The calendar’s pages turned quickly in January as Donald Trump‘s second inauguration loomed, bringing with it a presidency that would see the federal government’s willingness to help protect people living in America’s most polluted communities weaken just as it had during his first term in office.

KC Becker, a former Colorado House speaker who was President Joe Biden‘s political appointee to lead the Environmental Protection Agency’s Region 8 in Denver, raced to secure one more agreement with Colorado regulators before she resigned on Inauguration Day, as is customary for federal political appointees.

She had made it a priority of her tenure to enforce the federal Clean Air Act’s jurisdiction over the Suncor Energy oil refinery in Commerce City — one of the state’s largest polluters, with a long history of violations — and she wanted the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment to take a step that could lead to more public notification and input on permits for major polluters.

She got the needed signature five days before Trump took office.

“I thought it was important because having more public transparency on these major permits is just going to lead to better air quality, and, because of that, better health for communities that carry the biggest burden of bad air quality,” Becker said. “I figured if we didn’t get it done before we left, it would fall by the wayside.”

The agreement exemplifies how a presidential administration’s decision to prioritize environmental justice can influence state policy, in this case giving people living in highly polluted neighborhoods a stronger voice when it comes to regulating industries that make them sick. It also illustrates how Colorado has benefited from strong federal oversight even when it has one of the more robust environmental justice laws in the country.

Yet the agreement between the EPA and CDPHE is not a done deal. Colorado’s air quality regulators still must write a proposed policy, present it to a state commission for approval and then follow it once it’s in place.

There will be no penalty if Colorado fails to follow through, especially with the sharp transition to a new administration that is now dismantling the EPA’s environmental justice branch — making it even more vital for the state to commit to protecting people who live in neighborhoods that bear the brunt of air and water pollution, advocates said.

“I am concerned. Without EPA’s oversight we’re going to have to be very diligent in pushing CDPHE to do the right thing,” said Ean Tafoya, vice president of state programs for GreenLatinos.

Environmental advocates say the returning president made it clear on Day 1 that he has little interest in supporting the EPA’s mission to protect air, water and land, especially in communities such as Commerce City, where the residents suffer a disproportionate burden of pollution from industries that all Americans rely on for gasoline, cement and other industrial products.

Trump rescinded two of Biden’s executive orders that had prioritized environmental justice shortly after he was sworn into office. The dismantling continued from there.

The president’s decision to freeze EPA funding via grants created by Congress and the Biden administration is undergoing a legal challenge, but, if successful, would strike programs to address methane pollution from oil and gas wells, train workers for the clean energy sector, reduce greenhouse gas emissions from buildings, and clean up asbestos and other contaminants from public property.

Trump’s new EPA administrator, Lee Zeldin, has pledged to slash the agency’s budget as major workforce reductions are hitting agencies across the federal government. Ten people who specialize in environmental justice in the EPA’s Denver office already have been put on administrative leave.

Zeldin issued a memo Feb. 4 titled “Powering the Great American Comeback” that outlines five pillars that will guide the agency’s work. While the first pillar is to provide “clean air, land and water for every American,” the other four address industry and economic needs — restoring energy dominance, permitting reform, making America the artificial intelligence capital of the world, and reviving American auto jobs.

When asked about the agency’s commitment to environmental justice under Zeldin, EPA spokesman Richard Mylott said in an email, “EPA will follow the law and our statutory duties to protect human health and the environment.”

But Colorado environmentalists are skeptical that the Trump administration will protect the environment, especially since the president has scoffed at the science of climate change.

“By and large, we had an EPA we could turn to,” said Joe Salazar, an Adams County attorney and former Democratic state legislator who has worked on environmental issues. “With a Trump administration, No. 1, we might not even have an EPA or, No. 2, we have a blunted EPA or, No. 3, we have an EPA that reverses course and defends polluters in weird ways. We don’t really know what’s going to happen, but we know it’s not going to be good.”

Roots of environmental justice

Environmental justice first became a federal priority during the Clinton administration when the president in 1994 directed the EPA to shift resources to marginalized communities that bore the brunt of pollution.

That directive grew from an increasing understanding in the 1980s and ’90s that people in poor communities that had been built around refineries, factories and landfills were sicker with asthma and other illnesses than people in other neighborhoods, said Chris Winter, an environmental lawyer and executive director of the University of Colorado Boulder’s Getches-Wilkinson Center for Natural Resources, Energy and the Environment.

