Air Date: March 21, 2025

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GOP and Clean Energy Tax Credits / Dylan Baddour


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As President Trump and the Republican-led Congress aim to shrink the federal government and renew major tax cuts, hundreds of billions of dollars in clean energy tax credits could be on the chopping board. Twenty-one House Republicans whose districts are benefiting from the tax credits are petitioning GOP leadership to keep them intact. Inside Climate News Reporter Dylan Baddour joins Host Paloma Beltran to discuss. (09:42)

EPA Abandons Environmental Justice


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President Trump’s EPA is halting funding for EJ programs and shuttering its Office of Environmental Justice. David Cash led EPA Region 1 covering New England during the Biden administration and joins Host Jenni Doering to describe how EJ initiatives were starting to help overburdened communities clean up their air, replace lead pipes and enjoy better health as a result. (13:59)

Feds Drop Major Polluter Case / Andrew Skerritt


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Under President Biden the Department of Justice and EPA sued petrochemical manufacturer Denka, alleging that its Reserve, Louisiana plant posed unacceptable cancer risks. But the Trump administration abruptly dropped the case just weeks before the scheduled start of a trial. Living on Earth Producer Andrew Skerritt visited Reserve to speak to community activists who are being impacted by this decision, and he shares their testimony with Host Paloma Beltran. (08:54)

Fracking Waste Crisis / Kiley Bense


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The expansion of fracking or hydraulic fracturing for natural gas is generating large amounts of waste contaminated with heavy metals and radiation. Some of it gets sent to landfills like one in the small town of Yukon, Pennsylvania. Kiley Bense of Inside Climate News explains to Host Jenni Doering how EPA has documented unacceptable levels of pollution draining from the landfill into a local creek. (13:04)

Show Credits and Funders

Show Transcript

250321 Transcript

HOSTS: Paloma Beltran, Jenni Doering

GUESTS: Dylan Baddour, Kiley Bense, David Cash, Robert Taylor

REPORTERS: Andrew Skerritt

[THEME]

DOERING: From PRX – this is Living on Earth.

[THEME]

DOERING: I’m Jenni Doering.

BELTRAN: And I’m Paloma Beltran

21 House Republicans petition GOP leadership to keep clean energy tax credits.

BADDOUR: They're taking this stance essentially to protect investments that they say have already been made in their districts and in their states as a result of these tax credits. And the Republicans say that it would jeopardize investment and cause further uncertainty if they were to be revoked now.

DOERING: Also, DOJ and EPA are letting a Cancer Alley polluter off the hook.

TAYLOR: I'm still trying to figure out what that means. That means that this government has abandoned us, or either has joined the attack on us here to further enforce the reality of a sacrifice zone.

DOERING: That and more, this week on Living on Earth. Stick around!

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[NEWSBREAK MUSIC: Boards Of Canada “Zoetrope” from “In A Beautiful Place Out In The Country” (Warp Records 2000)]

[THEME]

GOP and Clean Energy Tax Credits

DOERING: From PRX and the Jennifer and Ted Stanley Studios at the University of Massachusetts, Boston, this is Living on Earth. I’m Jenni Doering.

BELTRAN: And I’m Paloma Beltran.

As President Trump and the Republican-led Congress aim to shrink the federal government and renew major tax cuts, Biden-era clean energy tax credits could be on the chopping board. The 2022 Inflation Reduction Act made historic investments in clean energy, including hundreds of billions of dollars in tax credits valid for a decade. Depending on how many businesses and households take advantage of the tax credits, some estimates put the total clean energy tax credit subsidies at $370 billion, while others put the figure at more than $1 trillion. Either way it’s a huge amount, with even more private investment on the line. And money talks in Washington. So, in a letter to the Chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee dated March 9th, twenty-one House Republicans publicly defended the Biden-era tax credits. Dylan Baddour is a Texas-based reporter with our media partner, Inside Climate News and he’s here to explain. Welcome to Living on Earth, Dylan!

BADDOUR: Thanks, Paloma.

BELTRAN: So 21 House Republicans recently wrote a letter asking federal budget planners to protect Biden-era clean energy tax credits. Why are they taking this stance?

BADDOUR: Well, they're taking this stance essentially to protect investments that they say have already been made in their districts and in their states as a result of these tax credits that were issued, made available in the Inflation Reduction Act about three years ago. So in that time, a lot of money has flowed in, counting on these tax credits, and the Republicans say that it would jeopardize investment and cause further uncertainty if they were to be revoked now.

BELTRAN: And who are some of these 21 Republicans who voiced their support for the clean energy tax credits?

BADDOUR: Well, the vast majority of these are Republicans from typically democratic states. I wouldn't say the vast majority, but a lot of them. You know, we had several Republicans from California, several from New York. There were some from Colorado, as well as swing states like Pennsylvania. Perhaps the most Republican state appearing on here is Georgia. Representative Earl Carter signed his name on that list. But for the most part, you know, big conspicuous absences are industrial states like Texas. None of our representatives are on this list.

BELTRAN: And there are a lot of different kinds of clean energy tax credits that were established under the Biden administration. Which credits do these Republicans seem most keen on carrying forward through the Trump administration?

BADDOUR: Well, In general, any lawmakers are most keen on carrying forward the tax credits that affect their particular states and districts. In this case, we see support for almost all of them, except for the EV tax credits. We spoke with one, Representative Don Bacon from Nebraska, a big corn state, who in particular wanted to protect the tax credits available for ethanol fuels, which all across the board, would be seen as one of the less new groundbreaking programs there in the IRA, however, extremely relevant for Nebraska, where they produce a lot of corn that becomes ethanol. There were at least three lawmakers from California, which is big on solar and wind, who have also benefited from that. There is money for hydrogen project developments, which still remains a bit off in the future. There was money for carbon capture and sequestration projects, which they've also been doing in California. So it's a lot of different tentacles here, reaching out to a lot of different energy fields.

