The Trump administration is threatening EPA jobs. Here's what Biden's enforcement chief thinks about it.
Landmark spoke to David Uhlmann, who worked as the Environmental Protection Agency's assistant administrator for enforcement and compliance under former President Biden.
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The second Trump administration has moved quickly in the past two weeks to undercut the work of some government functions, including by warning some career staff at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency that they may not have their jobs much longer.
On Monday, just days after former Republican congressman Lee Zeldin was sworn in as EPA administrator, reports suggested that more than 1,100 agency staffers received letters saying they could be fired at any time.
The letters were addressed to staff who had been hired in the past year as a part of the Biden administration’s effort to rebuild the EPA after years of being depleted. Those employees reportedly work on climate change, air pollution reduction and environmental law enforcement.
Just before that development, Landmark sat down with David Uhlmann, who ran the EPA’s enforcement operations up until just a couple weeks ago, to hear his thoughts on the first days of the second Trump administration.
The following is that interview, edited for clarity and length (though, fair warning: it’s still quite long).
Landmark: Let’s start with what everyone is talking about: Trump’s first couple weeks in office.
We've seen several executive actions by the Trump administration already. He reassigned four of the U.S. Department of Justice environmental section chiefs to work on immigration, placed numerous individuals on administrative leave, reclassified many career civil service appointees as political, has offered buyouts to encourage departures, revoked Clinton's environmental justice executive order, etc. Do you think it has all been legal? Do you see this as an attempt to systematically dismantle U.S. environmental enforcement?
Uhlmann: Most if not all of the executive actions probably are illegal. It is not permissible to reassign members of the Senior Executive Service, who lead the Justice Department’s environmental enforcement efforts, to non-existent positions. It is not lawful to fire civil servants without cause or place them on indefinite administrative leave. Nor is it legal to reclassify civil service positions as political appointments by the stroke of a pen, without going through the regulatory process of undoing Biden administration rules designed to protect civil servants.
These actions exact an enormous personal toll on career civil servants, which by itself should cause alarm. What the Trump administration has done sends an unmistakable message to everyone working in the federal government that their work is not valued and will not be supported. Still worse, as your questions suggest, the Trump administration is making clear that it has no regard for upholding the rule of law, holding polluters accountable, and protecting communities across America from harmful pollution — in both red states and blue states.
Landmark: Looking back at your tenure at the EPA these past few years, I’m curious to hear how you feel about the work you did and your accomplishments during the Biden administration now that Trump is back in the Oval Office and taking those actions?
Uhlmann: EPA accomplished a tremendous amount during my tenure in terms of holding polluters accountable, protecting communities from harmful pollution, and providing a level playing field so that law-abiding companies are not at a competitive disadvantage with polluters.
In addition to those overarching goals, which should be the focus of EPA enforcement during any administration, one of my top priorities was revitalizing the enforcement program at EPA, which had suffered from a decade of budget cuts and the challenges of the Covid-19 pandemic.
The pandemic obviously hit the entire country and everyone in the federal government hard. But the pandemic was particularly challenging for the EPA enforcement program, which depends on having people out in communities inspecting facilities and identifying violations of the environmental laws. So, revitalizing EPA’s enforcement program was a top priority of mine.
Another top priority for me was pivoting the enforcement program towards addressing what I call 21st century environmental problems: issues like mitigating climate change, promoting environmental justice, and addressing PFAS and coal ash contamination, all while doing everything we could to better protect everyone living in this country from harmful pollution.
In each of those areas, we had tremendous success. We significantly increased staffing in the enforcement program, bringing back online about one-third of the positions that had been lost. EPA increased enforcement activity across all metrics to levels not seen since 2017 — and in some cases even further back. EPA also brought major, precedent-setting cases.
We did everything we could to ensure that everyone living in the United States can breathe clean air, drink safe water and live in communities free of toxic pollution. That is what we mean when we talk about promoting environmental justice — and that goal deserves support regardless of who is president of the United States or in leadership roles at the EPA.
My tenure as EPA assistant administrator was shorter than I would have liked but we accomplished all the goals that I set out to accomplish. We enhanced the partnership between EPA headquarters and the 10 EPA regional offices so that we worked as one EPA enforcement program. We strengthened the partnership between our criminal enforcement and civil enforcement programs so that they were better strategically aligned and making more thoughtful and more principled decisions about which cases should be criminal, civil and administrative. We also approached our cases with greater urgency to bring communities more prompt relief and better reflect the significance of the public health and environmental challenges we face.
