EPA Deletes Pollution Tracking Tools as It Offers Exemptions to Polluters

Despite the self-imposed chaos disrupting the federal government, public health watchdogs say the Trump administration’s strategy for axing pollution protections on behalf of its allies in wealthy industries is more sophisticated than what was seen during the president’s first term. Advocates for communities overburdened by industrial pollution and the impacts of climate change say years of progress toward cleaner air, water and corporate accountability are at stake.

Under orders from President Donald Trump, Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator Lee Zeldin is simultaneously moving to rescind Biden-era rules meant to protect the public from toxic pollution while inviting hundreds of petrochemical manufacturers and the dirtiest coal-burning power plants to apply for sweeping “presidential exemptions” from meeting updated pollution limits for up to two years, after which they can be renewed.

Handing out regulatory exemptions to polluters provides the Trump EPA time to dismantle years of regulatory work toward limiting emissions of hazardous toxins such as mercury and cancer-causing benzene before private companies face requirements to invest in pollution controls that protect public health.

Meanwhile, the Trump administration has made it harder for regulators, policy makers, advocacy groups and residents living in the shadow of industry to track health threats from pollution and examine local impacts of energy, infrastructure and disaster relief policies by deleting key datasets and interactive maps from federal agency websites.

“No joke, they are trying to erase the [connection] between pollution and its outcomes on the ground,” said Jane Williams, executive director of the California Communities Against Toxics (CCAT), in an interview. “It’s a very concerted effort by big industry, and it’s not just at EPA, it’s at the Centers for Disease Control and the Department of Health and Human Services too.”

On April 14, CCAT and multiple watchdog groups filed a lawsuit in federal court challenging the removal of multiple online datasets and webtools, including EPA’s EJScreen, an interactive environmental justice mapping tool that allowed the public to analyze the impact of specific pollutants on local areas alongside demographic information. Public health groups scraped EJScreen data to recreate the tool on separate websites, but without fresh data from the EPA, the map will soon become outdated.

Since 2015, watchdog groups along with concerned residents, academics, environmental activists and regulators have used EJScreen to examine and confront environmental racism in areas where Black, Brown and lower-income communities have long been overburdened by pollution and outdated infrastructure. EPA used the tool to prioritize grants and enforcement resources for underserved communities in need of relief.

The Trump administration also deleted the Council on Environmental Quality’s Climate and Environmental Justice Screening Tool (CEJST), which the Biden administration set up to map out areas vulnerable to pollution and climate impacts such as flooding and wildfires. The webtool was created under an executive order signed by President Joe Biden that pledged to direct 40 percent of benefits from federal climate investments to underserved communities but was quickly rescinded by Trump. Both EJScreen and CEJST were used extensively by policy makers, academics, journalists and environmental justice activists fighting pollution in their own backyards, according to the lawsuit.

The lawsuit also challenges the removal of Department of Energy’s Low-Income Energy Affordability Data Tool and Community Benefits Plan Map, used for illustrating inequities in home energy costs and availability; the Department of Transportation’s Equitable Transportation Community Explorer that mapped out access to various modes of transport; and the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s Future Risk Index, which tracked the risk of natural disasters across the country.

The webtools and the data behind them helped watchdogs protect public health when the government fell short, the lawsuit argues. For example, the Union of Concerned Scientists, one of the plaintiffs in the lawsuit, used the data tools to investigate commercial sterilizers that emit ethylene oxide, an invisible gas that causes cancer and acute respiratory disorders. The group found that companies sterilizing medical equipment and dried food products in the U.S. are disproportionately polluting Black and Brown neighborhoods, low-income areas and non-English language speaking communities.

On April 16, news outlets Grist and El Paso Matters published a joint investigation into the dangers posed by ethylene oxide leaking from sterilization warehouses that operate near residential areas across the country.

Gretchen Goldman, president of the Union of Concerned Scientists, said the public has a right to access data and webtools that were funded by taxpayers.

“From vital information for communities about their exposure to harmful pollution, to data that help local governments build resilience to extreme weather events, the public deserves access to federal datasets,” Goldman said in a statement this week. “Removing government datasets is tantamount to theft.”

The lawsuit challenges the removal of the data sets and webtools under longstanding federal laws that require agencies to notify the public before making regulatory changes or cutting off access to major sources of public information on what the government does.

Under Trump’s flurry of executive orders, federal agencies have also deleted references to “climate change,” “environmental justice” and diversity initiatives from federal agencies websites. While critics argue some of the language and initiatives scrubbed from the internet were more of a window dressing than real-world reforms, plenty of critical public health information was lost in the mix.