BELTRAN: And you know, you said that no Texas representatives have signed on, despite the fact that wind energy is huge in Texas. Why do you think that is?

BADDOUR: Yeah, that's a good question. I'd say a lot of it has to do with just not breaking ranks politically with the establishment here in Texas. You know, it's not just wind energy. I'd say every one of these fields has a big presence here in Texas, including solar, including carbon capture projects, including hydrogen hubs. They're wanting to build them up and down the coast. So Texas has a lot to gain from these programs, a lot of energy development that's been sparked by these programs. And I would imagine that representatives here are aware of that. But, you know, you just kind of got to follow step with the big forces in Washington and in Texas.

BELTRAN: You know, it's kind of become politically risky for Republicans to support electric vehicles. So to what extent are there any Republican representatives who support EVs?

BADDOUR: I have not heard any in particular speak out about EVs. However, the role of Elon Musk in the government has certainly changed the cultural position of electric vehicles here in the United States. I have not heard him speak out explicitly on this tax credit policy. However, the cultural shifts in attitudes that he is ushering in towards electric vehicles has been pretty stark, and I think it's still too early to say exactly how that's playing out, but electric vehicles have been for a long time associated with Democrats, the green agenda, the climate people. And here comes Elon Musk, electric vehicle, you know, magnate of the United States, who's not really associated with any of those things, and in fact, has become one of the biggest, boldest supporters of President Trump, to the extent that President Trump bought a Tesla electric vehicle at the White House in a very big press event, and he gave a little commercial for Teslas there, I'm here in Texas, oil and gas, capital of the country, of the world, in some ways, Elon Musk also based here in Texas. Since Elon Musk has set up shop in Texas over these past 10 years, definitely, our state leadership has lightened its tone on electric vehicles from sort of sharp rhetoric that they, they used to use, because now this guy's the richest man in the world. He's a Republican muscle man. He is an electric vehicle guy. So where does that leave electric vehicles in the culture wars? Too soon to say, certainly we don't hear any big, outspoken Republican supporters at this time.

BELTRAN: And what about industry, Dylan? You know, how is industry responding to the possibility of these tax credits being taken away?

BADDOUR: Well, I recall something that I heard a week or two ago in Houston. It was CERAWeek, the year's biggest oil and gas conference, and there was a phrase being kicked around, kind of on Twitter and in quiet places, that the Trump administration is great for morale and bad for business, because, despite of all the talk and all the hype about the energy emergency and establishing American energy dominance, revoking these tax credits have a big impact, not just on the projects that have depended on them, but on other businesses who are thinking of investing and thinking of starting projects because this degree of uncertainty, setting this example, that tax credits that were set three years ago for a 10 year duration can now be revoked, well, that kind of breaks trust, I think, with other companies in the private sector with these kind of incentive programs from the US government, and it has already created a degree of uncertainty that might send investors and developers looking to build in other places.

BELTRAN: So 21 House Republicans are trying to keep the clean energy tax credits alive. To what extent do you think this indicates a growing bipartisan support for clean energy?

BADDOUR: There's definitely a growing bipartisan support for clean energy, not because it's clean, but because it's energy, really. And I think we've got to a point where any energy projects that generate money are going to be seen favorably almost anywhere. And that's really what they're trying to protect here, is not the clean nature of things, but the energy investments that have already been made. And if anything, the attitude right now is that we just need more energy, more energy of every kind. It's almost like it doesn't matter what, just build us some energy so we can run these data centers and all this other stuff that we're trying to build. Given the future load growth projected, we don't really have the luxury to be taking energy projects offline or killing them at this time.

BELTRAN: So Dylan, before you go, how much political leverage do you think these 21 House Republicans have? You know, to what extent does this tilt the scales in a closely divided Congress?

BADDOUR: Well, they themselves won't have a lot of personal leverage and power, but I think that the arguments that they're bringing forward are arguments that a lot of other lawmakers share in their feelings and in their thoughts, but ones that they might not be at political liberty to bring forward because of the state of the establishment in Washington or in their states. So I do think that these arguments will carry a lot more weight than just, you know, the 21 representative names that are signed on to the letter, but what President Trump is going to need to pass through his tax reforms, that would include the removal of these credits is just a simple majority in the Senate. So given that balance, it's a tight question, and it's complicated, because not all Republicans support all of the tax credits, not all Democrats support all of the tax credits. There's a lot of lines that get crossed in there. So it's definitely not clear at all how this is going to come out. It could be fairly simple for the Republicans to get a simple majority on a lot of these, but certainly not all of them.

BELTRAN: Dylan Baddour is a Texas-based reporter with her media partner, Inside Climate News. Dylan, thank you so much for joining us.

BADDOUR: Thanks for having me, Paloma.

Related links:
- Inside Climate News | “Some Republicans Defend Clean Energy Tax Credits from Trump Administration Cuts”
- Congress of the United States | “Letter to The Honorable Jason Smith Chairman”
- The New York Times "The Republicans Pushing Trump to Save Biden's Clean Energy Tax Credits"

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[MUSIC: Peter Rowan and Don Edwards, “I’m Going to Leave Old Texas Now” on High Lonesome Cowboy, Traditional Texas, Smithsonian Folkways Recordings, originally released by Western Jubilee Recording Company]

DOERING: Coming up, The Trump EPA is terminating its office of environmental justice. Stay tuned to Living on Earth.

ANNOUNCER: Support for Living on Earth comes from Sailors for the Sea and Oceana. Helping boaters race clean, sail green and protect the seas they love. More information @sailorsforthesea.org.

[CUTAWAY MUSIC: Jeff Little, “I’ll Fly Away” on Jeff Little, by Albert E. Brumley, JTL Music]

EPA Abandons Environmental Justice

BELTRAN: It’s Living on Earth, I’m Paloma Beltran.

DOERING: And I’m Jenni Doering.

