Science
E.P.A. Investigations of Severe Pollution Look Increasingly at Risk
A refinery in New Mexico that the federal government has accused of some of the worst air pollution in the country.
A chemical plant in Louisiana being investigated for leaking gas from storage tanks.
Idaho ranchers accused of polluting wetlands.
Under President Biden, the Environmental Protection Agency took a tough approach on environmental enforcement by investigating companies for pollution, hazardous waste and other violations. The Trump administration, on the other hand, has said it wants to shift the E.P.A.’s mission from protecting the air, water and land to one that seeks to “lower the cost of buying a car, heating a home and running a business.”
As a result, the future of long-running investigations like these suddenly looks precarious. A new E.P.A. memo lays out the latest changes.
E.P.A. enforcement actions will no longer “shut down any stage of energy production,” the March 12 memo says, unless there’s an imminent health threat. It also curtails a drive started by President Biden to address the disproportionately high levels of pollution facing poor communities nationwide. “No consideration,” the memo says, “may be given to whether those affected by potential violations constitute minority or low-income populations.”
Those changes, said Lee Zeldin, the E.P.A. administrator, would “allow the agency to better focus on its core mission and powering the Great American Comeback.”
David Uhlmann, who led enforcement at the agency under the Biden administration, said the memo amounted to the agency announcing that “if companies, especially in the oil and gas sector, break the law, this E.P.A. does not intend to hold them accountable.”
That would “put communities across the United States in harm’s way,” he said, particularly poorer or minority areas that often suffer the worst pollution.
Molly Vaseliou, a spokesperson for the E.P.A., said she could not comment on ongoing investigations or cases. The Department of Justice, which has faced its own staff and budget cuts, declined to comment.
Conservatives have argued that E.P.A. regulations have hurt economic growth and investment. “Bold deregulatory action at E.P.A. will unleash American energy and reduce costs for American families,” said Grover Norquist, President of Americans for Tax Reform, the anti-tax organization, in a statement. “The government’s expensive web of overregulation is being unwoven.”
To be sure, enforcement cases brought by the Biden administration are still winding their way through courts. On Wednesday, the Japanese truck manufacturer Hino Motors pleaded guilty to submitting false emissions-testing data in violation of the Clean Air Act and agreed to pay more than $1.6 billion in fines stemming from a probe first opened by California in 2019.
At the same time, a wider reframing of the purpose of the E.P.A. is underway. The agency was created a half-century ago, during the Republican presidential administration of Richard M. Nixon, with a mandate to protect the environment and public health.
Last week, the Trump administration said it would repeal dozens of the nation’s most significant environmental regulations, including limits on pollution from tailpipes and smokestacks, and protections for wetlands.
In a video posted to X, the social media site, Mr. Zeldin said his agency’s mission was now to “lower the cost of buying a car, heating a home and running a business.”
Project 2025, a blueprint for overhauling the federal government that was produced by the Heritage Foundation and written by many who are serving in the Trump administration, goes further, seeking to eliminate the E.P.A. office that carries out enforcement and compliance work. Mr. Zeldin has also said he intends to cut the agency’s spending by 65 percent and eliminate its scientific research arm.
Some on-site inspections, which form a vital part of enforcement investigations, are already being delayed or suspended, according to two people who spoke on condition of anonymity because they are unauthorized to speak publicly. Investigations related to air pollution were particularly vulnerable, they said.
There has already been one significant reversal. This month the Trump administration dropped a federal lawsuit against Denka Performance Elastomer, a chemical manufacturer accused of releasing high levels of a likely carcinogen from its Louisiana plant.
The Biden administration filed the lawsuit after regulators determined that emissions of chloroprene, used to make synthetic rubber, were contributing to health concerns in a region along the Mississippi River with some of the highest cancer risk in the United States.