Landmark: How did you organize EPA’s priorities, and were those specific to the Biden administration or was there some continuity with the Trump administration despite the obvious differences between the administrations?
The reason I’m asking this is because there’s a lot of chatter or concern that the Trump administration will just sort of neuter the EPA somehow, and I’m curious how you’re thinking about that after seeing how things work from the inside?
Uhlmann: So your question is referencing what EPA calls National Enforcement and Compliance Initiatives, which were previously called either National Enforcement Initiatives or National Compliance Initiatives, depending on the administration. EPA has pursued national enforcement initiatives for more than 25 years, including during the first Trump administration.
EPA announced six national initiatives in August 2023. There were three new initiatives — climate change, PFAS and coal ash contamination — and we continued three initiatives. Two of the initiatives we continued began in the Obama years — one on air toxins pollution, where we added a geographic and environmental justice focus, and another to prevent chemical accidents. One of the initiatives we continued began in the Trump years, which focused on ensuring communities across the United States have access to safe drinking water.
These initiatives have served communities across administrations. My view is that initiatives should not be partisan and should reflect what are the most significant public health and environmental challenges facing the United States. Like everything EPA enforcement does, initiatives should deliver meaningful results for communities across the United States.
The initiatives we selected are set to run from fiscal year 2024 through fiscal year 2027, so in the fall of 2027 the Trump administration will have an opportunity to decide whether it wants to continue any of these initiatives past 2027 or whether it wants to select new initiatives.
Landmark: With that in mind, maybe we should take a beat to talk about how EPA enforcement works in tangible terms. What types of cases did you oversee and how do you measure success in that role?
Uhlmann: There are lots of different ways that we can measure the success of an enforcement program. To be clear, the ultimate goal is fair and robust enforcement to protect communities and the environment from harmful pollution. There's a great Abraham Lincoln saying that law without enforcement is only good advice. If we are going to deliver on the full promise of the environmental protection laws, we need fair and robust enforcement of the environmental laws.
So how do we measure that?
One measurement is looking at the number of inspections that EPA does in a given year, because that's how EPA learns about most of the violations that the enforcement program addresses. Last year on-site inspections were at a seven-year high and that number was on track to climb even higher in the current year, which began October 1st, because of the hiring program during the last two years. We hired about 400-500 new people under my leadership.
Another important metric is the number of criminal investigations. Each of the last two years, EPA opened approximately 200 criminal investigations, the highest levels for a decade, with the exception of 2020, which saw a temporary surge in COVID fraud that the criminal program addressed. Still another metric that is hugely significant on the civil side would be case conclusions, which also were at a seven year high. In all of the quantitative ways that we can measure whether an enforcement program is robust, EPA’s enforcement program was soaring.
Landmark: Ok great, with those in mind, are there any standout successes from your time as assistant administrator?
Uhlmann: Quantity is not everything. Quality matters too, and the types of cases that EPA brought during my tenure were further evidence of a fair and robust enforcement program.
We brought the largest Clean Air Act mobile source case that EPA has ever pursued against a diesel manufacturer named Cummins that was Installing defeat devices in its vehicles, which caused harmful pollution in cities and towns throughout the United States.
We brought the biggest Clean Air Act stationary source case ever against Marathon Oil Company for unlawful refinery activities that exposed communities across North Dakota to harmful air pollution.
We brought the Norfolk Southern case following the derailment in East Palestine, which exposed residents of that community to unfathomable harm.
All of those cases were pursued while I was the Assistant Administrator–and they were all hugely significant cases. They are the types of cases that EPA should be bringing.
You put all that together — the quantitative results and the qualitative results — and what you see is a picture of a reinvigorated and revitalized EPA enforcement program that was protecting communities across America from harmful pollution. That is what EPA should be doing, regardless of who is the President of the United States.
Landmark: That may be the expectation, but do you have confidence that the enforcement focuses you mentioned earlier — climate, coal ash, PFAS, air toxins, chemical accidents and safe drinking water — will have staying power, and won’t be discarded before then? Or are you more cynical?
