The billions of dollars approved by Congress to clean up abandoned oil and gas wells have been frozen as part of President Donald Trump’s sweeping cuts to government spending, creating concerns that the cleanup will be halted just as it’s getting started.

President Trump’s barrage of executive orders included a January directive called “Unleashing American Energy,” which, among other provisions, ordered that federal agencies stop distributing money appropriated by President Joe Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) and the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA).

The Trump administration titled this section of the order “Terminating the Green New Deal.” But in freezing this congressionally approved spending, the administration halted a program that paid for plugging and reclaiming so-called “orphaned” or abandoned oil and gas wells. The order stated that agencies should “immediately pause the disbursement of funds” from those two Biden laws. It set a 90-day deadline, upcoming in April, for agencies to review their spending programs and make sure that they align with the Trump administration’s goal of increasing U.S. energy production.

The orphaned well program, which was modeled on a North Dakota initiative, had been widely used by oil states, including several in the West.

The program — which set aside $4.7 billion, a historically large sum, for plugging wells — was distributed to states via grants from the Department of the Interior. In January, days before Trump took office, New Mexico announced that it would be receiving $5.5 million to clean up abandoned wells in the state. California also received a $9 million grant.

California, Colorado, Montana and New Mexico had each plugged over 100 orphaned wells using the Biden funds, according to an Interior Department report in 2024. Wyoming alone plugged 1,021 wells in just one year using federal grants.

As of last fall, the U.S. government had released over half a billion dollars in grants. Wells have been plugged in the people’s front yards, in national park areas and deep in the remote Alaskan wilderness. More than $3 billion are still left to be distributed, but previously available information about the grants appears to have been removed from the Interior Department’s website.

In response to questions from High Country News, an Interior Department spokesperson said that the grant program is “under review.”

“President Trump’s decisive actions are necessary steps to eliminate bureaucratic waste and refocus our agency on its core mission: serving the American people and managing our nation’s natural resources with integrity and efficiency,” the spokesperson said in a statement. “Orphaned wells negatively impact current and future oil and gas development activities and pose significant risk to national energy security and public safety.”

In addition to supporting jobs that address oil patch pollution, these federal dollars are used on wells that lack any owner to pay for reclamation. Left unplugged, such orphaned oil and gas wells leak huge amounts of methane into the atmosphere and can contaminate local water sources with salty water and benzene.

Now the future of that work is uncertain, in legal limbo alongside many of the Trump administration’s cost-cutting policies. The funding in question had already been appropriated by Congress, making it unclear that the Trump administration can indefinitely cancel it.

On March 20, more than 30 House Democrats sent a letter to Interior Secretary Doug Burgum, asking him to clear up the lingering confusion surrounding orphaned well funding and restart the grant program.

The funding “protects our communities, cleans up our environment, and builds our economy.”

“We have already begun to hear from IIJA funding recipients impacted by this pause who now face an uncertain future after DOI issued a stop work order on their orphaned well remediation projects,” the letter states.

The letter goes on to say that the Interior Department has issued no guidance on the funds’ status.

“We urge you to resume distribution of this Congressionally directed funding immediately,” the letter stated. “It protects our communities, cleans up our environment, and builds our economy.”

ORPHANED WELLS represent the final stage in what ProPublica recently described as the oil industry’s “ playbook”: When oil wells are no longer productive, large companies sell them off to smaller companies and thereby shed their obligation to plug those wells.

Oil industry profits don’t pay for cleanup

The increasingly marginal wells change hands, eventually landing with operators who lack the financial means to plug them. And when these companies go bankrupt, the wells become orphaned, meaning that the plugging costs then fall on American taxpayers.

The Biden administration’s infrastructure law was the first significant federal attempt to address the growing problem of orphaned wells across the United States, although the funding it provided paled in comparison to the scale of the problem.

The Interior Department estimates that there are about 157,000 documented orphaned oil and gas wells nationwide. This figure is likely a dramatic undercount: The Environmental Protection Agency stated in an April 2021 report that there could be as many as 3.4 million abandoned wells nationally.

“Undocumented orphaned wells may emit nearly 63 million grams of methane per hour into the atmosphere,” according to a November 2024 report, “the equivalent of over 3.6 million gasoline-powered passenger cars driven per year.”

Many state regulators are aware that their financial requirements for oil and gas operators are are aware of this pattern and struggle to prevent it.

Several state oil regulators stated this explicitly in a 2024 survey conducted by the Interstate Oil and Gas Compact Commission (IOGCC), a quasi-governmental body that represents dozens of oil states. The documents were obtained via a records request by Fieldnotes, an industry watchdog, and shared with High Country News.

“Yes, this is the common life of a well,” regulators from Louisiana said, referring to the pattern of marginal wells being passed along to smaller companies.

Utah regulators agreed: “It is definitely a problem when wells are transferred to ‘poor’ operators.”

The plugging program was supposed to address these dysfunctional state programs, primarily by providing money. The Interior Department released its first round of grants in 2023, offering up $658 million to 26 states, including most of the oil states in the West.

The subsequent grants were intended to actually push states to fix their well-plugging programs and require that operators submit more money up front — enough to ensure that the industry and not the public ends up paying for the cost of plugging.

Known as regulatory improvement grants, these pools of funding required that states demonstrate higher financial assurance standards, increase scrutiny on well transfers, improve their plugging standards or show other reforms to their orphaned well regulatory regimes.

These grants essentially became the sole tool for the federal government to incentivize tougher state regulations. But the attempt immediately ran into headwinds: Oil states pushed back on these conditions. Some of this occurred via the IOGCC, which collaborated with the federal government on the rollout of the infrastructure law. This included initiatives to reduce orphaned well numbers, program implementation and data collection. Public documents show the inter-state commission lobbied to keep the federal guidelines as weak as possible. 

