EPA Plans to Suspend 90% of Operations in Government Shutdown

The EPA would shrink by some 90% in case of a government shutdown, which could happen at midnight on Tuesday, according to a new agency plan.

Staff would remain on hand to protect Environmental Protection Agency land, buildings, equipment, and ongoing experiments. They would also perform emergency and disaster assistance, law enforcement work, criminal investigations, and some types of litigation and legal counseling.

Other employees would be retained who do work on Superfund sites in cases where failing to maintain operations would pose an imminent threat to human life, according to the agency’s contingency plan for a government shutdown, updated Tuesday.

The plan is essentially the same one the EPA issues during every government shutdown. However, unlike the last blueprint issued in March, the new one does not include activities funded by unexpired spending from the 2021 infrastructure law as an exempted activity.

Under the plan, 828 staffers would be retained who are financed by a resource other than annual appropriations, along with 597 whose work is considered necessary to protect life and property, 24 whose work is expressly authorized by law, 284 whose work is “necessarily implied” by law, and one deemed necessary to execute the president’s constitutional duties and powers.

During a shutdown the EPA would largely stop doing civil enforcement inspections, issuing permits or regulations, issuing grants, or approving pending state requests.

Also on Tuesday, the EPA’s largest union condemned rumors that the Trump administration might use the shutdown as a way to lay off federal workers.

“It is appalling for the Trump administration to use the EPA workforce as a political pawn,” Justin Chen, president of American Federation of Government Employees Council 238, said in a statement.

“Threatening mass furloughs and layoffs as leverage treats our workers like bargaining chips instead of essential public servants who dedicate their lives to protecting the clean air we breathe, the water we drink, and the health of communities across the country,” Chen said.