“I honestly wonder if the malefactors are going to give us more burning rivers,” said William K. Reilly, E.P.A. administrator under President George H.W. Bush, speaking to reporters this month. He was referring to a fire on the polluted Cuyahoga River in Ohio in the late 1960s that helped galvanize environmental awareness.
And while the E.P.A. said it remained committed to addressing imminent health threats, the risks from pollution tend to play out over longer periods of time, in the form of increased rates of cancer, birth defects or long-term respiratory and cardiac harm, said Ann E. Carlson, a professor of environmental law at the UCLA School of Law.
“The memorandum is essentially a wink, wink to coal and oil interests that they can pollute with what may be close to impunity,” she said.
That would be a stark reversal after the Biden administration had worked to build up the agency’s enforcement work. In 2024, the E.P.A. concluded 1,851 civil cases and collected $1.7 billion in administrative and judicial penalties, both the highest levels since 2017. That same year, 121 criminal defendants were charged.
The agency had also prioritized policing greenhouse gas emissions, toxic “forever chemicals” known as PFAS, as well as the disposal of coal ash, the toxic material left over from burning coal.
The new Trump E.P.A. will pull back both from a focus on coal ash disposal, and from emissions of methane, a potent greenhouse gas, from oil and gas facilities, the recent memo said.
Other Biden-era enforcement settlements are waiting to be finalized, including one involving the decades-old HF Sinclair refinery in Artesia, N.M., accused of causing some of the worst concentrations of cancer-causing benzene in the country.
The E.P.A., together with the Department of Justice and the state of New Mexico, proposed a $35 million settlement in the final days of the Biden administration as part of an effort to protect people living in Artesia, a city of 13,000 people with a long history of pollution. HF Sinclair, which processes about 100,000 barrels of crude oil a day in Artesia, was also required to invest in fixes at the refinery that would reduce emissions of hazardous air pollutants.
So far, the Trump administration has not moved to finalize that settlement.
In a statement, the Texas-based operator said it had already invested in fixes and monitoring to address the allegations.
The New Mexico Department of Environmental Quality said it supported moving forward with the settlement “as expeditiously as possible,” adding that, “due to the change in administration at the federal level, timing is unclear.”
Investigations just getting started face even greater uncertainties, because the agency has leeway not to follow up on violations.
In March 2023, E.P.A. officials discovered leaks and other alleged violations of pollution laws during an inspection at a refinery and chemicals plant operated in Norco, La., by Shell, the Dutch oil and gas giant.
According to a notice later issued by the E.P.A., and obtained by the Environmental Integrity Project, a watchdog group, one chemical storage tank was found with “severe pitting across the entire fixed roof, as well as cracks/openings with detectable emissions.”
The E.P.A. has declined to say whether investigations were continuing. Shell declined to comment.
Some cases may be shaped by wider changes.
In 2021, E.P.A. inspectors found signs that a cattle ranch in Bruneau, Idaho, had disrupted protected wetlands by constructing road crossings and by mining sand and gravel from a local river. The agency sued, alleging violations of the Clean Water Act, in particular a bitterly contested rule adopted by the Obama administration known as “waters of the United States,” which extended existing federal protections to smaller bodies of water such as rivers, waterways and wetlands.
A federal judge dismissed the original case after a 2023 Supreme Court ruling curtailed the federal government’s authority to regulate smaller bodies of water. President Biden’s E.P.A. filed an amended lawsuit in September.
Last week, the E.P.A. said it would rewrite the rule to lower permitting costs for developers.
Ivan London, an attorney with the Mountain States Legal Foundation who is helping to defend the ranchers in the case, said that he expected his clients’ arguments to prevail regardless of the E.P.A.’s new rule-making. The ranchers argue that the E.P.A. has no authority to regulate the wetlands in question.
Still, the current Trump administration would certainly side more with the defendants, and that could affect the case, he said. “I’ve been surprised before, and I’m sure I’ll be surprised again,” he said.
