During his eight years representing New York’s 1st Congressional District, Rep. Lee Zeldin, the president-elect’s pick to head the Environmental Protection Agency, earned a dismal 14% on the national environmental scorecard put together by the League of Conservation Voters. Among other things, he voted against a bill that would protect about 1 million acres of federal lands around Grand Canyon National Park from uranium mining; voted against establishing a White House office of climate resilience; for a bill to end the U.S.’s participation in the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change; and against a bill that would have invested billions to fully replace lead service lines that provide drinking water for people across the country.
Zeldin’s opposition to essential protections for clean air and water makes him unqualified to lead the Environmental Protection Agency.
Zeldin’s opposition to essential protections for clean air and water makes him unqualified to lead the EPA. But President-elect Donald Trump’s nomination of Zeldin to that role signals the incoming president’s intent to once again prioritize corporate interests over the health and safety of our communities.
In announcing his pick of Zeldin, Trump, who described Zeldin as a “true fighter for America First policies,” said, “He will ensure fair and swift deregulatory decisions that will be enacted in a way to unleash the power of American businesses, while at the same time maintaining the highest environmental standards, including the cleanest air and water on the planet. He will set new standards on environmental review and maintenance, that will allow the United States to grow in a healthy and well-structured way.”
Zeldin is expected to lead a significant overhaul of the EPA, potentially the most drastic overhaul since the department was established in 1970. His lack of engagement on critical environmental issues, including his previous comments doubting the seriousness of climate change and his opposition to the Paris climate agreement, raise serious concerns about his commitment to the agency’s mission.
Even his initial comment on social media after Trump tapped him for the role didn’t prioritize environment concerns. He wrote on X, “We will restore US energy dominance, revitalize our auto industry to bring back American jobs, and make the US the global leader of AI. We will do so while protecting access to clean air and water.” It’s a bad sign when a person nominated for EPA chief puts “clean air and water” at the end of his list of goals.
As a mother of children with health issues, living in Sulphur, Louisiana, a community overflowing with fossil fuel pollution, I am engulfed in a profound sense of grief and disillusionment. I find myself grappling with a loss that transcends politics and is deeply personal. The people who will suffer from the rolling back of environmental policies are not mere statistics. They include me and my children.
In March 2023, the BioLab plant near where I live had a chlorine gas leak that forced us to shelter in place. In June 2023, a fire at the Calcasieu Refining Co. tank farm, near where I live, resulted in an evacuation and shelter-in-place orders. The year before, an explosion at a Westlake Chemical plant, also near where I live, injured at least six people and resulted in a lockdown of local schools.
In 2020, Category 4 Hurricane Laura and Category 2 Hurricane Delta hit my part of Southwest Louisiana six weeks apart, and my family lost our home and we had to live in a FEMA trailer. In February 2021, winter storm Uri hit, knocking out almost 100 water utilities across Louisiana. That May, about 18 inches of rain fell in a short amount of time, more rain than we’d seen in either of those hurricanes.
I created the Vessel Project of Louisiana, a mutual aid and environmental justice organization, in the wake of the back-to-back destructive weather events we’d had.
The League of Conservation Voters found that Zeldin voted against 51 of 53 measures that would have addressed climate change.
But there are some people who pretend this is normal. The League of Conservation Voters found that Zeldin voted against 51 of 53 measures that would have addressed climate change.
When I watch my children play, their laughter is a bittersweet reminder of what is at stake. I fear for their futures, not just because of their particular health issues, but because the very environment we inhabit is being neglected and exploited. The Trump administration’s approach to environmental deregulation is a direct threat to our community’s safety and health. Decisions like withdrawing from the Paris Agreement and rolling back critical environmental protections sends a chilling message: that corporate profits are more important than the lives of our children and the health of our communities.
This is a moment of reckoning, not just for Louisiana, but for the entire nation. We must educate our communities about the impact of environmental injustices and demand that our elected officials take action to protect us. Most importantly, the Biden administration must make this lame-duck period the most impactful it can be for my state, our country and our planet.
In January, the Biden administration paused the approval of applications to export liquefied natural gas from new projects, and Bloomberg Law reported last week that the administration is “racing to complete a study” that will find that such projects are not in the public interest. Three applications for LNG projects are in my community. We need Biden, during these final two months of his term, to get that study done before Trump enters office, and to declare a climate emergency if necessary to speed that process up.
President Biden also needs to impose new rules that will prevent states from finding ways to work around the federal government’s limits of how much air pollution plants can release. We implore him to do everything he can do protect communities like mine and help lay the groundwork for a sustainable future, one that prioritizes the health and safety of our children over corporate greed.
The profits of corporations is obviously Zeldin’s biggest concern. “There are regulations that the left wing of this country have been advocating through regulatory power that ends up causing businesses to go in the wrong direction,” he said in a Fox News interview Monday.
I live in a community where those corporations and their pollution have made us sick. It feels like we are David, armed only with our voices and our passion, standing against the Goliath of a powerful administration intent on dismantling environmental protections. But David didn’t shrink from the fight, and we can’t, either.
