lawmakers have maneuvered behind the scenes to try to save funding for initiatives in their states or districts.
That was apparently the case last month for a grant awarded to the West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection, which EPA terminated due to its connection to environmental justice.
