The Trump EPA recently announced it will no longer consider the benefits of regulating soot, which will lead to more premature deaths. (Photo: hsun337)
Last March, I interviewed staffers at the Environmental Protection Agency’s Region 5 headquarters in Chicago who were horrified by the Trump administration’s staff and funding cuts, which notably included eliminating environmental justice and…
La empresa EPA realizó un aporte inicial de Q61.576,46 a Hábitat para la Humanidad Guatemala para financiar becas de formación técnica en albañilería dirigidas a personas adultas que buscan fortalecer sus habilidades en el sector construcción.
La iniciativa forma parte del programa solidario “Ayudar es Sencillo”, que reúne donaciones voluntarias realizadas por clientes en las cajas de las tiendas.
El aporte corresponde al primer desembolso destinado al proyecto “Manos a la Obra”, una iniciativa que busca transformar vidas a través de capacitación técnica. En total, se otorgarán 100 becas completas en Quetzaltenango y Ciudad de Guatemala, dirigidas a hombres y mujeres mayores de edad interesados en profesionalizar sus conocimientos en albañilería y mejorar sus oportunidades laborales.
De acuerdo con representantes de la empresa, el programa demuestra cómo pequeñas contribuciones pueden generar un impacto social significativo cuando se suman esfuerzos entre empresas, organizaciones sociales y ciudadanía. El objetivo es brindar herramientas prácticas que permitan a los participantes fortalecer sus capacidades técnicas y avanzar hacia una mayor estabilidad económica para sus familias.
Desde Hábitat para la Humanidad Guatemala se destacó que este apoyo amplía el acceso a formación técnica especializada, lo que permite que más personas desarrollen competencias en un oficio altamente demandado dentro del sector construcción. La capacitación busca fortalecer habilidades prácticas y promover oportunidades de desarrollo para quienes ya cuentan con experiencia en el área.
Requisitos para aplicar a las becas
Las personas interesadas en participar deberán cumplir con algunos requisitos básicos:
Ser mayor de edad
Saber leer y escribir
Presentar DPI
Contar con al menos 2 años de experiencia en albañilería
Residir en Ciudad de Guatemala o Quetzaltenango
Presentar carta laboral (opcional)
Las inscripciones se realizarán a través del programa de becas de Hábitat para la Humanidad Guatemala, donde los aspirantes podrán conocer más detalles sobre el proceso de selección y la formación técnica que recibirán.
Solidaridad que se transforma en oportunidades
La campaña de recaudación “Ayudar es Sencillo” continuará activa durante un año en las cinco tiendas de EPA en Guatemala. Gracias a la participación de los clientes, cada donación se convierte en una oportunidad concreta para impulsar capacitación, empleo y mejores condiciones de vida para familias guatemaltecas.
EPA impulsa oportunidades laborales con 100 becas de albañilería en Guatemala
Former EPA Scientists Say Agency Rollbacks Increase Deadly Air Pollution
Weaker regulations from the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) are putting millions at risk of higher exposure to deadly air pollutants, hundreds of former EPA scientists said in a new report. Published on February 27, “Terrible Toxics” found that under President Donald Trump, the EPA has abandoned safeguards necessary to protect communities’ health.
The Environmental Protection Network, a nonprofit made up of over 700 former EPA officials, studied how a dozen toxic pollutants are poised to wreak even greater havoc due to recent EPA rollbacks. This includes air pollutants that have been linked to respiratory diseases, reproductive health harms, and early deaths: particulate matter, ozone, benzene, formaldehyde, and vinyl chloride. Human Rights Watch has documented how air pollution often directly harms front line communities, which frequently includes low-income communities of color.
According to the report, the EPA is worsening exposure to these air pollutants by repealing emissions standards for power plants, delaying requirements for the oil and gas industry to cut pollution, and ending its longstanding policy of considering health costs when determining pollutant limits. These pollutants, most of which are also known carcinogens, are emitted at dangerous levels by the fossil fuel and petrochemical industry. [Human Rights Watch]
El administrador de la EPA, Lee Zeldin, ha emitido una advertencia sin precedentes: la inyección de químicos en la atmósfera para modificar el clima (geoingeniería) se está llevando a cabo con una falta de supervisión legal “insana”. Según Zeldin, la tecnología ha avanzado más rápido que las leyes, dejando a la agencia sin autoridad estatutaria para detener experimentos al aire libre que podrían…
El “Cielo Químico” es Oficial: Lee Zeldin y la Crisis de la Geoingeniería No Regulada
The Fight for the Heart of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency - bioGraphic
Excerpt from this story from Biographic:
[Lee Zeldin, EPA Administrator] and the Trump administration “came in with very strong opinions and plans to really deeply undermine a lot of what we’ve kind of understood to be core foundations,” says a current EPA worker who spoke on condition of anonymity. They even axed programs “that we didn’t think were controversial.”