People who live in those more polluted neighborhoods often are Black, Latino or Indigenous; earn less money; live in homes with lower values; and sometimes do not speak English as their first language. Those circumstances make it difficult to move away, forcing children to be raised around polluters such as the Suncor refinery.

Other areas of the state that have been designated as disproportionally impacted communities include Pueblo, the Western Slope and the San Luis Valley.

“Folks who are marginalized in low-income communities have less mobility,” Winter said. “They’re trapped.”

Trump undid Clinton’s order when he took office in 2017, Winter said.

Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris restored that priority on environmental justice during their administration, creating advisory councils, directing money toward communities overburdened by pollution and creating stronger regulations that cover air quality, asbestos use, coal ash cleanup and PFAS, also known as forever chemicals, which contaminate water.

“Environmental justice is saying let’s focus government efforts around pollution to where it’s needed most,” Becker said. “Where is the pollution the worst? Where is the investment the least? At the end of the day, that’s all environmental justice is asking.”

But Trump and Zeldin are again rolling back policies that benefit those who are most at risk from pollution, Winter said.

The plans to downsize the EPA will strip the agency of scientists and drain it of institutional knowledge on complex environmental laws and how those laws protect land, water, air and people, he said.

Americans also can expect the Trump administration to reframe the story about environmental justice and disproportional impacts, Winter said.

“They’re going to try to downplay the importance or severity of those concerns,” he said. “Changing the narrative will be a part of their playbook.”

The administration also will roll back the EPA’s practice of conducting environmental justice analyses on air- and water-pollution permits, which establish the amount of toxic chemicals that companies can release, leaving those communities to continue drinking more contaminated water and breathing dirtier air than their neighbors.

And it will cut funding for projects such as increased air-quality monitoring in polluted neighborhoods, Winter said.

“That was a big part of the Biden administration,” he said. “Those types of funding opportunities are really important to disproportionately impacted communities to have a say in their communities.”

Major vs. minor modifications of permits

All of those moves are what gave Becker a sense of urgency to get CDPHE to sign that agreement that would put more scrutiny on air permits for big polluters.

“The recognition of the Civil Rights Act intersection with environmental laws was a priority of the Biden administration and we knew it would not be a priority for the Trump administration,” Becker said.

To that end, the EPA’s inspector general under Biden — who has since been fired by Trump — realized the agency had never conducted a review of its compliance with civil rights laws and ordered it to be done.

The EPA’s Office of Environmental Justice and External Civil Rights studied COVID-19 death rates in cities with poor air quality and found Commerce City and north Denver were among the worst in the nation, Becker said. So the agency picked Colorado as a focus.

Suncor was already on Becker and the EPA’s radar because CDPHE had been slow to renew the Commerce City refinery’s two Title V air permits and because public complaints about repeated permit violations were rampant. Becker thought the EPA could push the state to change the way it reviews those permits, which ultimately must receive EPA approval.

In March 2022, the EPA’s Office of Environmental Justice informed CDPHE that it was launching a review of the state agency’s Air Pollution Control Division to investigate whether it followed federal civil rights laws in administering the Clean Air Act.

“We looked at Colorado and determined that part of the way Colorado manages Title V permits is that communities are excluded from the process,” Becker said. “We never reached a conclusion that said, ‘You’re violating the Civil Rights Act.’ But we said the process you’ve set up has limited opportunity for public comment. And because the majority of these pollution sources are in low-income, diverse communities, there could be a Civil Rights Act violation.”

Becker’s team at the EPA met with people in the community to hear their complaints and to collect ideas for a resolution. Ultimately CDPHE agreed to change how it addresses minor changes to Title V air permits.

When a company receives a Title V permit, it’s valid for five years. During that period, a company must seek CDPHE and EPA approval if it wants to change the amount of pollution it releases into the air.  But if a company wants to make minor changes that would create more pollution, but below a certain threshold, it does not have to go through the more robust approval process, which includes a public comment period.

The issue has been that polluters avoid more intense scrutiny by claiming they are going to make small changes in the amount of pollution coming from their facility by separating out projects rather than aggregating them into one larger plan, said Jeremy Nichols, a senior advocate at the Center for Biological Diversity. Those polluters tell the state the changes will be minor, and the state approves the request with no public review.

“What happened is people discovered that small changes that polluters claimed were minor were actually pretty significant,” he said.

