Nine years ago, Deanna Branch’s younger son, Aidan, was poisoned by lead. He was exposed through lead service lines that provided water for the family’s home in Milwaukee. Aidan was hospitalized twice and will face lifelong health consequences.
State Rep. Wendy E. N Thomas (D) lives in Merrimack, New Hampshire, three miles from a manufacturing plant that released toxic PFAS chemicals into her community. In 2022, Rep. Thomas was diagnosed with breast cancer. She has since undergone a double mastectomy and plans to remove her ovaries and fallopian tubes.
These stories are only two examples of the millions of American families who have experienced harm from environmental toxins in the water they drink and the air they breathe. Yet far-right extremists want to make it easier for corporations to poison people. The Project 2025 playbook proposes replacing tens of thousands of career civil servants, such as scientists at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), with far-right nonexpert loyalists to usher in a radical agenda that would make it easier for big corporations to dump dangerous toxins into the U.S. water supply and air.
An April 2024 joint staff report by the Democratic staff of both the House Committee on Oversight and Accountability and the Senate Budget Committee sheds light on how fossil fuel companies have attempted to undermine efforts to curb pollution while they earn record-breaking profits.
Specifically, Project 2025 would neuter the EPA’s ability to safeguard public health and protect Americans’ fundamental right to breathe clean air and drink safe water, pushing the EPA toward obsolescence; dissolve unprecedented U.S. climate, clean energy, and environmental investments that are creating millions of jobs and cutting carbon and local pollution; reverse hard-won progress on protecting Americans from lead poisoning, dangerous forever chemicals, and soot pollution.
Project 2025 aims to drastically reduce the EPA’s powers by shrinking existing offices and programs within the agency. It also plans to “pause and review” major rules protecting public health—for example, tailpipe emissions limits for cars—in order to weaken or eliminate those protections.
The project calls for banning EPA research on cumulative impacts of toxin exposures unless directly authorized by Congress; eliminating cumulative impact analysis under the National Environmental Policy Act; dissolving the Office of Enforcement and Compliance Assurance (OECA); dissolving the Office of Environmental Justice and External Civil Rights (OEJECR); repealing all Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) subsidies including clean energy credits; reversing Biden-Harris administration's rules on lead poisoning prevention; halting improvements under Lead and Copper Rule; reversing standards regulating PFAS contaminants in water; rolling back new rule limiting soot pollution.
If implemented, these measures could result in significant adverse effects on public health across various communities—especially low-income areas disproportionately burdened by environmental hazards—and economic setbacks due to increased healthcare costs associated with exposure-related illnesses like asthma or cancer.
Former EPA scientist Ronnie Levin estimated that removing all lead service lines would provide total annual health benefits worth $37 billion translating into $4k per pipe removed annually according Natural Resources Defense Council study saving nearly $786 billion over next thirty-five years while creating fifty-six thousand jobs annually according Environmental Entrepreneurs United Association Union Plumbers Pipefitters study estimating forty-five billion dollar investment generating hundred-four billion dollars total economic activity.
Reversing national standard regulating PFAS contaminants risks exposing up-to-105-million people higher levels pollutants preventing at least ninety-six hundred deaths twenty-nine thousand nine hundred illnesses developmental cardiovascular issues kidney bladder cancers resulting nearly one-point-five-billion-dollars annualized health benefits according Infrastructure Investment Jobs Act funding compliance improvements benefiting communities color low-income rural areas disproportionately affected exposures rolling-back limit could yield eighteen-billion-dollar benefits Northeastern United States five-point-three-billion Southeast two-point-three-billion Western states twenty-one-billion California alone failing grades soot-pollution levels increasing severity requiring counties implement reduction measures improving quality especially vulnerable populations
By 2032 revised limit expected deliver forty-six-billion-dollar net-health-benefits prevent four-thousand-five-hundred premature deaths fifty-seven-hundred new cases asthma two-thousand emergency room visits two-hundred-ninety-thousand lost workdays every dollar spent compliance yielding seventy-seven human-health-benefits reducing disparities between white communities communities-color sixteen percent disparity premature-deaths reverting previous standard prolong burdens risking lives millions
Biden-Harris administration made progress ensuring clean air drinking-water healthy environments recent rulemaking addressing toxins reversing regulations intended curtail protections undermine decades efforts
Project 2025 deregulation agenda threatens nation's capacity monitor mitigate exposure putting citizens serious risk prioritizing corporate profits undermining fundamental rights long-term detrimental economic outcomes
