EPA workers silence as agency, canceled hundreds of grants

According to several sources and several sources working with the agency inside the EPA, employees of the Environmental Protection Agency across the country have been told by obs

And without notice, many non -profit organizations and other EPA grant recipients have found themselves out of reaching their federal money without notice or clarification.

Melissa Bosworth said, “I have never experienced anything like this, which runs a small non -profit organization out of Denver, which was operating an EPA Award approved by the Congress in the last May for tribals, schools and local municipalities in Mountain West.

Non -profit leaders from across the country with EPA grants and contracts have described weeks of communication blackout. Bosworth said that his local contacts in the office of EPA area 8 stopped responding within the inauguration of President Donald Trump. He and his partnership organization, Montana State University, said that they reached the local point of their local contact repeatedly, but did not get any response.

ABC News reached the EPA area 8 office for comments.

Then, at the end of February, he received a formal notice that his grant was finished. The objective of the grant was to help in cities, tribes and schools in rural Montana, Vyoming and Dakota get access to federal funding for clean drinking water, disaster preparations, reduction in emissions and projects focused on food security.

The expiry notice reviewed by ABC News, suggested that its contract may have been canceled as the President’s executive order to shut down shutdown diversity, equity and inclusion programs.

“It was about helping to fight inequalities from small towns and rural schools,” she said. “So often these are large universities and large institutions that have expertise to get money. I worry that inequality for rural America, tribes and smallest communities will deteriorate.”

Bosworth has a son with autism, and his business partner gave birth to a child with serious medical challenges last month. Both of them have now been closed.

Bosworth told ABC News, “We thought there was a good chance that they would try to end our contracts, but without any real communication, we had nothing formal to fight.” “We didn’t know what was real, if we could spend money or ask questions. I wonder whether the ambiguity was part of the strategy.”

While communication blackout appeared in many regional offices widely and the resulting for grant recipients, it did not apply all EPA employees nationwide nationwide

Even before receiving the termination notice, Bosworth said she struggles to reach her EPA grant. He and dozens of other non -profit leaders said from California to Tennessee that they were out of the government payment system, without clarification or notice.

At an EPA Regional Office in Philadelphia, staff members are reporting in meetings with EPA political appointments located in Washington, DC that they are still not allowed to process new awards or communicate with grant prize recipients as last week. Despite the recent court decisions, the addict blocked the proposed federal funding freeze of the administration.

And when local EPA employees pressed their regional owners about communication blackout, those owners asked them to comply with them because they did not want to risk doing anything to endanger their jobs according to many sources.

As part of agencies recommending their work to reduce the cost and deduction employees, Elon Musk and their official efficiency department have promised transparency and the taxpayers are going out of the dollar door, extended attention to it. Along with grant management, experts working in former EPA officials argue that there will be no lower transparency and no inspection as a result of lack of communication.

A former EPA officer under the Biden Administration told ABC News, “The proof of the evidence is that many program officials are subject to some kind of gag order, which is almost impossible for him to do his work.” “If you care about misuse in federal expenses, it has no meaning and is absurd hypocrisy.”

Usually, EPA employees work closely with non -profit organizations and local government partners, who have been awarded grants, operating the oversight and responding and asking and asking how the government’s money is being spent.

Rebecca Kadadru, president of the Institute for Sustainable Communities in Nashville, said that she had lost access to the payment system at least once a week for the last month. His organization had two EPA grants till last month, when one was abolished.

The effective gag order has shocked non -profit leaders, local governments and tribes and is uncertain and uncertain about how they proceed to spend the EPA grants they have honored.

Kaduru explained the stress of chaos of the last few months.

“Do I do fire staff because I can’t pay payroll? But if I do this, I am not in line with the grant that I say that I have employees and keep our website,” he said on the phone. “This is a lot of risk for non -profit organizations.”

On Monday, EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin announced that the agency has decided to abolish more than 400 contracts with non -profit organizations across the country.

Zeldin wrote in a statement, “Hands to work with the dog, which curb the federal expenses, the EPA has saved more than $ 2 billion in the taxpayer’s money.” “It is our commitment to EPA to have extraordinary dollars of exceptional stewers.”

The EPA did not answer questions which contracts were actually canceled or why, but it appeared that environmental justice and community change grants were particularly difficult in this week’s cut.

More than 100 organizations received community change grants last year, more than $ 1.6 billion, in 2022, as part of the environmental judicial work funded through the lack of bipartisan infrastructure act in 2022. Grants focus on low income, deprived and often helping rural communities, which fight air and water pollution, make green places and invest in renewable energy and disturbances.

On Tuesday, Zeldin also sent an internal memorandum to all regional administrators, stating that the agency planned to abolish all environmental justice positions and offices immediately.

“With this action, the EPA is providing organizational reforms in the personnel structure that will directly benefit all Americans,” said, “Memo, who reviewed by ABC News, said, said.

Many non -profit leaders received ending notices in the last few weeks, expressing disappointment that they were not given a chance to convince their work and said that savings, in their views, were overblown. This news comes when agency leaders were also asked to draft the schemes with the deadline of this week.

In terms of savings, in a recent post, Zeldin claimed that he saved more than $ 12 million taxpayers by canceling the contract with the Kaduru’s organization. However, in reality, it was a grant of $ 8 million, out of which more than half was already spent.

Speaking from a joint session of the Congress last week, Trump said that his administration wants to focus on the pollutants, saying, “Our goal is to get toxins from our environment, poison out of our food supply and keep our children healthy and strong.”

Both current career EPA employees along with non -profit partners said that the deduction and closure of environmental justice offices would make this task difficult.

“I think it’s ashamed what they are not seeing what we do – what we really do,” said Kaduru. “It is a matter of shame because those environmental justice programs are especially really good programs, and I think there is an unfortunate misunderstanding about environmental justice (IS).”