Longtime resident of Athens, Alabama, where recent expansions of the city’s sewer lines have excluded Black households.1i
Project 2025 will dismantle federal efforts to expand Black communities’ access to safe air, clean water, and climate-resilient housing. These proposals will weaken, defund, and, in some cases, completely eliminate programs, regulations, and offices that strive to keep the environment safe and livable for humans and wildlife, while undermining science and investments in combating climate change. Project 2025 will also withdraw the United States from international commitments to address climate change, including the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change and the Paris Agreement.2 Furthermore, Project 2025 will drastically weaken environmental protections by significantly reducing the size and capacity of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), which received the highest funding per worker in the agency’s history in 2023.3 It will also restrict the EPA’s ability to engage in new scientific research projects, calling for the EPA to cease ongoing or planned research for which there is no clear and current congressional authorization.4 Scientists at the EPA use research to inform evidence-based decision-making about climate science. This attack on the EPA’s ability to conduct such research is consistent with other recent litigation and efforts to consolidate power, increase partisan interference, and undermine the expertise of federal agencies.5
Due to persistent environmental racism, such rollbacks will be particularly harmful to Black communities by:
The EPA is responsible for establishing and enforcing environmental regulations to protect air, water, and the climate. The (EPA’s) budget for the 2023 fiscal year was $10.135 billion. The Department of Justice (DOJ) also plays a role in holding local jurisdictions accountable when they violate environmental civil rights protections. Targeting both agencies, Project 2025 will severely decrease the federal government’s oversight capacity and enforcement of key environmental regulations that protect Americans’ access to clean air, land, and water.
Project 2025’s proposals to reduce environmental regulations and the enforcement of environmental protections will exacerbate environmental racism and cause Black communities, who already face more severe and prolonged exposure to environmental hazards, to suffer further from air pollution, water contamination, and natural disasters.
iAs climate change and the ensuing extreme weather events place further strain on failing water and wastewater infrastructure, Black communities will face the brunt of the consequences. Sandhya Kajeepeta, Jason Bailey, & David Wheaton, Water / Color 2023: An update on water crises facing Black communities, Thurgood Marshall Inst. (Dec. 2023), https://tminstituteldf.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/2024-02-08-LDF-TMI-Water-Brief.pdf.
Water/Color 2023 provides an overview of the drivers of racial inequity in water access, highlights examples of recent and ongoing water and wastewater crises in urban and rural Black communities, reviews strategies to address water affordability through legislation and litigation, and provides recommendations for steps federal, state, and local governments can take to ensure all people have access to clean, safe, and affordable water.
Research shows that Black people face the highest overall exposure to air pollution across racial groups and represent the only racial group to face higher-than-average exposure to pollution from every type of source (such as industrial facilities, road traffic, coal production, and construction sites).6 The nation’s long history of housing discrimination and exclusionary zoning laws have led to racial residential segregation, and policymakers have selectively targeted majority-Black neighborhoods as the sites for these harmful environmental exposures.7 This disproportionate air pollution results in Black communities facing higher risks of asthma, lung disease, and cancers.8
Black communities are also more likely to experience water contamination, inadequate access to plumbing, and water affordability issues.9 Five of every 1,000 Black households in the United States lack complete plumbing, which is double the rate among white households.10 Additionally, majority-Black neighborhoods and cities have suffered from decades of disinvestment, leading to crumbling water and wastewater infrastructure in desperate need of repair.11 As a result, water systems serving communities of color have higher rates of drinking water violations due to contamination.12 Moreover, available evidence suggests that communities of color are charged higher rates for water and sewer services despite being served by lower-quality systems, and therefore face higher rates of service shutoffs due to unaffordability.13
To learn more about threats to water quality and sanitation in Black communities, read Water/Color 2023, a research brief from LDF’s Thurgood Marshall Institute.14
Climate change further threatens essential infrastructure and access to clean air and water through extreme weather events, with disproportionate effects on Black communities. Black families are more likely to live in regions of the country with an especially high risk of extreme weather events caused by climate change, such as flooding, hurricanes, and extreme heat.15 Majority-Black neighborhoods are also more susceptible to the consequences of extreme weather, due to historic and ongoing disinvestment in infrastructure.16 Despite living in homes and areas that are more vulnerable to the impacts of climate change, Black communities do not receive equal levels of disaster recovery support compared to white communities following extreme weather events.17 This inequity contributes to further disparities in home values and wealth, the risk of displacement and homelessness, and public health challenges.18
Project 2025 will decrease the enforcement of environmental regulations and civil rights protections by eliminating the EPA’s Office of Environmental Justice and External Civil Rights.19 It will also end the ability of the DOJ’s Office of Environmental Justice to hold jurisdictions that are not in compliance with environmental civil rights protections accountable. Project 2025’s proposals to restrict the federal government’s ability to enforce civil rights protections will leave marginalized communities without crucial safeguards against the unequal effects of climate change and environmental hazards. For example, in 2023, the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division reached a settlement with the Alabama Department of Public Health after determining that the health department discriminated against Black residents by mismanaging their sewage disposal program and denying a credible hookworm outbreak.20 As part of the settlement agreement, Alabama agreed to suspend the enforcement of sanitation laws that could result in criminal charges against residents who could not afford a septic system, which disproportionately affected Black Alabamians.21 The DOJ also required Alabama to conduct a comprehensive assessment of septic and wastewater management systems, prioritizing properties with a high risk of exposure to raw sewage.22 Project 2025 proposes that the federal government pause and review all ongoing environmental justice investigations, voluntary resolution agreements, and consent decrees, which will delay action on similar environmental justice matters across the country and have particularly dire consequences for Black communities.
