‘This Feels Reckless’

Local environmental groups react to freezes and rollbacks

In a whirlwind of executive orders on his first day in office, newly re-elected President Donald Trump ordered that the U.S. drop out of the international Paris Climate Agreement, end subsidies for electric vehicles, halt approval of new wind farms, block the enforcement of environmental justice laws, shut down the American Climate Corps and to reconsider whether the greenhouse gases that drive climate change are pollutants, settled science for over a century.

“The failure of a lot of people was believing that Trump’s campaign rhetoric was more exaggerated than what his actions would be,” said David Toman, executive director at Hudson River Sloop Clearwater. “Nobody in the country should assume differently anymore.”

Officials at Clearwater, Scenic Hudson and Riverkeeper — three major environmental nonprofits based in the Hudson Valley — said they knew from Trump’s first term support for fossil-fuel energy and his promises and affiliations on the campaign trail, that a second term would be difficult for the environmental movement. 

There was also concern about Project 2025, which many felt provided an outline for what a second Trump administration would undertake, said Pete Lopez of Scenic Hudson, a former regional director for the Environmental Protection Agency. An online project called Project 2025 Tracker estimates that a third of the plan’s objectives have been enacted since Trump returned to the White House on Jan. 20, including eliminating the EPA Office of Environmental Justice and External Civil Rights.

Local environmental groups were prepared to see regulatory rollbacks. But funding freezes and layoffs — Trump said in a cabinet meeting on Feb. 26 that EPA staffing will be cut by 65 percent over the next month, although the White House said he meant to say the budget would be cut by 65 percent — had led them to reconsider what they will be able to accomplish.

“This all just feels really reckless,” said Tracy Brown, the executive director of Riverkeeper. Her organization had finally started to get federal funding for an ongoing project to remove the thousands of abandoned dams that litter Hudson River tributaries, hampering fish migration and water quality. “These are expensive to remove,” she said. Thanks to a $3.8 million grant from the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation, Riverkeeper has begun work on the removal of a dam in Quassaick Creek in Newburgh.

But with this type of grant, the government doesn’t provide the money up front. Instead, groups pay for the work and are reimbursed. Brown said they heard the funds were frozen, and then that they weren’t. “We won’t know for sure until we submit our next round of expenses,” she said.

Riverkeeper’s annual operating budget is $5 million. Doing $3.8 million worth of work, and not being paid for it, would be disastrous. “This starts to create a real risk for groups,” she said. 

Toman decided the risk was too great for Clearwater, which abandoned its efforts to secure federal grants to pay for maintenance that the Coast Guard requires on its eponymous sloop every five to seven years. 

Lopez said that Scenic Hudson is trying to figure out what promised funds it still has access to. One project in jeopardy is the connection of the Westchester RiverWalk to the Tarrytown MTA station. 

There’s also indirect funding. Much of Clearwater’s revenue comes from schools that book educational sails. The group is only now pulling itself out of a tailspin caused by schools canceling trips after the 2008 financial crisis and the pandemic. Trump has said he plans to block any federal funding to schools that have vaccine mandates and to eliminate the Department of Education. Toman and others fear that could create funding squeezes that eliminate student excursions.

Lopez said that Scenic Hudson is structured so that none of its employee salaries are dependent on federal grants. The same can’t be said for the agencies it works with. The federal government provides about 30 percent of funding for the state Department of Environmental Conservation, said Brown. Any EPA cuts could at best severely limit — and at worst, end — work to clean up the Hudson River.

The EPA said last year it was expecting to make a determination in the next few years if General Electric needs to continue dredging for the PCBs it dumped into the water over decades. The agency two years ago began monitoring the Lower Hudson to determine the extent of the contamination in the Highlands, after decades of delay.

Riverkeeper is planning to unveil an expanded version of its public monitoring program at more than 200 locations this summer, but the program is dependent on a partnership with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, a federal agency that Project 2025 says should close.

“People just aren’t so aware of what they do,” said Brown, referring to NOAA’s research to maintain and restore the Hudson’s marshlands, such as Constitution Marsh, monitor water quality in the river, run the Norrie Point Environmental Center in northern Dutchess County and provide weather forecasts.

Some local environmentalists wonder if Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a former attorney for Riverkeeper who is now head of Health and Human Services, will prove to be an ally for the Hudson Valley. But Brown, speaking shortly after Kennedy was confirmed by the U.S. Senate, said he has had no contact with the organization since leaving in 2017. “I don’t anticipate any collaboration,” Brown said.

A few days after being sworn in, Kennedy defunded the National Institute of Health’s climate-change programs. 

There was also hope that Lee Zeldin, a New Yorker confirmed Jan. 29 to lead the EPA, might be sympathetic to the Hudson River Valley. When he was a member of the state Assembly, Zeldin championed cleaning up the Long Island Sound and its waterways. 

Lopez, who served in the Legislature with Zeldin and knows the EPA well from his own time as Region 2 administrator, said that he had spoken to Zeldin recently and was optimistic. But in the past few weeks, Zeldin has attempted to claw back $20 billion in funding from environmental groups and is seeking to overturn a 2009 finding that gave the EPA the authority to regulate greenhouse gases. 

Tomlin finds some encouragement in history. The EPA was created by a Republican president, Richard Nixon. The Clean Water Act was passed with a bipartisan supermajority that overrode a Nixon veto — he thought the bill would be too expensive. And Clearwater’s founder, the folk icon Pete Seeger, was able to win over skeptics on both sides of the aisle. “The people made noise, and change happened,” Toman said. “And it happened in a bipartisan way.”