Former president Joe Biden made environmental justice a core initiative of his administration and especially his Environmental Protection Agency. But as President Trump seeks to undo Biden’s legacy, his EPA is halting funding for EJ programs and shuttering its Offices of Environmental Justice and Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion or DEI. David Cash led EPA’s Region One covering New England until January 20th, as it is customary for regional administrators to resign when a new President is sworn in. He’s here to discuss the changes at EPA and the impacts they could have on vulnerable communities. David Cash, welcome back to Living on Earth!

CASH: Thanks. It's good to be here.

DOERING: So let's start with the cuts to environmental justice programs responsible for serving marginalized, disadvantaged communities. Can you give us an overview of the key EJ programs at EPA and what impact they had?

CASH: Yeah, there are a number of them and all of them are being targeted by this new EPA, and the whole foundational focus of the EJ program is to address long standing burdens that poor and minority communities have suffered under because of where things like highways and manufacturing facilities and power plants are cited and because of the public health implications of that. So for example, minorities in low income communities have higher rates of things like asthma and heart disease and cancer because they're closer to these sources of pollution. So the whole focus of environmental justice programs, which go back decades, by the way, and have transcended Democratic and Republican administrations, is to figure out how to alleviate these burdens and turn these wrongs of environmental injustices into environmental justice. And what these investments did, these environmental justice investments did was provide funding for electric school buses in these communities, provided funding to remove lead pipes in these communities. Blood lead levels for kids that live in these communities is higher than in other communities. Why shouldn't we want to invest in these communities? If they're so concerned with efficiency and impact and effectiveness, that's precisely where we should be investing our resources. So essentially, what EPA is doing is eviscerating these programs by reducing staff, freezing funding, and all of those kinds of things that are going to hurt these communities.

DOERING: And by the way, what do you make of the administration's denial of environmental justice itself? I mean, EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin has called it, “so-called environmental justice.”

CASH: I mean, it's part and parcel with how they're approaching all of this, which is not using science and not using evidence, and being driven by ideology or being driven by the desire to put the interests of polluters, fossil fuel companies, toxic chemical producers, ahead of protecting our children, ahead of protecting our air, ahead of protecting our water. So of course, to justify that, they're going to have to say it's unfair, or whatever it is, whatever excuse they're giving, when in fact, it's the exact opposite. The investments that we're making by focusing on environmental justice bring the greatest impact that we possibly can.

DOERING: Now, this administration seems to be taking a sort of race blind approach to what they're doing across the government. I mean, they're getting rid of DEI, they're lumping in environmental justice as part of that. So what exactly does environmental justice mean when it comes to race as well as other aspects of a community?

CASH: So race is highly correlated with the kind of problems that I talked about, the overburdening of different kinds of pollution in particular areas. So it's correlated with but it doesn't necessarily mean that communities that are black or brown, absolutely have these kinds of environmental injustices, but it's a good correlate. And so for example, Springfield, Springfield, Massachusetts, is an old industrial city, and is both a low-income community, it has median income that's about half the state average, and it's also a majority minority community. It has one of the highest asthma rates in the country, and so they applied, a very robust, rigorous application process to get between 19 and $20 million of an Environmental Justice grant to completely renovate many municipal buildings so that they would be more energy efficient, that would invest in electric vehicles within the municipal fleet, that would help people who live in apartments get energy retrofits so that they could clean up their apartments so they wouldn't have oil furnaces and that kind of stuff that pollute the air, pollute their kids. Some of this money was going to go to clean up houses that continually have mold problems, which we know cause asthma, that have lead pipes. So this was going to save the city money so they could focus, let's say, on education instead of energy costs, and it was going to save money for these customers. So Springfield had an opportunity to clean up its air, clean up its water, hire local people to do these jobs, and the EPA is putting the kibosh on that.

DOERING: So let's talk more about replacing lead pipes and clean drinking water. You know, many of these communities relied heavily on EPA programs to provide them with assistance for you know, replacing lead pipes. How is that going to be impacted by this EPA effort to erase environmental justice programs?

CASH: It's going to make it very harder for these cities and towns to clean up their water. It will mean more and more people exposed to lead, and kids exposed to lead, and therefore kids having education problems and attention deficit problems, all of those kinds of things that are related to high blood lead levels, and at this point, it's completely unlawful, what EPA is doing. These are congressionally mandated investments, mandated to go to communities that have been overburdened and are vulnerable. And essentially what EPA is doing by blocking and freezing the funding, is flouting what Congress has told them to do. And so essentially we're going to see more public health impacts because of this EPA pulling back on these programs.

DOERING: You know, Dr. Cash, Administrator Zeldin says that he's giving some of the responsibility of environmental protection back to the states. What's your reaction to that approach?

CASH: So the Environmental Protection Agency in this country has always been partnered with state environmental protection agencies, and I used to be a Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection Commissioner, so I worked for the state, and I worked hand in hand with EPA. I didn't always agree with EPA, but I saw EPA as a co regulator, and that's the relationship it always has, and always should have. And you know, with changes in administration, sure, there's different focus on states, there are different focuses on what roles each should play, but a full abandonment of the role of the federal EPA will leave states in the lurch. The states depend on EPA for funding. They depend on EPA for scientific advancement and monitoring, scientific monitoring of pollution, on analysis, scientific analysis. So you may have heard this week, it was announced that EPA is going to get rid of the Office of Research and Development. That's essentially the scientists who do all of the work that states depend on, that EPA depends on, other federal agencies depend on, something on the order of 1500 scientists, biologists, chemists, hydrologists, the kind of people who understand why pipes might be filled with water that has lead in it, why an industrial polluting site might be toxic for your children, why the particular kinds of cars that drive by might cause asthma, right? These are the scientists that drive what we do. EPA, by statute, is a scientific organization, and by eviscerating the science program, what are you doing? You're eviscerating the ability to regulate, to hold accountable the polluters, to provide the benefits to communities all over the country who want to have clean air and clean water.

