“Devastating” was the word I heard over and over from current and former Environmental Protection Agency employees on Thursday, after President Donald Trump revealed the outline of his first federal budget. In Trump’s ideal world, the agency tasked with protecting human health and the environment would be slashed by 31 percent to $5.7 billion, its lowest level in 40 years (the EPA is only 46 years old). Nineteen percent of the current workforce, or 3,200 agency employees, would be fired.

It’s not just the amount of the cuts, but where they would come from, that has past and present EPA officials worried. Trump’s budget basically wipes out all climate change programs, which was widely expected. But it also slashes the Office of Enforcement, which punishes polluters, by 23 percent. It cuts the science division in half, and reduces state environmental program grants by 44 percent. It eliminates funding to clean up the Chesapeake Bay and the Great Lakes, and terminates more than 50 other programs designed to fight global warming, protect public health, and clean up air and water.

Judith Enck, a former regional EPA administrator appointed by President Barack Obama, said that if these sweeping reductions are realized, the agency won’t even be able to fulfill it’s basic mission to protect clean air and water. “It’s going to make people sick,” she said. “It literally will make people sick.”

Enck’s concerns stem from Trump’s proposed $482 million in cuts to traditional state environmental grants, otherwise known as categorical grants, which help states, local governments, and tribal governments clean up hazardous waste, protect drinking water, and make sure disgusting wastewater doesn’t leak into soil or waterways. Public Water System Supervision grants, for instance, help towns, cities, states, and tribes to meet safe drinking water standards. The recipients decide how to use that money, Enck said, so these grants can’t be accused of “federal bureaucracy overreach”—EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt’s common complaint about the agency. “You have Pruitt saying he wants to give more responsibility and resources to the states,” Enck said. “Well, by cutting the categorical grants, you’re cutting money that goes to the states.”



Pruitt, of course, may not agree with Trump’s proposed reductions. Though he clearly wants to pare down the agency, he has already said he opposes Trump’s desire to slash grant programs for states. Republicans in Congress have also indicated that they may not agree with such drastic cuts. Earlier this year, Republican Representative Mike Simpson told E&E News that there’s “not that much in the EPA [budget] for crying out loud.”