The EPA’s new leaders canceled hundreds of grants—including money earmarked for water sampling and treatment, such as the work done by Krukowski’s program. They also slashed efforts to combat lead poisoning, curb the health effects of wildfire smoke and heat waves, and reduce childhood asthma.
But in the middle of all this, current and former federal employees have become a powerful force fighting the dismantling of agencies like the EPA. They’re planning for the future as they grapple with the present, asking: If a government that supports science and environmental protection is elected in the future, what might it take to rebuild agencies like the EPA? And, what needs to change to protect their scientific integrity from future political assaults?
To Krukowski and other workers, many of the changes made to the EPA have looked like overt efforts to prioritize industry needs over science, public health, and ecosystem protection.
The agency has tossed aside datasets that help communities plan for floods, tornadoes, hurricanes, and even hostile security attacks. Because of President Trump’s executive order against “diversity, equity, and inclusion,” the EPA has also scrapped major efforts associated with environmental justice, including programs that pinpointed communities facing specific health and pollution risks. One such casualty was EJScreen, an analytical tool that helps identify locations where people are particularly susceptible to pollution, such as where a school sits too close to a highway or other source of diesel pollution, locations with elevated rates of asthma or cancer, or neighborhoods where lead-based paint still lingers.
Missy Haniewicz, a former EPA employee based in Denver, Colorado, felt blindsided when the screening tool was taken down. “To have the whole mission change, it’s emotionally upsetting,” she says. “Professionally upsetting.”
The EPA’s reorganization is also endangering the Integrated Risk Information System, or IRIS—a key program the entire agency relies on, says retired EPA worker Kevin Garrahan. IRIS is a scientific assessment program within EPA’s Office of Research and Development that tracks the dangers posed to human health by a vast list of chemicals ranging from cancer-causing asbestos to zinc cyanide, a highly toxic compound used in electronics manufacturing. But this research office is being dismantled, and IRIS has long been in the crosshairs of industry groups. The American Chemistry Council, which represents around 150 chemical manufacturers including ExxonMobil and Dow, has repeatedly lobbied for a bill that congressional Republicans introduced last year called the “No IRIS Act of 2025,” designed to permanently ban the program from being used to inform EPA regulations.
There have also been numerous “reductions in force” and waves of mass firings, often targeting workers who had been recently hired and thus still held probationary status. “You’re losing worldwide scientific expertise,” adds another former EPA worker. Some of Krukowski’s coworkers were initially terminated, then eventually reinstated. But even in such cases, the upheaval has left workers feeling insecure and demoralized.
A lawsuit involving billions of dollars in climate grants is headed back to court on Tuesday, more than a year after the Environmental Protection Agency tried to cancel the awards and claw back the money.
For the nonprofit groups that were blocked from spending the funds while the legal battle played out, it’s been a long wait. Some have had to cut staff and drastically restructure because the money has been frozen. One asked the E.P.A. to end its participation in the program altogether, despite the fact that its work had barely started.
Last February, Lee Zeldin, the E.P.A. administrator, seized $20 billion in clean energy grants known as green bank funding, that were awarded to eight groups under the Biden administration. Mr. Zeldin claimed there was misconduct, conflicts of interest and potential fraud.
But investigations by the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the agency’s Office of Inspector General have not presented evidence of fraud. Still, the E.P.A. sought to freeze the funds and cancel the grants, which totaled roughly double the agency’s budget for 2025. Lawsuits followed, and on Tuesday the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit will reconsider an earlier ruling that found the case should be tried in a different court.
The eight nonprofit groups expected to spend the last year leveraging billions of government dollars into low-cost loans and investments for renewable energy projects around the country.
Instead, some are struggling to stay afloat.
Ohio EPA weighs allowing data centers to dump wastewater into rivers
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Ohio EPA weighs allowing data centers to dump wastewater into rivers
EPA Dismantles Protections for Mercury and Air Toxics From Power Plants
The Trump EPA has repealed mercury standards, recklessly allowing coal plants to emit 3x more toxin. Food chain contamination, brain damage, heart disease, asthma, and cancer will rise for millions. Profit over health is not leadership or protection.
Trump’s EPA to roll back rule limiting hazardous mercury from coal plants
The Trump administration announced on Friday it would roll back air regulations for power plants limiting mercury and hazardous air toxics at an event in Kentucky, a move it says will boost baseload energy but that public health groups say will harm public health for the most vulnerable groups in the US.
Donald Trump’s EPA has said that easing the pollution standards for coal plants would alleviate costs for utilities that run older coal plants at a time when demand for power is soaring amid the expansion of datacenters used for artificial intelligence.