DOERING: Now, EPA is a science-based agency, is what I hear you saying. And in early February, the Trump administration removed from the EPA website the EJ screen and mapping tool that was provided for the public, which kind of like brought the science and understanding of environmental issues directly to the public. So what was this online resource used for? And what do you think its removal means for communities?

CASH: Yeah, so this was a database and mapping tool that allowed you, as the user, anyone in the public, or if you're a planner in a city, or if you're the air quality director in a state could go to this map and ask questions of it. Where are there high asthma rates? Where are there toxic waste sites? Where do we see water quality problems in ponds? Something like that. You can ask lots of different questions and ask this map to map it with these correlates of things like income and race and public health impacts and things like that, so that if you're a municipality, if you're a state, if you're the EPA, you could say, hmm, maybe we should focus our electric vehicle program on these cities because they have high asthma rates. Or, oh, maybe we should be focusing our clean water programs on these areas, because these are where people recreate in waters, you know, things like that. So it's an incredible tool. There's no ideology behind this tool. This is a tool backed by decades of data collection, monitoring data in which we partner with states and cities to get the right data. It's all checked and double checked and triple checked, and it's a tool. It's a tool of information. It's a tool of science. So you could see why it would be taken down, because what this tool points to are areas where we should be investing and protecting people's health and put a path forward on how to hold accountable these polluters.

DOERING: You know, the Office of Environmental Justice at EPA was actually established by President Bush Senior over three decades ago. What has been its history of addressing environmental justice issues, particularly environmental racism in this country?

CASH: I mean, it's a checkered history, of course, and there have been times where there's been more focus on it and times when there's been less focus on it. But throughout all, it's been driven by the scientific research and research that shows, for example, that communities that are in the areas where there are more fossil fuel plants, more manufacturing facilities, transportation corridors, have higher rates of asthma and heart disease and lung disease and cancer and so again, it's been on and off, but in the last four years, the focus on it has brought huge benefits to communities all over this country, red states, blue states, urban areas, rural areas, agricultural areas, all of those have benefited by having cleaner water and cleaner air and seeing increase in job growth, because all of these programs are about growing jobs in these communities as well, whether those are the jobs of replacing lead pipes or the new battery manufacturing facility that's in Kentucky or West Virginia, or the new bus manufacturing facility. I mean, those are jobs. Those are jobs, jobs, jobs, precisely in the communities that need it most. So those are at risk as well.

DOERING: How do these recent decisions, you know, the undoing of environmental programs, impact people's trust on the EPA, which, as you mentioned, has a checkered history when it comes to addressing climate justice. I imagine it takes time to build trust.

CASH: Absolutely. You know, when I visited communities all over New England at the beginning of my time working at EPA Region One, there was a lot of mistrust. You know, we said, oh, there's funding that's going to be coming to help your community. The Inflation Reduction Act was just passed, the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law was just passed, and there was a lot of skepticism. And we kept on saying this new staff is going to be able to help you out. We're going to have technical assistance for you. We're going to help you figure out how to craft an application for a grant that can best support you. And you know, we built trust over time, and wasn't perfect. They still have skepticism, and they should, but now, now this is like skepticism on an order of magnitude, so much higher, because they're seeing basic tenets of our democratic system being questioned, when our legal system is being flouted, when law firms are being targeted, when science is being undermined. These are all basic tenets of democracy, all of which the underlying Foundations of Law and separation of powers is being questioned in a way that it never has.

DOERING: Dr. David Cash is the former EPA Administrator for Region One, New England. Thank you so much, Dr. Cash.

CASH: Thanks for having me.

Related links:
- Hear our conversation with David Cash from 2024 on federal funding for environmental projects
- Learn more about David Cash
- Learn more about the Environmental Protection Agency
- WBUR | “Outgoing New England EPA Head Says Trump’s Environmental Agenda Is ‘Counter to the Values’ of U.S.”
- Learn more about the Inflation Reduction Act
- An open letter from EPA staff to the American public

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[MUSIC: Expansions: The Dave Liebman Group, “Searcher 2” on Samsara, by Miles Davis, Whaling City Sound]

Feds Drop Major Polluter Case

BELTRAN: The Trump Administration’s dismissal of environmental justice is having a big impact on people in “Cancer Alley.” That’s the stretch of the Mississippi River between Baton Rouge and New Orleans with a high concentration of petrochemical plants. One of those plants is Denka Performance Elastomer and produces neoprene, a synthetic rubber that is found in products such as wetsuits and laptop sleeves. The manufacturing involves the release of a cancer-causing chemical called chloroprene. And residents of Reserve, Louisiana, the predominantly Black community near the plant, have long voiced concerns about breathing issues among children and high adult cancer rates. In 2023 under President Biden, the Department of Justice on behalf of the EPA sued Denka, alleging that the plant posed unacceptable cancer risks. But the Trump administration abruptly dropped the case just weeks before the scheduled start of a trial. Days after the DOJ announcement, our Living on Earth colleague Andrew Skerritt visited Reserve to speak to community activists who are being impacted by this decision, and he joins us now. Hi Andrew, how are you?

SKERRITT: I’m doing well, Paloma.

BELTRAN: So how are activists responding to President Trump's decision?

SKERRIT: You know, I talked to Robert Taylor, founder of Concerned Citizens of Saint John, one of the groups campaigning for the plant to lower its toxic emissions. His group wasn’t part of the lawsuit, but he was still reeling from the DOJ’s announcement.

TAYLOR: Well, I was astounded by, you know, I'm still recovering, I'm still trying to figure that out. I'm still trying to figure out that, what that means, that means that this government has abandoned us, or either has joined the attack on us here to further enforce the reality of a sacrifice zone that these people here, me, my people, our people are being sacrificed.