Uhlmann: EPA has had national initiatives for the enforcement and compliance program for 25 years. For 25 years, those initiatives have straddled administrations and have always continued across administrations. As the initiative cycle comes to a close, which will happen in 2.5 years in the fall of 2027, the new administration will have the opportunity to decide whether it wants to continue any of the existing initiatives for another cycle.
But the initiatives deserve to be continued for reasons beyond precedents. The initiatives should be continued because they were selected after an objective, professional assessment by the career staff to identify the most significant public health and environmental challenges facing the United States, where federal enforcement can make a difference. That’s a labor-intensive process over about 18-months and involves multiple working groups at EPA headquarters and the regions, as well as an opportunity for public comment on what EPA proposes to do.
My expectation, and I think the expectation we should all have, is that this administration will act as every prior administration has and continue the enforcement initiatives that have been identified and set in motion by the prior administration. The Trump administration should recognize that enforcement of the law should never be partisan. It is EPA’s obligation to hold polluters accountable, to protect communities from harmful pollution, and to ensure that law-abiding companies do not have a competitive disadvantage over polluters. None of that is partisan. That should be true whether the President is a Republican or a Democrat.
Landmark: But are you confident Trump’s administration will respect that history and those norms?
The first two weeks of the Trump administration gives me no confidence that this president intends to protect communities from harmful pollution or upholding any norms, even those that have served our nation well for decades. President Trump repeatedly has made dismissive statements about EPA and the role of environmental protection. He has refused to acknowledge the existential threat climate change poses. He shows no regard for the rule of law.
But I am hopeful that the new EPA administrator and his team will wait to hear from the career staff about the significance of the existing initiatives and will be receptive to their arguments about why it is so important to continue those efforts. If there's an initiative I'm concerned about among the six, it would be the climate change initiative. But even there, I’m hopeful that the work will continue. Our climate work didn’t involve any new or expansive ideas about EPA’s regulatory authority. It involved addressing methane emissions from oil and gas facilities, which are quite harmful to surrounding communities. It focused on land methane emissions from landfills, which are also quite harmful to surrounding communities. And the climate initiative focused on the global phasedown of hydrofluorocarbons required by the Kigali Amendments to the Montreal Protocol, which the U.S. Senate ratified in an overwhelming bipartisan vote.
Although that work is under the important moniker of mitigating climate change, each of the components of the initiative involve law enforcement activity that the incoming administration should support, regardless of the President’s rhetoric, if it cares about ordinary Americans.
Landmark: Talking about Trump’s rhetoric, the president has talked about moving EPA out of Washington and has taken action to reduce the size of the federal workforce. You’ve discussed being proud of hiring at the EPA and bulking up its staff numbers.
Do you think what Trump is doing — asking federal workers to take buyouts, for instance — is a good recipe for continued robust enforcement at EPA? Or do you think that robust enforcement can continue even under those circumstances?
Uhlmann: The Trump administration is off to a dreadful start, one that threatens to undermine a wide range of protections provided by the federal government, including programs to ensure clean air, safe drinking water, and communities free of toxic waste. If the current assault on the federal workforce continues unabated, the resulting chaos will affect everything from social security checks and funding for safe drinking water, to the safety of our air traffic control system and whether we can protect communities against deadly chemical accidents and train derailments. What President Trump has unleashed is reckless and irresponsible at best, and it puts everything the federal government does in jeopardy, including EPA’s enforcement program.
For EPA’s enforcement program to continue to thrive–for it to continue to hold polluters accountable and help meet the promise of the environmental laws–the Trump administration needs to maintain or increase current staffing levels. The enforcement program at EPA already endured more than enough budget cuts between 2011 and 2021 for even the most conservative approach to government. Starting in year three of the Obama administration, and all the way through the Trump years, the enforcement program lost 950 positions. It went from between 3,400 and 3,500 positions down to under 2,500 positions — that’s more than a 30% cut.
If you look at the enforcement numbers over that decade, you see declining enforcement and reports out of the nonpartisan Government Accountability Office and the nonpartisan EPA inspector general’s office that said EPA’s declining enforcement resources had deprived communities across America from the full protections of our Nation’s environmental laws.
EPA already has been cut to the bone in the enforcement area. When I arrived at EPA in 2022, I found an enforcement program that was stretched impossibly thin, placing communities at risk.
