JTNWI Statement on Health and Environmental Triple Threat: Proposed EPA Regulations, Governor Braun’s Executive Orders, and NEPA Rule Executive Order

The sweeping environmental deregulations proposed Wednesday by EPA will drastically impact public health and erase all progress on curtailing greenhouse gas emissions harming the planet. Additionally, the “reorganization and elimination” of all 10 EPA Environmental Justice offices effectively ends EPA’s efforts over three decades of trying to right historical wrongs to low-income and minority communities suffering the disproportionate effects of toxic industrial pollution.

At the state level, Indiana Governor Mike Braun’s two Executive Orders (25-37 and 25-38), signed within hours of EPA’s announcement, echo similarly destructive actions and hand the federal government control over the state’s environmental laws. Based on EPA’s threatening rollbacks and proposed eliminations protecting our air, water, and soil and Governor Braun’s newfound adherence to federal standards that could now effectively disappear, Indiana would have very few, if any, environmental laws or standards. Factually based sound science underscores that their actions will not safeguard health or the environment but will endanger, if not destroy, it.

Paving the way for such drastic actions was the Unleashing American Energy Act, the Executive Order President Trump signed in January, effectively commanding the Commission on Environmental Quality (CEQ) to gut all rules that implement the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA). This would remove 50 years of foundational law that protects at-risk communities and provides reliable government protections of clean air and water by slashing the EPA budget by 65%. 

The guardrails are effectively off, and historically overburdened environmental justice communities working so hard to create real change for health and the environment locally and nationally will suffer the first impacts in far-reaching consequences of removing the NEPA rules, the slashing of EPA regulations, and state rules. These actions will likely result in catastrophic impacts for Northwest Indiana, which has been unable to escape the toll of industrial pollution for over a century.