SKERRITT: Robert was born in Saint John the Baptist Parish within walking distance of where the plant now sits. He married his high school sweetheart five years before the plant was built, in 1968. And they’ve lived in their Reserve neighborhood for more than 60 years.

BELTRAN: So how has this plant in such close proximity to Robert’s home impacted his life?

SKERRITT: Robert was an electrician and later a general contractor. He mostly worked 30-40 miles away in New Orleans and other communities. He was aware of the prevalence of cancer and other serious illnesses among his relatives and neighbors, but the reality of the plant’s emissions didn’t really sink in. That was until he returned home one evening in 2016 to find his wife, Zenobia, in distress.

TAYLOR: Yeah, I came home one night from work, and my wife was I thought she was dying. I immediately called 911, so I'm asking her, what happened? She said, that plant, she said, a wind changed, and it's now blowing, she said, and it's been blowing this way for a week, and that stuff just made me sick. I couldn't, I couldn't stand it anymore, so we rushed her to the hospital. She survived that. But during the process of this, I called 911, and they showed up. And when the fire chief finally arrived, and he jumped out of his car, and he stopped in his tracks, and he looked around, he said, my God, how can they expect y'all to live like this, you know?

SKERRITT: Robert said the fire chief was reacting to the prominent chemical smell in the air. His wife Zenobia waged a long battle with breast cancer and other illnesses before she died last December. And his youngest daughter, Raven, suffers from a rare auto-immune disease. All of which he believes is a result of their lifelong exposure to the chemicals being released from the plant next door.

BELTRAN: Oh wow that’s awful. You know, I’ve actually been to this petrochemical belt in Louisiana and there’s definitely a strong smell.

SKERRITT: Yeah and you know Paloma, the Denka plant was built just a quarter mile away from the overwhelmingly Black Fifth Ward Elementary School. Robert worries for the students.

TAYLOR: And to have that thing in that close to proximity to this community as a whole, you know the idea of children being exposed at these outrageous levels, all science shows that the children are far more vulnerable than an adult. If that’s the case with these children, their life's going to be cut short.

SKERRITT: After years of pressure from activists, the local school board finally voted to close Fifth Ward Elementary. This fall students will be reassigned to schools east of the plant to reduce their daily exposure to Denka’s chemical emissions. Deena Tumeh is a senior lawyer at Earthjustice who’s working with Robert Taylor’s group. She said the threat posed by Denka’s emissions is real.

TUMEH: They are dangerous. The facts on the ground for this case are really strong. St. John faces some of the highest cancer risk from toxic air pollution in the nation. And when EPA brought this enforcement case, it concluded that a child born near Denka would accumulate double his or her lifetime cancer risk from chloroprene alone by the age of two. So this lawsuit wasn't about hypothetical harm. It wasn't about marginal harm. It was about stopping ongoing and very dangerous pollution.

BELTRAN: Well, and even though this one school is being closed, people like Robert Taylor still live right by the plant. So given the threat posed by Denka’s emissions, what reasoning did the Department of Justice give for dismissing the case?

SKERRIT: DOJ officials said they are fulfilling President Trump’s executive order called, “Ending Radical and Wasteful Government DEI Programs and Preferencing.” EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin said this move is a step toward ensuring that environmental enforcement is consistent with the law. He added that while EPA’s core mission includes securing clean air for all Americans, the agency can fulfill that mission within well-established legal frameworks. He also said the EPA doesn’t need to stretch the bounds of the law or improperly implement “so-called environmental justice.” But Deena Tumeh is just not impressed. She said the EPA is putting politics and corporate profits ahead of people.

TUMEH: So the Trump EPA’s decision to drop this enforcement case leaves the St. John community without sufficient federal protection, and it leaves them at the mercy of industry, right? It allows these corporate emissions to continue harming people who've already been breathing it for years. And this decision also signals, it'll say to industry, that environmental harms will go unchecked, right? If a company can release toxic chemicals at harmful levels with little consequence, other polluters will follow suit. The Trump EPA claims to care about Americans’ rights to clean air, but if it did, it wouldn't be dropping an enforcement case like this one where pollution is at its worst, right? The reality is that communities like St. John need more protection from the federal government, not less.

BELTRAN: So what options do fence line residents like those in Saint John have when it comes to calling for protections from toxic emissions like those from the Denka plant?

SKERRITT: Deena said these communities will have to keep fighting and that they’ll have to look for help closer to home.

TUMEH: So dropping this enforcement case tells other cancer alley communities and other communities across the country facing severe toxic air pollution that they can't rely on the federal government to enforce federal law, and with the federal government stepping back, these communities will have to rely on state enforcement, local advocacy, and lawsuits that they bring to hold polluters accountable. Community advocates will also need to keep pushing the EPA and the DOJ to strengthen protections and public attention and media coverage will also help compel action from the government.

BELTRAN: You know, Andrew, where do Robert Taylor and the Concerned Citizens of St. John go from here?

SKERRITT: You know, Robert is 84 years old, but he’s determined to keep fighting for the health of his community. And the world is paying attention.

BELTRAN: Thanks, Andrew.

SKERRIT: Thank you, Paloma.

BELTRAN: That’s Living on Earth’s Producer Andrew Skerritt.

On March 7, Denka released a statement which says in part, “no emergency can exist when the facility’s emissions are at a historical low as a result of Denka’s investment of more than $35 million and the innovation of its workforce. The company remains committed to implementing the emissions reductions achieved as we turn the page from this relentless and draining attack on our business.” To read the full statement visit the Living on Earth website at loe.org.

--

STATEMENT FROM DENKA PERFORMANCE ELASTOMER (DPE) ON DISMISSAL OF EPA LAWSUIT:

EPA and DPE reached an agreement for EPA to dismiss the agency’s “imminent and substantial endangerment” case against our company, marking a long-overdue and appropriate end to a case lacking scientific and legal merit from the start.

