Photo: AFP
The Trump administration has canceled nearly two dozen federal projects aimed at addressing environmental and health issues in predominantly Black communities across the South.
According to the Washington Post, at least 22 efforts across federal agencies, including the EPA, Department of Justice, Department of the Interior, and Department of Agriculture, to fix problems like raw sewage leaks, toxic pollution, and chronic flooding affecting southern Black communities have been reversed by the Trump administration.
In rural Alabama, Lowndes County lost a $14 million grant to upgrade its sanitation systems. For decades, residents have dealt with raw sewage pooling on their properties due to inadequate septic systems, which has led to cases of hookworm.
“We feel left behind again, like so many other times,” Carmelita Arnold, president of the Lowndes County Unincorporated Wastewater Program, said in a statement. “I just felt we had more support when we had the DOJ keeping track.”
Residents of Aberdeen Gardens, Virginia, a historic Black neighborhood, lost a $20 million EPA grant meant to address chronic flooding.
“I’m disappointed. It’s putting politics over the safety of human beings," Shelton Tucker, a lifelong resident, said.
In Louisiana’s Cancer Alley, federal support was pulled from several initiatives, including air quality monitoring, a lawsuit against a chemical company accused of worsening cancer risk in a Black neighborhood, and a proposed historic landmark designation that would have limited industrial development in Wallace.
The historic landmark designation was granted last year by the National Park Service, but was later rescinded at the request of state officials. The agency had previously found the area “presents a remarkably unique rural historic landscape” and showcased “an alternative narrative to the stories of sharecropping and the Great Migration.”
Joy Banner, a resident and advocate in Wallace, called the reversal a political stunt.
“It is 22,000 acres of land that would have been protected. Now some greedy developer is going to come in and still be able to develop that land,” Banner said. “DEI is just an easy excuse to target vulnerable communities.”
The Trump administration said the cuts are a part of efforts to reduce government spending and eliminate diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programs. Many of the terminated projects were funded or supported under Biden-era climate and equity initiatives.
“President Trump was given an overwhelming mandate to stop spending hard-earned taxpayer dollars on the left’s radical climate agenda and restore commonsense to the federal government’s out-of-control spending,” White House spokeswoman Taylor Rogers said in a statement.
Jen Duggan, executive director of the Environmental Integrity Project, condemned the Trump administration's move to end key health and environmental projects.
“Old and crumbling infrastructure in these Southern communities that should keep everyone safe and healthy, it’s not going to be repaired or upgraded,” Duggan said. “It is incredibly cruel, and it is lazy for the Trump administration to destroy and tear down these programs.”
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