Williams said EJScreen in particular was a vital tool for advocates pushing for tougher pollution protections during the Biden and Obama administrations, when environmental groups spent years in courtrooms and regulatory hearings fighting for more resources for communities overburdened by toxins. Williams likened the Trump administration’s censorship to “book burning.”

“[EJScreen] gives the government tools to say, these are the most impacted communities, so where do we focus enforcement and resources,” Williams said. “When you wipe out the tools, and you wipe out the ability for government to do stuff like that, you permanently enshrine an underclass…preventing them from knowing or doing anything about the situation, or the government.”

Asked whether public access to the data and tools would be restored after content edits to comply with Trump’s executive orders, an EPA spokesperson said the agency was unable to comment on pending litigation.

“EPA is working to diligently implement President Trump’s executive orders, including the ‘Ending Radical and Wasteful Government DEI Programs and Preferencing,’ as well as subsequent associated implementation memos,” the spokesperson said in an email.

While it took down environmental justice maps and datasets, the EPA published a new webpage inviting fossil fuel and chemical companies to apply for presidential exemptions to pollution limits. Historically, such exemptions are issued in rare cases when the necessary pollution control technology is not available, and compliance would pose a threat to national security, according to Grace Smith, a senior attorney at the Environmental Defense Fund.

“This exemption is really meant for one-off circumstances,” Smith told the Environmental Defense Fund’s outlet Vital Signs.

Dubbed the “polluters’ portal” by critics, the EPA recently set up a new webpage with step-by-step instructions to apply for two-year waivers from nine major EPA pollution protections that Williams and other advocates spent years fighting to put in place. The rules include tougher limits on dangerous pollution from smokestacks and chemical plants, new emission standards for cars and trucks for reducing asthma and lung disease, and a historic rule designed to update water systems and protect children from lead in drinking water. At least 530 industrial facilities are eligible to apply for the exemptions, according to the Environmental Defense Fund.

The EPA quietly announced that a list of nearly 70 aging coal-burning power plants received a presidential exemption from rules requiring reductions of harmful pollutants including mercury, arsenic, benzene and fine particulate matter that lodges in human lungs. Trump signed a “presidential proclamation” on April 8 granting the coal plants the exemption, part of a larger but vague plan to bring back a dying industry responsible for climate-warming air pollution and waste pits that contaminate groundwater.

Technology for removing pollutants from smokestacks has existed for years, but aging coal plants, mostly in red states, have dragged their feet and are now considered among the dirtiest sources of power in the nation. Thanks to the availability of cheap fracked gas, utilities would likely shutter the plants before installing pollution controls. With the exemptions, Trump is once again gleefully throwing the coal industry a lifeline.

Additionally, the American Chemistry Council and the American Fuel & Petrochemical Manufacturers, two industry groups representing hundreds of oil and gas refineries and chemical plants, are reportedly seeking a blanket exemption for more than 200 facilities from historic EPA rules designed to limit emissions of toxic pollutants such as ethylene oxide and chloroprene, which are both linked to an increased risk of cancer.

Residents and activists living near these facilities fought for the limits on ethylene oxide and chloroprene for years, and activists in Louisiana’s infamous “Cancer Alley” celebrated a victory when the EPA announced the final standards in 2024. The Mississippi River corridor between Baton Rouge and Louisiana is packed with petrochemical plants built around historically Black communities dating back to the end of slavery. An investigation by ProPublica found that in certain areas of Cancer Alley the risk of developing cancer is 47 times higher than what the EPA deems acceptable.

One of the plants covered by the new pollution limits operates near a majority-Black elementary school in Reserve, Louisiana. After years of protests and litigation over pollution and elevated cancer rates, the EPA filed a historic civil rights lawsuit in 2023 alleging the company is exposing the surrounding majority-Black community to an unacceptable risk of cancer.

Last month, the Trump administration dropped the landmark lawsuit against Denka. The local school board voted to shut down the elementary school and move it away from the Denka plant last year. Williams now wonders if the school will have enough funding for the move now that the Trump administration is attempting to dismantle the Department of Education.

“How does everything that happened in the last 100 days affect those kids who go to that school?” Williams said, adding that the Trump administration has also undermined voting rights and federal efforts to support disadvantaged public school students.

Besides the coal plants already approved by presidential proclamation, the EPA has not made requests for exemptions from its pollution rules public, according to the Environmental Defense Fund. The group says it filed a Freedom of Information Act request for all records related to the EPA exemption portal, including the names of companies, and pledges to take the matter to court if necessary.

“With this invitation to apply for exemptions, they have opened it up in a way where you can tell that they will be rubber stamping whatever comes their way,” Smith said.