No “emergency” can exist when the facility’s emissions are at an historical low as a result of DPE’s investment (more than $35 million) and the innovation of its workforce. Scientifically, the Integrated Risk Information System (IRIS) review program was misused to dramatically exaggerate the cancer risk of chloroprene with a series of overly conservative assumptions stacked on top of 20-year-old data. As a result, the actual potential health risk was not properly communicated to the community, the established process for risk assessment was disregarded, and the Louisiana Tumor Registry (LTR) was ignored. The LTR shows that cancer incidence rates in our community are in the lowest quartile in the state. The focus should be on the real-world data that shows no adverse health effects, even at substantially higher emission levels.

DPE remains committed to implementing the emissions reductions achieved as we turn the page from this relentless and draining attack on our business. We are also committed to working with the EPA to develop a sensible replacement for the Section 112 emissions standards for neoprene production.

We thank the Trump Administration and are grateful for the unwavering support of Governor Jeff Landry, Louisiana’s other elected leaders, and DPE’s dedicated workforce during this challenging period.

Related links:
- AP | “Justice Dept. Says Ending Louisiana Petrochemical Case Helps ‘Dismantle Radical DEI Programs’”
- U.S. Department of Justice | “Justice Department Dismisses Suit Against Suit Against Denka, Delivering President Trump’s Mandate to End Radical DEI Program”
- Environmental Integrity Project | “Trump Dropping Clean Air Act Enforcement Case in Louisiana “Raises Alarm Bells”
- MSNBC | “Cancer Alley Residents Fight for Public Health After Trump Drops Biden Era Pollution Lawsuit”

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[MUSIC: Lou Donaldson, “Autumn Nocturne” on Blues Walk, Blue Note Records]

DOERING: Just ahead, fracking waste is piling up and spilling out of some Pennsylvania landfills. Keep listening to Living on Earth.

ANNOUNCER: Support for Living on Earth comes from Friends of Smeagull the Seagull and Smeagull’s Guide to Wildlife. It’s all about the wildlife right next door to you! That’s Smeagull, S - M - E - A - G - U - L - L, SmeagullGuide.org.

[CUTAWAY MUSIC: Pinetop Perkins, “Careless Love” on Ladies Man, by Leadbetter, M.C. Records]

Fracking Waste Crisis

BELTRAN: It’s Living on Earth, I’m Paloma Beltran.

DOERING: And I’m Jenni Doering.

There are communities all across the country fighting industrial pollution. And we turn now to the small, predominantly white town of Yukon in western Pennsylvania, which faces a fracking waste crisis. Fracking, or hydraulic fracturing for natural gas, leaves behind contaminated wastewater as well as solid waste, which gets sent to landfills like one in Yukon. In 2023, after decades of locals raising concerns about air and water pollution from the landfill, the Environmental Protection Agency finally conducted an inspection. The resulting report states that in addition to showing signs of disrepair, the landfill is draining heavy metals into a local creek at levels far above what its permit allows. Here to speak to us about this fracking waste is Inside Climate News reporter Kiley Bense. Welcome back to Living on Earth, Kiley!

BENSE: Thanks so much for having me. I'm really excited to be here.

DOERING: So I understand that you actually spent eight months reporting this story about Yukon, Pennsylvania. Paint a picture for me, please, of Yukon. Who lives there, and what's the landscape like?

BENSE: Sure, Yukon is kind of a typical small town in western Pennsylvania. It's about 30 miles from Pittsburgh, set on Appalachian hills. It's a lot of small houses, horse paddocks, chicken coops. It's actually quite bucolic. There's a creek that runs through or next to the town that has all these beautiful old trees, and the fall foliage was in full form when I was there. So it's quite pretty.

DOERING: Yeah, sounds like real small-town America.

BENSE: Yeah. And then in terms of who lives there, it's a small town, only a few hundred residents. Most of the residents are older, so people who are retired, living on fixed income, and the income level tends to be slightly lower than the rest of the state.

DOERING: So how is Yukon being impacted by fracking waste?

BENSE: So I think the story of how Yukon is being impacted by industrial pollution, which includes oil and gas waste, goes back quite a long ways. There's a landfill there that's owned by a company called MAX Environmental Technologies, and that landfill opened in 1964, so there's a lot of history. In terms of fracking waste, the landfill started to take more waste related to the fracking boom when fracking started in Pennsylvania. So that was in the early 2000s and then it really ramped up in the 2010s, and that's when the landfill started to take this kind of waste. And residents who live in Yukon had complained about waste and pollution from the landfill before this, but many of them noticed, or started to feel that the pollution from the landfill was worse when they started taking fracking waste. So residents noticed things like odors, dust, truck traffic, noise, light that was really impacting their quality of life.

DOERING: You know, of course, landfills are supposed to, in theory, keep in the bad stuff that we put into them. But in this case, it seems like some of it was getting out into the environment, and people were noticing. So what specifically were they seeing in terms of this pollution?

BENSE: So I think one of the most alarming things that we've seen is increased radioactivity in the waterways that the landfill discharges wastewater into. There's a creek called Sewickley Creek that is, again, as I mentioned, this beautiful spot where people fish and swim and kayak. Children play there. And there's a discharge pipe from the landfill that goes into this creek, and scientists from the University of Pittsburgh and Duquesne University have done testing at this outfall, which is basically a word for the discharge point, both upstream and downstream of the point. And they've found increased radioactivity in the sediment downstream. It's unclear what the effects will be on the environment and people, but it is kind of alarming. And then the other effects are increased water pollution that includes heavy metals like arsenic, lead, cadmium, zinc. And then, as I mentioned before, this air pollution.

DOERING: So you said there's an outfall pipe going right into this creek. Why is there this pipe that's directly linking a landfill with a creek?

