For over five decades, EPA has been the cornerstone of federal efforts to protect public health and safeguard natural resources. Its work is not abstract: it is measurable in the air we breathe, the water we drink, and the stability of our ecosystems. Yet today, the agency faces unprecedented threats to its workforce that jeopardize this essential mission.
Moves to reduce staffing at EPA are more than mere administrative changes; they are a direct attack on the nation’s environmental safety net. The people of EPA are not bureaucratic placeholders. They are scientists, engineers, attorneys, analysts, and frontline responders whose expertise underpins the enforcement of laws like the Clean Air Act and Clean Water Act. Their absence will have immediate, measurable consequences.
Consider what is at stake. Every air quality inspection delayed, every water contamination response curtailed, every climate resilience project stalled translates into heightened risk for American communities. Asthma rates don’t wait for new appropriations. Lead doesn’t pause its seepage into pipes and soils. Wildfire smoke does not recognize political agendas. The work of protecting the public must continue, and that work requires people.
Staff cuts will dismantle EPA’s capacity to deliver on its statutory obligations. We would see fewer inspections of industrial polluters, slower responses to environmental emergencies, and diminished oversight of water safety systems. These outcomes are not speculative; they are historical. Past reductions in environmental staffing have been followed by spikes in pollution, weakened enforcement, and adverse health outcomes.
Moreover, these threats to EPA’s workforce are unfolding against a backdrop of intensifying climate disruption and persistent environmental injustice. The agency’s work is more vital now than at any point in its history. Cutting EPA jobs at this juncture would reverse decades of progress and would actively endanger lives, particularly in frontline communities already bearing disproportionate burdens of exposure.
Protecting EPA’s workforce is not a matter of administrative preference; it is a moral and scientific imperative. These professionals are America’s environmental first responders. They deserve our full support.
This is not a moment for retreat. It is a moment to stand in defense of the defenders.