WASHINGTON — NASA recaptured the world’s attention with Artemis II, which took astronauts to the moon and back for the first time in half a century. But the agency’s scientific projects could again be under threat as the Trump administration makes a renewed push to drastically cut their funding — including at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
The cuts, proposed in the Trump administration’s 2027 budget request to Congress, would pose further challenges to the already weakened Caltech-managed lab and could be broadly damaging to American efforts to bring back new discoveries from space. They echo last year’s attempt by the administration to slash NASA funding, which Congress rejected.
Though the Artemis project is billed as laying a foundation for a crewed NASA mission to Mars, exploration of the Red Planet is among the endeavors that could be slashed. The rover currently exploring Mars’ ancient river delta and a mission to orbit Venus are among projects with JPL involvement targeted for spending cuts, according to an analysis of the NASA budget proposal by the nonprofit Planetary Society.
“This isn’t [because] they’re not producing good science anymore. There’s no rhyme or reason to it,” said Casey Dreier, chief of space policy at the Planetary Society, which led opposition to the administration’s similar effort to cut NASA funding last year.
Storm clouds hang over the Jet Propulsion Laboratory on Feb. 7, 2024.
(David McNew / Getty Images)
This time, the administration is asking Congress to cut NASA funding by 23% — including a 46% cut to its science programs, which are responsible for developing spacecraft, sending them into outer space to observe and analyzing the data they send back.
The proposal would cancel 53 science missions and reduce funding for others, according to the Planetary Society analysis. The effort to pare down NASA Science comes amid the Trump administration’s broader effort to cut scientific research across federal agencies.
The plan swiftly drew bipartisan criticism from members of Congress, who rejected the administration’s similar 2026 proposal in January. Republican Sen. Jerry Moran of Kansas, who chairs the Senate appropriations subcommittee that oversees NASA, indicated last week that he would work to fund NASA similarly for 2027, saying it would be “a mistake” not to fund science missions.
Moran plans to hold a hearing with NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman before the end of April to review the budget request, a spokesperson for his office said. The president’s budget request is an ask to Congress, which ultimately holds the power to allocate funding.
But until Congress creates its own budget, NASA will use the plan as its road map, which could slow grants and contracts. The proposal “still creates enormous chaos and uncertainty in the meantime for critical missions, the scientific workforce, and long-term research planning,” said Rep. Judy Chu (D-Monterey Park), whose district includes JPL.
A NASA spokesperson declined to comment Friday. In the budget request, Isaacman wrote that NASA was “pursuing a focused and right-sized portfolio” for its space science missions in order to align with Trump’s federal cost-cutting goals.
The budget “reinforces U.S. leadership in space science through groundbreaking missions, completed research, and next-generation observatories,” Isaacman wrote.
Jared Isaacman testifies during his confirmation hearing to be the NASA administrator in the Russell Senate Office Building on Capitol Hill on Dec. 3, 2025.
(Anna Moneymaker / Getty Images)
At JPL — which has for decades led innovation in space science and technology from its La Cañada Flintridge campus — questions had already swirled about the lab’s role in the future of NASA work.
Multiple rounds of layoffs over the last two years, the defunding of its embattled Mars Sample Return mission and a shift by the Trump administration toward lunar exploration and away from the type of scientific work that JPL executes had pushed the lab into a challenging stretch.
It has had a steady stream of employee departures in recent months, and those left have been scrambling to court outside funding from private investors, sell JPL technology to companies and increase productivity in hopes of keeping the lab afloat, according to two former staffers, who requested anonymity to describe the mood inside the lab.
“If we’re not doing science, then what are we doing?” asked one former employee, who recently left JPL after more than a decade there.
A spokesperson for the lab declined to comment, referring The Times to the budget proposal.
The NASA programs marked for cancellation or cutbacks support thousands of jobs at JPL and other centers, said Chu, who has led a push for increased funding for NASA Science. After last year’s layoffs, JPL “cannot afford to lose more of this expertise,” she said in a statement.