Three groups representing the oil and gas industry declined to comment for this story. But in the past, representatives from the industry, chambers of commerce and other trade associations have argued that, while they are committed to protecting the environment, too many government regulations threaten their economic stability and the future of their businesses.

In January, the American Petroleum Institute sent a seven-page memo to the EPA with its priorities for the new Trump administration. The institute’s list included actions on auto emissions, ozone standards, methane emissions and clean water rules. The memo reminded the new administration that the federal government’s regulations “directly shape the industry’s ability to innovate, maintain economic stability and meet evolving energy demands — all while prioritizing environmental protection and public health.”

Over the years, environmentalists like Nichols have accused Suncor of dividing its major alterations into smaller projects to avoid the more intense scrutiny. Environmentalists raised questions about it last year in petitions that asked the EPA to object to both of Suncor’s permit renewals.

Efforts to reach Suncor officials for comment were unsuccessful.

EarthJustice, on behalf of the Center for Biological Diversity and the Sierra Club, noted in its petitions that Colorado regulators have allowed Suncor to begin making changes at its Commerce City refinery as soon as it files a minor-modification notice. No modeling was used to determine whether emissions changes would increase the amounts of sulfur dioxide or nitrogen oxides the refinery released and without any public determination as to whether the changes would trigger a violation of federal air quality standards.

The EPA asked the state’s Air Pollution Control Division to revisit those sections of Suncor’s air-pollution permits.

“Colorado ultimately did that analysis when they did the Suncor permit and decided there wasn’t an issue and EPA was satisfied with that,” Becker said.

But Becker and the community wanted to make that process for minor modifications more transparent so the public would know what Suncor is doing.

“We thought CDPHE would be open to this,” Becker said. “It seemed like it wasn’t something CDPHE was going to initiate on their own and we didn’t think the Trump administration would do it.”

The Colorado health department voluntarily agreed to propose a new rule that would change how it reviews those minor modifications to air-pollution permits by creating a process for public notifications and public comment. It would give people who live near the refinery — with the help of groups like the Center for Biological Diversity — a chance to review projects and provide input as to whether they would result in major or minor increases in toxic emissions.

“EPA stepped up and Colorado made concessions”

The state has one year to bring a proposed rule to the Air Quality Control Commission, which creates air pollution regulations that state health officials must carry out. That commission, whose members are appointed by Gov. Jared Polis, is not legally bound by the agreement with the EPA and could reject any proposals submitted. There would be no penalty for Colorado failing to uphold its end of the deal.

While CDPHE signed the agreement with the EPA, the agency continues to maintain that it has a strong environmental justice program and is a national role model for its work.

Colorado is one of 12 states that have environmental justice embedded in state law, and CDPHE manages an environmental justice office that helps carry it out. Since the law was passed in 2021, polluters are required to include environmental justice analyses in their permit applications and do more to notify the impacted communities of their plans.

“CDPHE viewed this partnership with EPA as an opportunity to further examine its civil rights and environmental justice work, and explore potential areas for improvement above and beyond current practice,” department spokeswoman Kate Malloy wrote in an email.

The Air Pollution Control Division plans to file a rule proposal by January, Malloy wrote.

“The agreement itself does not change our process, as it currently, and previously, complies with federal requirements,” Malloy wrote. “We committed to raise the topic of minor modifications with the Air Quality Control Commission. The commission will determine whether to adopt any changes.”

While the agreement could fall through, further weakening protections for Colorado’s most environmentally vulnerable communities, it illustrates the important role the EPA serves in the state, especially when it comes to environmental justice, said Nichols, of the Center for Biological Diversity.

“EPA stepped up and Colorado made concessions,” he said. “It speaks volumes as to how the state doesn’t get it right all the time. They need scrutiny.”

Lucy Molina, an environmental activist who lives in the shadow of the Suncor refinery, started questioning environmental policies several years ago when she realized her family and her neighbors were frequently sick. They suffered from nose bleeds, asthma attacks and cancer. No one seemed to care about their suffering until they started speaking out.

While there is uncertainty over the EPA’s future, she plans to continue participating in marches and rallies and speaking during public meetings.

“This is a matter of life and death. We’ve been fighting for our lives,” Molina said. “This administration — they’re murdering us. We are going to continue to fight for our lives. We’re going to continue to speak our voices and share our stories.”

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