I spent my first year going around the building doing everything I could to advocate for more resources because it was clear that, for the EPA to meet its statutory mandate to robustly and fairly enforce the environmental laws, we needed more people. We restored about one-third of the positions the enforcement program had lost. If I'd been able to stay longer, I would have been advocating for more. EPA enforcement still is not at optimal staffing levels to ensure that everyone living in the United States has the full measure of the protections promised by our Nation's environmental laws. But the program is in much better shape than when I started.
Every single one of the new positions that were created under my leadership should stay.
So I am deeply concerned about the suggestion that the Trump administration may fire people who have only worked at EPA for the last year or two. The loss to the agency would be incalculable, both in terms of having the resources needed to carry out EPA’s essential mission and also because those new employees were part of a generational shift at EPA that needs to take place as agency veterans reach retirement age. But the biggest losers would be the American public, including many people who helped elect President Trump. Without a strong enforcement program, the air will not be as clean, and the water may not be safe to drink. It is that simple.
As for the question of where EPA staff should be located: it's an interesting question philosophically for others to address regarding the broader value of having the various components of the federal government headquartered in Washington. If the Trump administration means what it says about having an executive branch that is accountable to the President, it will need to maintain a critical mass of federal government staff in Washington.
But at EPA, in the enforcement program, between 70% and 75% of our resources are in the 10 EPA regional offices in Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Atlanta, Chicago, Dallas, Kansas City, Denver, San Francisco, and Seattle. We sent more new positions to those 10 regional offices during my tenure than to any part of the EPA Office of Enforcement and Compliance Assurance. So I would argue that EPA has the right balance between headquarters and the various regions.
Landmark: I guess the next question for you and it's kind of broad, but you know you seem fairly even keeled about what's happening with the new administration. Let's imagine that you're at a dinner party with people. There is a lot of fear that the judicial system in the United States is falling apart, and frustration with increasingly politicized and political courts. There’s maybe some frustration with a perceived historical lack of enforcement, which you were trying to correct. But you're at a dinner party and you're talking to people who are worried about these things. What do you say to them?
Uhlmann: There's a lot to be worried about, don’t get me wrong. The first two weeks of the Trump administration could not have been worse for those who care about the rule of law, protecting the environment and promoting a sustainable future.
I'm both an optimist and somewhat even-keeled by nature. I also think as a leader that it's important to encourage people to keep their eye on what is done, not just what is said.
From my vantage point, it seems clear after living through the first Trump administration and now the beginning of the second Trump administration that their modus operandi is to flood the zone with a lot of inflammatory rhetoric and disruptive actions in the hope that they will overwhelm and demoralize us. What they are doing is very upsetting. But we cannot let their assault on public servants and our legal system keep us from standing up for what is right.
As for the court system, we should all watch closely to see how the court system responds. After four days in the new administration, a federal court in Seattle blocked the president’s effort to end birthright citizenship, which is guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution. The judge involved, who was appointed by President Reagan, called the president’s executive order to end birthright citizenship blatantly unconstitutional. Then two more judges enjoined President Trump’s efforts to pause federal funding for everything from food stamps and public education, to cleanup of hazardous waste and funding that cities and towns depend upon to provide safe drinking water.
Out the gate, President Trump went after birthright citizenship and federal funding, and very quickly we saw the legal system responding in an appropriate way, stopping him in his tracks.
Those judges give me hope that, at least in the more outrageous positions that are being taken by the Trump administration, the center will hold and the legal system will impose limits.
I will finish where we started, which is President Trump’s mistreatment of federal employees. His nominee for OMB said they wanted to cause “trauma” for civil servants, and specifically called out my colleagues at EPA. There is no excuse whatsoever for that abusive behavior or rhetoric.
Public servants deserve to be celebrated. They deserve to be valued. They are human beings, so they are not infallible, but they're extraordinarily talented and dedicated. They do not deserve to be attacked by the President of the United States or anyone who serves in his administration.
It remains to be seen what will happen when the judicial system is asked to protect federal employees, many of whom have devoted their lives to public service. But for those civil servants–and for the communities that they are charged with protecting — I am hopeful that the center will hold, that the rule of law will be upheld, and that human decency will prevail.