April 1, 2025
By Ramona du Houx
The nine Democratic Senators who sit on the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works have been investigating the EPA’s move to cut $1.5 billion in grants funded through the Inflation Reduction Act, (IRA) President Joe Biden’s signature law intended to mitigate the climate crisis with investments that would also grow the economy.
In its investigation, the Senators obtained both a list detailing some 400 grants, along with emails from an EPA counsel that said the agency committed a “significant error” in cancelling them. According to the emails, the EPA contracts for the grants can’t be cancelled due to a change in agency priorities.
The Democratic Senators then sent a letter to EPA Director Zeldin March 24, 2025 demanding additional information on the grants, and on the staffing cuts the agency has made in offices focused on environmental justice.
The EPA grant list only includes short descriptions of what the money was awarded for, but a review of the document indicates that, among other priorities, the grants were significantly funding work in communities vulnerable to extreme weather events fueled by the climate crisis.
“The vast majority of the targeted grant awards were made using funds appropriated by Congress with a statutory mandate that they be distributed to disadvantaged communities,” the senators wrote in the letter.
There has yet to be a response from EPA Director Zeldin.
Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, a Rhode Island Democrat, told the Associated Press that the “illegal” moves by Zeldin “violates a series of congressional appropriations laws, contractual agreements, and multiple court orders.”
But it also will have a real-world effect, Whitehouse said, by undermining “essential programs aimed at eliminating childhood lead poisoning, reducing toxic air pollution, and mitigating health risks from heat and wildfires,” Whitehouse