Among the JPL projects that appear to be slated for cancellation are two involving Venus, Dreier said. One, Veritas, is early in development and would give work to the lab for the next several years, he said.
The project would be the first U.S. mission to Venus in more than 30 years, Dreier said, and aims to make a high-resolution mapping of the planet’s surface and observe its atmosphere.
The Perseverance rover, which is on Mars collecting rock and soil samples, could face spending reductions. The budget request proposes pulling some funding from Perseverance to fund other planetary science missions and reducing “the pace of operations” for the rover.
Though how the Mars samples might get back to Earth is uncertain, the rover is still being used to explore the planet and search for evidence of whether it could have ever been habitable to life.
Researchers hope the tubes of Martian rock, soil and sediment can eventually be brought back to Earth for study. The team has about a half a dozen more sample tubes to fill and the rover is in good shape, said Jim Bell, a planetary scientist and Arizona State University professor who leads the camera team on Perseverance, which works daily with JPL.
He said NASA’s spending proposal put forth “no plan” for the future of the agency’s work.
“Are people just supposed to walk away from their consoles,” Bell asked, “and let these orbiters around other planets or rovers on other worlds — just let them die?”
The NASA document did not clearly show which programs were targeted for cuts and did not list which projects were targeted for cancellation. The Planetary Society and the American Astronomical Society each analyzed the proposal and found that dozens of projects appeared to be canceled without being named in the document.
Across NASA, other projects slated for cancellation according to the Planetary Society’s analysis include New Horizons, a spacecraft exploring the outer edge of the solar system; the Atmosphere Observing System, a planned project to collect weather, air quality and climate data; and Juno, a spacecraft studying Jupiter.
The administration’s plan also doesn’t prioritize new scientific projects, Bell said, which further jeopardizes long-term job stability and space discovery at centers like JPL.
“We’re going through this long stretch now with very few opportunities to build these spacecrafts,” Bell said. “All of the NASA centers are suffering from the lack of opportunities.”
Last year, the Trump administration proposed to slash NASA’s 2026 funding by nearly half. Instead, Congress approved funding in January that provided $24.4 billion for the agency — a cut of about 29% rather than the proposed 46%. The 2027 budget request asks for $18.8 billion.
Congress kept funding for science missions nearly steady, allocating $7.25 billion for science missions, about a 1% decrease from 2025. The administration had proposed cutting the science investment down to $3.91 billion. This time, the budget requests $3.89 billion.
Under the Trump administration, NASA has put an emphasis on moon exploration, including this month’s successful Artemis II mission. Isaacman, who defended the proposed cuts on CNN last week, touted the agency’s lunar plans, including a project to build a base on the moon.
The agency has indicated commitment to some existing science missions, including the James Webb Space Telescope, the to-be-launched Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, the Dragonfly spacecraft set to launch for Saturn’s moon in 2028, and other projects.
“NASA doesn’t have a topline problem, we just need to focus on executing and delivering world-changing outcomes,” Isaacman said on CNN.
Scientists have urged the government not to choose between funding science and exploration but to keep up investment in both.
“It’s ultimately kind of confusing, especially on the heels of the Artemis II mission,” said Roohi Dalal, deputy director for public policy at the American Astronomical Society. “The scientific community … is providing critical services to ensure that the astronauts are able to carry out their mission safely, and yet at the same time, they’re facing this significant cut.”
After years of heated debates among fire officials, scientists and local advocates, California’s Board of Forestry and Fire Protection released new proposed landscaping rules for fire-prone areas Friday that outline what residents can and can’t do within the first 5 feet of their homes.
Many of these proposed rules — designed to reduce the risk of a home burning down amid a wildfire — have wide support (or at least acceptance); however, the most contentious by far has been whether the state would allow healthy plants in the zone.
Many fire officials and safety advocates have essentially argued anything that can burn, will burn and have supported removing virtually anything capable of combustion from this zone within 5 feet of houses, dubbed “Zone Zero.” They point to the string of devastating urban wildfires in recent years as reason to move quickly.
