President Donald Trump’s gutting of federal agencies could undermine his pro-fossil-fuel agenda as permit writers and energy experts head for the exit in droves, current and former government employees say.
Agencies like the Army Corps of Engineers and the Interior Department now have fewer people to review permit applications and roll back regulations seen as burdensome to the energy industry. While the Trump administration says it can accelerate project approvals by using artificial intelligence and emergency procedures, the loss of federal experts could slow down environmental reviews required for starting projects.
“We just sent an enormous amount of brain power packing through the deferred resignation program and natural retirements,” Steve Tryon, who directs Interior’s Office of Environmental Policy and Compliance, said during a webinar last week. “[It] struck our most senior levels … [and] our newest employees as well.”
Interior’s Fish and Wildlife Service, for example, has lost considerable subject matter expertise, Tryon said. The service is charged with consulting with other agencies to ensure compliance with the Endangered Species Act and other environmental laws.
In addition, the Army Corps’ three senior-most environmental experts each retired in April or May, creating a leadership vacuum at the agency charged with evaluating projects’ effects on wetlands and waterways. Permitting at the corps is almost certain to slow down if more staffers depart, said John Paul Woodley Jr., a wetlands consultant who oversaw the agency during the George W. Bush administration.
“If it doesn’t, somebody should give them a medal,” Woodley said.
Since March, the Army Corps has been working with EPA to redefine which waters are federally protected under the Clean Water Act. The effort likely requires substantial resources, and the upcoming new rule is likely to spur legal challenges.
But those who’ve left the Army Corps since late April include Jennifer Moyer, the former chief of the regulatory division, which oversees Clean Water Act regulations, environmental permits and reviews.
David Olson, the agency’s longtime expert on a streamlined permitting program, also retired last month. And Margaret Gaffney-Smith, the former deputy chief of operations and second-in-command for the regulatory division, retired at the end of May.
“That was literally the Army Corps’ regulatory branch trifecta,” said Marla Stelk, executive director of the National Association of Wetland Managers, which works with state wetland scientists. “Those were the three people that made things happen.”
Aside from retirements at the top, the agency appears to be short on staffers who process permits and ensure compliance with environmental requirements, according to Woodley and others who follow the corps’ activities.
In a regional office in Norfolk, Virginia, for example, there are now 43 staffers in the environmental regulatory program and 12 vacant positions, said Breeana Harris, deputy chief public affairs for the office. The office’s two leading experts on wetlands mitigation banks, which are required under law to offset loss of wetlands, are among those who recently retired.
“We remain committed to minimizing disruption and maintaining our regulatory responsibilities,” Harris said in an email.
‘Juggling a lot of hot potatoes’
More than 7,500 staffers across the Interior Department have taken buyout or early retirement offers since Jan. 20. At the USDA, which includes the Forest Service, at least 15,000 employees have taken the Trump administration’s offers to resign.
The brain drain could take a toll on both compliance with regulations and drafting new ones.
Interior’s Office of Environmental Policy and Compliance, where Tryon works, helps ensure compliance with laws like the National Environmental Policy Act and the Fixing America’s Surface Transportation Act, or FAST-41. In addition to loss of staff, the Trump administration’s decision to freeze funding tied to the Inflation Reduction Act is complicating the office’s work, Tryon said.
He made the comments during a webinar put on by the Federal Permitting Improvement Steering Council, which is working to help accelerate mining of materials like uranium, graphite and lithium.
Seven mining projects are now covered under FAST-41, while more than two dozen have been added as “transparency projects.”
Emily Domenech, the council’s director, said the intent is to keep up the fast pace of adding mining projects to the federal dashboard — work that she said is crucial to fulfilling Trump’s focus on onshoring mineral supply chains. Domenech was formerly senior vice president at Boundary Stone Partners, and is an alum of House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) and former Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.).
“The president has made it really clear that we have to advance these resources as quickly as possible if we want to be competitive with China and the permitting council is going to continue to be a really integral part to moving these projects forward,” Domenech said.
“We are not at all done with listing critical minerals and mining projects on the dashboard,” she added. “Our hope is to continue to keep this pace going forward, particularly through this calendar year.”
Participants on the call pushed back on the notion that environmental reviews are less robust if they’re streamlined or accelerated. Manisha Patel, the council’s deputy executive director of the Permitting Council, said there’s proof that the FAST-41 project is accelerating reviews, even while complying with all federal laws and requirements.
“We’re not cutting corners,” said Patel.
Scott Vandegrift, a chief environmental review and permitting officer at the Department of Agriculture, agreed that the reviews are thorough and said there are many opportunities for agencies to make their work more efficient.
But Vandergrift, like Tryon, signaled that staffers have a full plate with such an ambitious agenda, especially given the flow of departures.
“We’re losing a lot of talent in this space, or we have already lost [it], and it’s a time of transition … we don’t know exactly what this space is going to look like,” said Vandergrift. “We are juggling a lot of hot potatoes right now.”
‘Crank out more permits faster’
The Army Corps regulatory program has long faced scrutiny on Capitol Hill, given its role in permitting infrastructure projects that could pollute wetlands and water supplies. A proposed bill that recently passed the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, for example, would direct the agency to establish “expedited” permitting procedures and allocate more resources to Clean Water Act permitting.
But now, the White House’s criticism of civil servants could be driving some people out.
One recently departed regulatory program staffer, who was granted anonymity to talk freely, said the Trump administration’s intent to downsize the government contributed to their decision to retire.
“I wanted to get out early, to kind of protect myself,” they said. “I have a lot of acquaintances at other agencies that unfortunately didn’t get any advance warning.”
Another person currently at the Army Corps said environmental permitting specialists have faced heightened pressure in recent years to get projects approved quickly, a situation that’s escalated since Trump took office.
In November 2023, agency leadership instituted new performance metrics for some regulatory program teams, according to a memo obtained by POLITICO’s E&E News. The system is aimed at reducing permit backlogs, but the metrics have been difficult to achieve, resulting in teams deemed off-target losing agency resources, the staffer said.
“If you were to get a glimpse into the way people are talking in team chats, you’d see this workforce that’s being directed to use every resource we have to crank out more permits faster — or at least to make it look like we did,” they said.
Mark Sudol, who led the Army Corps regulatory program in the 2000s, estimated that between 15 and 30 percent of the agency’s environmental regulators have left since the start of the year. The regulatory division normally has about 1,300 people, he said.
Even if the agency were able to hire more people, replacing experienced permit writers is not easy, said Sudol, who is now a senior adviser at the permitting firm Dawson & Associates. The agency needs specialists, for example, who are trained in determining whether individual wetlands or streams are regulated by the Clean Water Act, a highly complex and technical process, he said.
“It takes two to three years before you get good enough to make those calls,” Sudol said.
Army Corps spokesperson Douglas Garman said the agency does not have data on how many staffers have accepted the Trump administration’s offers for early retirement or resignation. That’s because the early retirement and deferred resignation programs are “ongoing,” Garman said.