Project 2025 will limit the EPA’s monitoring of environmental hazards. It encourages the federal government to remove the Greenhouse Gas Reporting Program (GHGRP) for any category of greenhouse gas sources that the EPA does not currently regulate, which will impede the EPA’s ability to monitor new sources of greenhouse gases.23 Project 2025 will also curtail clean water regulations by excluding any analyses of future potential harm when testing water under the Clean Water Act.24
Additionally, Project 2025 will hinder the EPA’s ability to regulate harmful chemicals such as per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS).25 PFAS are a group of manufactured chemicals that have been used in industry and consumer products since the 1940s.26 Recent scientific research suggests that exposure to certain PFAS may lead to adverse health outcomes, including high blood pressure in pregnant women and developmental effects or delays in children.27 Water systems serving Black communities are significantly more likely to be contaminated with PFAS.28
In 2024, the EPA designated two PFAS compounds as “hazardous substances,” which significantly expanded the EPA’s authority over new and existing cleanup sites. Project 2025 will have the federal government revisit this designation and rescind the EPA’s authority to expedite the cleanup of sites with dangerous PFAS chemicals.
Project 2025 will reverse all efforts to invest in a sustainable future and instead will make climate change worse. Investments in climate resilience and disaster preparedness reduce the future costs of disaster relief caused by extreme weather events. Project 2025 will halt and reverse investments in climate resilience and instead prioritize the interests of private fossil fuel companies, putting the future of the planet in peril. Proposals include eliminating incentives to accelerate the construction of clean energy infrastructure30 and terminating EPA grants to environmental advocacy groups,31 thereby removing agency from communities to protect their own neighborhoods from the impacts of climate change. Project 2025 will also shutter several Department of Energy offices dedicated to clean energy and climate resilience and will repeal spending on climate resilience in other federal agencies.32
At the same time, Project 2025 will increase spending on fossil fuels and prioritize the interests of fossil fuel corporations over the health of the planet. Specifically, Project 2025 will expand natural gas infrastructure and coal production, eliminate environmental reviews before approving new gas pipelines, and disallow the consideration of any upstream or downstream public health and climate consequences from greenhouse gas emissions.33 These proposals cater to the interests of the oil and gas industry and will adversely impact Black communities throughout the United States.
Project 2025’s goal of reversing all investments in climate resilience and increasing investments in fossil fuels will most severely harm the environmental health of Black communities, who already bear a disproportionate burden of climate change consequences, by exacerbating climate change and increasing the risk of natural disasters.
Furthermore, Project 2025 will drastically change how the government responds to natural disasters, such as by shifting the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA)’s emergency spending for most disaster preparedness and response costs from the federal government to state and local governments.35 Although FEMA has historically failed to provide Black communities with equitable disaster relief funds, shifting responsibility to states may result in the further denial of relief for Black people living in states with hostile governments.
Historic and persistent environmental racism means that Black communities will face the greatest risks should the federal government adopt Project 2025’s proposals to roll back funding, regulations, and enforcement that are intended to protect the health of the planet and its inhabitants. As the climate crisis accelerates, these investments and protections are more crucial than ever before.
LDF strives to defend the health and safety of the planet and each of its inhabitants by protecting and expanding Black communities’ access to safe air, clean water, and climate-resilient housing. While all people are at risk of harmful environmental hazards, such as air pollution and water contamination, many Black communities face more severe and prolonged exposure to these hazards. This injustice is an example of environmental racism, which occurs by design: policymakers have long intentionally targeted majority-Black neighborhoods as the sites of hazardous environmental exposures, including factories and highways, and have historically deprived these communities of the resources necessary to maintain safe and adequate water and sanitation systems.36 As climate change threatens clean air and water access through extreme weather events, Black communities will bear a disproportionate burden of the health consequences. Therefore, unlike what Project 2025 proposes, the federal government should ensure more—not fewer—protections against environmental hazards.