Yet, researchers who study the array of benefits shade and extra foliage can bring to neighborhoods — and local advocates who are worried about the money and labor needed to comply with the regulations — have argued that this approach goes beyond what current science shows is effective. They have, instead, generally been in favor of allowing green, healthy plants within the zone.
The new draft regulations attempt to bridge the gap. They outline more stringent requirements to remove all plants in a new “Safety Zone” within a foot of the house and within a bigger buffer around potential vulnerabilities in a home’s wildfire armor, including windows that can shatter in extreme heat and wooden decks that can easily burst into flames. Everywhere else, the rules would allow residents to maintain some plants, although still with significant restrictions.
The rules generally do not require the removal of healthy trees — instead, they require giving these trees routine haircuts.
Once the state adopts a final version of the rules, homeowners would have three years to get their landscaping in order and up to five years for the bigger asks, including removing all vegetation from the Safety Zone and updating combustible fencing and sheds within 5 feet of the home. New constructions would have to comply immediately.
The rules only apply to areas with notable fire hazard, including urban areas that Cal Fire has determined have “very high” fire hazard and rural wildlands.
Officials with the Board will meet in Calabasas on Thursday from 1 p.m. to 7 p.m. to discuss the new proposal and hear from residents.
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Some L.A. residents are championing a proposed fire-safety rule, referred to as “Zone Zero,” requiring the clearance of flammable material within the first five feet of homes. Others are skeptical of its value.
Where is the Safety Zone?
The proposed Safety Zone with stricter requirements to remove all vegetation would extend 1 foot from the exterior walls of a house.
In a few areas with heightened vulnerabilities to wildfires, it extends further.
The Safety Zone covers any land under the overhang of roofs. If the overhang extends 3 feet, so does the Safety Zone in that area. It also extends 2 feet out from any windows, doors and vents, as well as 5 feet out from attached decks.
What plants would be allowed in the Safety Zone?
Generally, nothing that can burn can sit in the Safety Zone. This includes mulch, green grass, bushes and flowers.
What plants would be allowed in the rest of Zone Zero?
Homeowners can keep grasses (and other ground-covers, like moss) in this area, as long as it’s trimmed down to no taller than 3 inches.
The rules also allow small plants — from begonias to succulents — up to 18 inches tall as long as they are spaced out in groups. Residents can also keep spaced-out potted plants under this height, as long as they’re easily movable.
What about fences, trees and gates?
Any sheds or other outbuildings would need noncombustible exterior walls and roofs in Zone Zero — Safety Zone or not.
Residents would have to replace the first five feet of any combustible fencing or gates attached to their house with something made out of a noncombustible material, such as metal.
Trees generally would be allowed in Zone Zero. Homeowners would need to keep any branches one foot away from the walls, five feet above the roof and 10 feet from chimneys.
Residents would also have to remove any branches from the lower third of the tree (or up to 6 feet, whichever is shorter) to prevent fires on the ground from climbing into the canopy.
Some trees with trunks directly up against a house in this 1-foot buffer or under the roof’s overhang might need to go — since keeping branches away from the home could prove difficult (or impossible).
However, the board stressed it wants to avoid the removal of trees whenever feasible and encouraged homeowners to work with their local fire department’s inspectors to find case-by-case solutions.
What’s new and what’s not
Some of the rules discussed in Zone Zero are not new — they’ve been on the books for years, classified as requirements for Zone One, extending 30 feet from the home with generally less strict rules, and Zone Two, extending 100 feet from the house with the least strict rules.
For example, homeowners are already required to remove any dead or dying grasses, plants and trees. They also have to remove leaves, twigs and needles from gutters, and they already cannot keep exposed firewood in piles next to their house.
Residents are also already required to keep grasses shorter than 4 inches; Zone Zero lowers this by an inch.
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