But environmental groups have said that weakening standards for mercury, a neurotoxin that can impair babies’ brain development, and other air toxics will lead to higher health-related costs.
The Biden-era Mercury and Air Toxics Standard (Mats), which updated standards set in 2012 under the Obama administration, had still been in force after the supreme court declined to put the rules on hold after a group of mostly Republican states and industry groups led a legal challenge to suspend it.
That rule would reduce allowable mercury pollution from the coal plants by 70%, emissions of nickel, arsenic, lead and other toxic metals from coal plants by two-thirds and result in health cost savings of $420m through 2037, according to the Environmental Defense Fund.
Utilities had been phasing out ageing coal-fired generators, which are leading sources of mercury and carbon emissions, but Trump has promised to reduce barriers to meet rising electricity demand from artificial intelligence and datacenters.
He declared an “energy emergency” last year to justify moves to keep open ageing coal plants that have been set for closure and exempt ageing coal plants from key air regulations.
Last spring, he issued a proclamation inviting coal plants to request by email to be exempt from Mats regulations for two years as part of his administration’s energy emergency. Sixty-eight plants were granted exemptions.
Last week, the EPA announced it was repealing the “endangerment finding”, which gave the agency the authority to regulate greenhouse gas emissions, and the White House directed the Pentagon to purchase power from coal plants for military use.
Coal-burning power plants are among the largest sources of hazardous air pollution, including mercury, lead, arsenic and acid gases, as well as major sources of benzene, formaldehyde, dioxins and other organic hazardous air pollutants.
Coal plants generate less than 20% of US electricity, according to the Energy Information Administration.
EPA Repeals Regulations for Mercury and Toxic Air Pollutants From Power Plants
EPA Repeals Regulations for Mercury and Toxic Air Pollutants From Power Plants
Sacrificing health for profits.
US President Donald Trump has repealed the EPA’s endangerment finding on greenhouse gases. This decision creates a significant legal hurdle for future climate and public health regulations.
EPA Repeals: What This Means for Public Health and Climate Regulation
US President Donald Trump has repealed the EPA’s endangerment finding on greenhouse gases. This decision creates a significant legal hurdle for future climate and public health regulations.
EPA Repeals: What This Means for Public Health and Climate Regulation
WASHINGTON (AP) — A coalition of health and environmental groups sued the Environmental Protection Agency on Wednesday, challenging the rescinding of a scientific finding that has been the central basis for U.S. action to regulate greenhouse gas emissions and fight climate change.
WATCH: Trump, EPA’s Zeldin announce end of scientific basis for U.S. action on climate change
A rule finalized by the…
Groups sue Trump’s EPA over repeal of rule that supported climate protections
Democratic senators launch inquiry into EPA’s repeal of key air pollution enforcement measure
More than three dozen Democratic senators have begun an independent inquiry into the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) following a huge change in how the agency measures the health benefits of reducing air pollution that is widely seen as a major setback to US efforts to combat the climate crisis.
In a regulatory impact analysis, the EPA said it would stop assigning a monetary value to the health benefits associated with regulations on fine particulate matter and ozone. The agency argued that the estimates contain too much uncertainty.
Previously, the EPA placed a dollar figure on the benefits of cleaner air, factoring in outcomes such as fewer premature deaths and reduced illness, including asthma attacks.
The 2009 endangerment finding determined that greenhouse gases threaten public health and welfare and should therefore be controlled by the EPA. By revoking it on Thursday, officials eliminated the legal foundation enabling the government to control planet-heating pollution.
The senators criticized the updated policy as “particularly troubling” and said the repeal “destroys that framework and results in a failure to faithfully execute EPA’s statutory mandate to protect human health”, according to a letter sent to the EPA on Thursday.
The effort is being led by the ranking member of the Senate committee on the environment and public works, Sheldon Whitehouse. The lawmakers have asked the EPA to provide documents and details explaining how it reached its decision by 26 February.
Senate Democrats are seeking to know the reasoning behind the EPA’s move; what factors the agency will consider when carrying out Clean Air Act rule-making; whether it has considered no longer quantifying health effects for other pollutants; and whether it consulted any outside parties, including the secretary of health and human services, the US surgeon general, or public health specialists.
EPA is repealing Endangerment finding. [cough]
Lee Zeldin, head of EPA says climate change is a con. [hack hack]
David Roberts, “If you can get the Supreme Court to rule that carbon is not a danger to public health, it will mark the point at which they have abandoned all pretense, because that’s just a flat out lie.”
As U.S. abandons climate fight, Washington state feels the heat to do more
Washington state’s push for a rapid switch to electric vehicles is in jeopardy— with its ultimate fate likely to be decided in the courts.
A Trump administration move Thursday to axe the centerpiece of federal climate policy jeopardizes state-level efforts to control pollution from motor vehicles as well.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency on Thursday erased the U.S. government’s ability to fight climate-changing pollution from motor vehicles and other sources. It is now official U.S. policy that climate change does not endanger human welfare.