BENSE: So this is quite common, and this is really emblematic of the way that our country regulates hazardous waste and landfills in general. People might think that when we issue a permit to a landfill, maybe that permit says you can't pollute our public waterways at all, but that's actually not what permits say. They basically set limits for how many or the types and levels of pollutants that can be discharged into the stream. And in this case, MAX Environmental over multiple years exceeded those limits. The fact remains that even when they're operating legally, they're still allowed to just discharge things like arsenic into the water.

DOERING: And what is this waste, exactly? I mean, you know, it's a byproduct of fracking, but what is in it and where does it come from?

BENSE: Sure. So MAX Environmental takes a ton of different kinds of industrial waste, both hazardous and non-hazardous. Important to note that most oil and gas waste is not considered hazardous, so it is treated less stringently than waste that is labeled hazardous, but oil and gas waste and fracking waste is toxic and often radioactive. And the reason for that is that when you frack, so when you drill a well, it requires a huge amount of water, and there's often like chemicals that are added, drilling fluids that are added to that water in order to release the gas from the rock. And then when they successfully drill the well, the water comes back up. It's already been contaminated with the chemicals from the company, and then it's further contaminated with radioactive materials and heavy metals that are like deep underground. So some of the chemicals that they have specifically been cited for violating the permit exceedances, so how much they've discharged into the creek, for example, are things like lead and cadmium and arsenic and zinc. And then there's also this issue of radioactivity. Basically, the oil and gas industry creates a huge amount of toxic and radioactive material, both solid waste and water. And with the oil and gas industry, this has been a known problem for decades. It's not like this is a new issue. Fracking accelerated it and created a lot more of this waste, especially in a place like Pennsylvania, which saw a huge uptick in natural gas production because of fracking. But this has always been a problem, and we've sort of been, you know, kicking the can down the road for many years now.

DOERING: Tell me more about the potential health impacts of this waste. You mentioned radiation. How is that affecting the local people and community and Yukon residents?

BENSE: Yeah. So a lot of really good questions there. To start with the radioactivity, we don't really know how it's impacting people's health and animals and plants in the area, mostly because it's under studied. It doesn't mean that there isn't an impact. We just don't know. And then in terms of other health impacts from the landfill, there's a long history of residents in Yukon complaining about things like elevated levels of cancer in this small community, respiratory symptoms like asthma, sore throats, headaches and then reproductive symptoms like miscarriages that people believe is because of exposure to pollution from the landfill. It's really heartbreaking, the testimonies of residents, like if you read the transcripts of public hearings where people have gone and talked about the impacts on their lives and their neighbors, it's really devastating.

DOERING: Now the U.S. EPA and Pennsylvania's Department of Environmental Protection did investigate MAX Environmental Technology's landfill. What did they find there?

BENSE: So what they found was pretty alarming. The EPA inspected the landfill in March of 2023 and they found what they called pretty significant disrepair. One of the things that inspectors saw was a containment building, which is supposed to hold untreated hazardous waste, had a hole in the roof and was leaking. And on the day that inspectors were at the landfill, it was raining, and they were able to watch the waste and run-off like leaking out of the building.

DOERING: Wow, that seems concerning.

BENSE: Yes, it definitely seems concerning. It's literally a containment building that is supposed to contain the waste, so if there's a leak in it, that is a big problem.

DOERING: So Kiley, we have this landfill that's wildly out of compliance with their permits, but at the same time, it sounds like nobody entirely knows what to do with fracking waste. So what's the solution here?

BENSE: I mean, I wish I knew the answer to that. That is a huge question that no one has really solved. There have been many solutions, so to speak, tried about what to do with fracking waste. For example, a lot of fracking wastewater is sent to injection wells, which you may have heard about, because in other states they've caused earthquakes. And then another thing that now is banned in a lot of places, but not all of them, is using this wastewater because it's very salty to deal with ice and snow on public roads. You can see why that might be a long term problem, or might cause long term problems to put toxic and radioactive water on public roads. To my knowledge, nobody has a long-term solution. I don't think that we know of one.

DOERING: So what's next at this point for MAX Environmental Technology's landfill? To what extent are there any actions they need to take to comply with the permits that they have?

BENSE: So there's a lot of different requirements that they need to fulfill based on these two consent orders that the EPA issued last year. And they talk about the requirements that the landfill has to meet in order to come into compliance. And it's very detailed. There's deadlines, you know, it requires, like hiring a third party auditor to make sure that everything's above board. It's a long process, though. So the EPA was keeping a very close eye on the landfill in communication with the company and making sure that they were meeting deadlines and doing the repairs that needed to be made and hopefully meeting the standards that are outlined in the permit.

DOERING: So of course, the U.S. EPA is currently in turmoil as the Trump administration slashes jobs, and even though some jobs have been restored, there's a lot of uncertainty. How might major cuts at EPA impact this situation with this landfill?

BENSE: I think it's too soon to know for sure what it will mean for this specific site, but I will say that residents and activists who work on this issue are concerned about this because it does seem like the Trump administration really wants to roll back environmental regulations and cut staff. And that is not helpful for making sure that this company comes into compliance. This is a very complex and large operation, and these consent orders are many pages long. There's all these detailed requirements. You know, it requires staying on top of it, and it requires time and effort and personnel, especially personnel with expertise. And, you know, if you're cutting the agency, it's unclear how well they're going to be able to stay on top of the orders and on top of the company.

DOERING: Kiley, before you go, what can other communities who have been affected by fracking waste learn from Yukon?

BENSE: I mean, I think that one of the things that made a difference here, and that led to these consent orders and this investigation happening, and all of this pressure coming from the federal government and the state government is that the residents there and people who are involved locally have been resisting and speaking out and protesting and writing their state legislators for decades. They have not given up, despite many obstacles and the many difficulties in being heard. And I do think that any progress that has been made in terms of regulating this landfill so that it is operating more safely is because of those grassroots movements and the work being done by residents, that the voices of individual people really do matter. And I'd also say that, although this story focuses on this small town in western Pennsylvania, it really does have resonance and importance for the whole state and the whole country. Whether you live near one of these landfills or not, this does affect you in ways, both large and small, and it's part of the price and the cost of our oil and gas development in this country.