“In 2009, Barack Hussein Obama, his EPA, designated fossil fuels such as oil, gas, and other things that actually make factories rock and roll and other things drive very nicely as a threat to health and human welfare,” Trump said.
The Environmental Protection Agency under President Obama issued a finding that greenhouse gas pollution endangered human welfare, enabling regulation of the gases under the federal Clean Air Act.
“Effective immediately, we are repealing the ridiculous endangerment finding and terminating all additional green emission standards,” Trump said.
“It really kind of wipes clean what has been the major domestic vehicle for addressing climate change in this country,” University of Washington law professor Sanne Knudsen said.
“This is the most pro-pollution President in American history,” Sen. Patty Murray said in an emailed statement. “This crook of a President promised to let Big Oil and giant corporations trash our environment—and now we’re all paying for his corruption.”
Murray said she would fight back “every way possible.”
“This federal action is unlawful, ignores basic science and denies what we can see with our own two eyes: Climate change endangers our communities and our health – period,” Washington Gov. Bob Ferguson said in an emailed statement. “From historic floods to devastating wildfires, Washingtonians have seen the impacts of the climate crisis firsthand.”
Washington Attorney General Nick Brown said in an emailed statement that leaving greenhouse gas pollution unchecked would “invite catastrophe.”
“For the sake of our communities and our future, this illegal action will not go unchallenged,” Brown said.
Brown was part of a coalition of 23 attorneys general who urged the EPA in September, in a 225-page comment letter, to abandon the proposal.
The rule announced Thursday immediately removes emission limits on motor vehicles, the nation’s leading source of heat-trapping pollution, with deregulation of power plants and methane emissions expected to follow.
“It’s radical,” Knudsen said of the federal government canceling its own authority to regulate climate pollution. “It’s a big move that would have major implications for how this country addresses greenhouse gas emissions, and it would mean that states become a much more important part of the picture here.“
With the new rule, the EPA is both ending its own restrictions on planet-heating pollution from cars and trucks and claiming that it still has the authority to prevent states from regulating that pollution.
“They’re trying to thread a needle here,” Knudsen said. “They cannot walk back federal regulation and at the same time prevent state regulation.”
The Clean Air Act forbids states from regulating emissions from motor vehicles, with one big exception. California, which had been regulating air pollution from cars and trucks before the Clean Air Act existed, has been granted waivers over the years to keep doing so. States including Washington and Oregon have adopted California’s tougher vehicle emission standards.
Washington state is currently phasing out petroleum-powered cars and trucks, requiring all new passenger vehicles and 40% to 75% of medium- and heavy-duty vehicles sold in the state have zero emissions by 2035.
In June, Trump rescinded California’s latest waiver. California and 10 other states sued to restore the waiver, and their tighter vehicle rules, the same day.
With manufacturers free to sell as many gas-guzzling, highly polluting vehicles as they can, state and local efforts to fight climate change now face more of an uphill battle to help preserve a livable climate.
A spokesperson for Bellevue-based truck manufacturer PACCAR said the new federal policy would not affect the company’s plans to produce cleaner trucks.
“We have a strong economic incentive to continuously improve the fuel efficiency of our trucks,” spokesperson Ken Hastings said by email. “Customers benefit from lower fuel costs and factor that into their truck purchasing decisions.”
Legal experts say the demise of the endangerment finding will not undermine the centerpiece of Washington state’s efforts to reduce climate-altering pollution: the state’s cap on emissions from major polluters.
Auctions of the permits needed to emit industrial quantities of carbon dioxide have been a major revenue source for the state’s environmental programs and a major expense for polluting businesses, with $5 billion worth of pollution permits auctioned off in three years.
Spokespeople for the Association of Washington Business and the Western States Petroleum Association declined to comment.
“EPA can try to erase the science, but climate change is real and impacting every community in our state,” Washington Department of Ecology director Casey Sixkiller said in an emailed statement. “Washington state will continue our work to protect communities from the impacts of air pollution and double down on decarbonizing our economy.”
Federal agencies under Trump have pursued a multipronged effort to promote fossil fuels and end the regulation of their climate-altering emissions. By eliminating the legal basis for limiting carbon pollution, revoking the endangerment finding is the farthest-reaching of all the federal actions.
Environmentalists claim the move will cost up to $4.2 trillion in climate harm, up to $1.4 trillion in increased fuel costs, and up to $500 billion in damages to people’s health from breathing in more fossil fuel exhaust over the same time period.
According to the estimate by the Environmental Defense Fund, Washington state residents would pay up to an additional $73 billion for fuel and suffer up to $11 billion in health harms from the increased exhaust.