DOERING: Kiley Bense is a reporter based in Pennsylvania for our media partner, Inside Climate News. Thank you so much, Kiley.

BENSE: Thank you.

DOERING: The landfill owner MAX Environmental provided a statement that reads in part, “There is no air or radiation pollution from our Yukon operations. There have been some exceedances of metals in our permitted effluent discharges from our wastewater treatment plant which we are in the process of correcting.” The full statement is linked to on the Living on Earth website, loe.org.

--

STATEMENTS FROM MAX ENVIRONMENTAL TECHNOLOGIES IN AN EMAIL DIALOGUE

LIVING ON EARTH: We are collaborating with the Inside Climate News reporter Kiley Bense to cover the situation in Yukon, PA. It is our understanding that the residents of Yukon, as well as the state and federal governments, claim that Max Environmental’s landfill is polluting Yukon both through the air and water and that some of that pollution is radioactive.

MAX ENVIRONMENTAL TECHNOLOGIES: There is no air or radiation pollution from our Yukon operations. There have been some exceedances of metals in our permitted effluent discharges from our wastewater treatment plant which we are in the process of correcting. We do not believe that these exceedances have caused any negative environmental impact to the receiving stream (Sewickley Creek). We also do not believe that our operations are causing any impact to our neighbors’ properties or their health. EPA has stated that the environmental indicators of potential human exposure and potential groundwater impacts are under control.

LIVING ON EARTH: What is your understanding of the situation in Yukon? What is Max doing to address the EPA and DEP’s concerns? What is Max Environmental’s long term plan for the landfill in Yukon?

MAX ENVIRONMENTAL TECHNOLOGIES: The situation with our Yukon facility is that we are a properly permitted waste treatment and disposal facility and provide a needed service to industry and government and private cleanup projects in the mid-Atlantic region and beyond.

Based on an inspection conducted in 2023, EPA concluded that there were some operational areas that needed to be further evaluated and improved, resulting in two EPA consent orders with MAX to address those issues. We are complying with those consent orders regarding the treatment and testing of waste and the treatment of wastewater. We are also working with EPA and PADEP to resolve any outstanding concerns that the agencies may have, including the repair of infrastructure, updating operational plans and improvements to our wastewater treatment operations. A third-party audit of our Yukon waste treatment and testing operations concluded that we are treating and testing waste properly. EPA has approved that audit report. A third-party consultant has evaluated our wastewater treatment plant, concluding that we have made some improvements along with suggesting some additional evaluation of our operations to determine if additional improvements are necessary. EPA is reviewing a report prepared by that consultant. MAX will review any comments from EPA on that report and will take appropriate actions after it is received.

We plan to continue our current waste treatment operations at Yukon long into the future. Treated waste is shipped off-site for disposal at permitted facilities and some is still disposed of on-site in our permitted landfill. Any landfill expansion plans have been put on hold for the time being.

Related links:
- Read Part 1 of Kiley Bense’s article here
- Read Part 2 of Kiley Bense’s article here
- Examine documents connected to MAX Environmental Technologies’ landfill.
- Learn more about fracking

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[MUSIC: William Coulter & Benjamin Verdery, “Flow Gently Sweet Afton” on Song for Our Ancestors, Traditional Scottish/arr. Coulter & Verdery, Solid Air Records]

BELTRAN: Next time on Living on Earth, as we were preparing this broadcast we learned that a North Dakota jury awarded the pipeline company Energy Transfer hundreds of millions of dollars. That money would satisfy claims the company was defamed and improperly harassed by Greenpeace during protests in the state nearly a decade ago. The award, if it stands, would likely bankrupt the environmental group. Greenpeace has denied the claims, saying the ruling is an attack on First Amendment free speech rights to protest, and has already filed a counter suit in court in the Netherlands. Greenpeace under fire in court for its role in the Standing Rock Sioux Dakota Access Pipeline protests.

DOERING: And next week we’ll also talk more about the attacks on science in the federal government.

ORESKES: It's not like there's been any kind of review of these agencies to say what are they doing well, what are they doing poorly? No, there's been no review whatsoever and I think this tells us this is not about a principled question about the appropriate role of federal authority or how to make these agencies function more efficiently. This is a wholesale attack on the federal government. And federal science is part of that, but it's not just a part, it's a very important part because of the role of science in informing regulation.

DOERING: That’s next week on Living on Earth.

[MUSIC: William Coulter & Benjamin Verdery, “Flow Gently Sweet Afton” on Song for Our Ancestors, Traditional Scottish/arr. Coulter & Verdery, Solid Air Records]

DOERING: Living on Earth is produced by the World Media Foundation. Our crew includes Naomi Arenberg, Kayla Bradley, Daniela Faria, Mehek Gagneja, Swayam Gagneja, Mark Kausch, Mark Seth Lender, Don Lyman, Ashanti McLean, Nana Mohammed, Aynsley O’Neill, Sophia Pandelidis, Jake Rego, Andrew Skerritt, Melba Torres, and El Wilson.

BELTRAN: Tom Tiger engineered our show. Alison Lirish Dean composed our themes. You can hear us anytime at loe.org, Apple Podcasts and You Tube music, and like us, please, on our Facebook page, Living on Earth. And find us on Instagram @livingonearthradio. We always welcome your feedback at comments@loe.org.
Steve Curwood is our Executive Producer. I’m Paloma Beltran.

DOERING: And I’m Jenni Doering. Thanks for listening!

ANNOUNCER: Funding for Living on Earth comes from you, our listeners, and from the University of Massachusetts, Boston, in association with its School for the Environment, developing the next generation of environmental leaders. And from the Grantham Foundation, for the protection of the environment, supporting strategic communications and collaboration in solving the world’s most pressing environmental problems.

ANNOUNCER 2: PRX.