“Undocumented orphaned wells may emit nearly 63 million grams of methane per hour into the atmosphere.”

In a meeting of the Texas Railroad Commission in May 2022, Commissioner Wayne Christian – also an appointee to the IOGCC – said that he was working to remove the requirements from the federal grants.

“I’m part of the negotiation with IOGCC on the dollars coming down,” Christian said. “The Interior Department kind of have slowed things down, because all of a sudden, surprise, surprise, they decided they wanted to tell us how to do our work. And so we’re kind of fighting back on that.”

Interior devotes billions to plugging old oil wells. Is it enough?

Regulatory improvement grants would have made available an additional $40 million per state. Now the future of those grants and the improvement incentives are in jeopardy, though some groups are challenging the legality of Trump’s decision to freeze funds that had already been appropriated by Congress and passed into law.

Several environmental groups and many Democratic states have filed lawsuits against the Trump administration, seeking to release the unspent funds from the Infrastructure and Inflation Reduction acts, the Biden administration’s landmark spending bills.

“The Trump Administration has continued to block funds needed for our domestic energy security, transportation, and infrastructure provided under the IRA and IIJA,” said California Attorney General Rob Bonta in a statement in February, after filing an injunction alongside 23 Democratic attorney generals, attempting to halt the administration’s funding cuts.

Bonta’s statement noted that the administration was blocking funding that “creates well-paying jobs while simultaneously reducing harmful pollution.”

The post Trump halts historic orphaned well-plugging program appeared first on High Country News.

Following revelations earlier this month that Oviedo’s water fluoridation system had been down for the majority of the last year without notice to the City Council or the public, the Public Works Department is making changes to internal protocols.

Oviedo residents voted for the city’s water to be fluoridated in 1974, though the system wasn’t activated until 1995. After operating for decades, city records and staff statements suggest the system began to break down sometime between December 2023 and January 2024, though the City Council was only alerted to the issue this February, more than a year later.

The subsequent pausing of the water fluoridation “dosing” program wasn’t brought to the city manager or City Council’s attention because, as staff put it, it wasn’t an urgent matter of public health or safety. Public Works Director Bobby Wyatt said he was “aware they weren’t dosing” at the “beginning of January” 2025, and “that’s where I got involved.”

Oviedo Deputy Mayor Natalie Teuchert said in an email to Wyatt that not being informed put the City Council “into a bad spot from lack of info,” and “citizens should be aware we aren’t dosing the water.”

Oviedo’s Public Works Department was recognized during the March 3 City Council meeting for its work, with a Flood Awareness Week proclamation. Director Bobby Wyatt is in the middle (Photo via City of Oviedo’s Facebook)

In a Feb. 27 email response to Teuchert, Wyatt wrote:

“I just learned the ‘rest of the story’ this past Tuesday. The City Manager was informed immediately and as quickly as I could prepare the information it was provided to Council. In hindsight I should have dug deeper when the issue was first presented to me, but I understood it as a recent occurrence. I have already discussed with staff the types of information I need to know in order to keep Council informed. There is no excusing the situation as it presents bad optics. However, there is no malicious intent. Staff was doing their job as they always do, but the details I need to know weren’t shared; not to hide it but because from the operation/maintenance perspective it wasn’t thought to share it with me.”

Oviedo Mayor Megan Sladek said “the communication breakdown” was “exceptionally not OK.”

When to notify

Wyatt said that “critical” issues are brought to his attention “if it’s an urgency, and we address it right away.

“Normally what happens is staff will come tell me to my face, ‘Hey, we’ve got a problem, we need to address this,’ and we act on it right away,” he said. “They never brought it to my attention as … an urgent need to replace.”

When asked whether something that was voted for and is a long-standing public policy is paused for extended periods of time should be communicated to the public and City Council, Wyatt said “Yes.”

“I think anything other than fluoride would’ve been brought to my attention as an emergency issue as far as service and delivery to residents, and would’ve been addressed immediately,” he said.

The city said that if the system was overdosing rather than underdosing, it would have risen to the level of a “health safety issue” and be communicated to the public.

“I can’t speak to the 1970s [when it was voted for by Oviedo residents] and fluoride as a health issue, but when I have raw sewage on the ground or a water main that’s broken and I can’t provide service, that’s on a much higher level of emergency than if I’m able to add fluoride, which is an additive to the water system,” he said.

Not communicating the issue had left elected officials uneasy.

“It is a significant issue of public trust,” Sladek said. “Even though perhaps nobody’s life was in danger, it’s an incredible breach of public trust for people to, for [the majority of] 15 months, think the water’s being fluoridated and not have that to be the case.

“If one can forget something that is as politically a hot-button an issue as fluoride, there could be other things. … I don’t know what else might be forgotten.”

Wyatt said that when he first learned the system was not dosing, he “understood it to be that it was a recent issue.”

Following Florida Surgeon General Dr. Joseph Ladapo’s Nov. 22 guidance about fluoridation, groups speaking about fluoride at the Jan. 6 Oviedo Council meeting, the Feb. 4 announcement and Feb. 13 filing of the 2025 Florida Farm Bill that could prohibit fluoride statewide, and multiple inquiries by OCN, Wyatt sent the City Council email updates about the system being paused on Feb. 6 and Feb. 26. In the first email, the timing of the issue was unclear, but Sladek said it read as if it was very recent while, in the second email, more details revealed that it was down intermittently in 2024, and paused since September.

Oviedo resident Agnieszka Francis spoke at the Jan. 6 Oviedo City Council meeting about her concerns regarding water fluoridation.

It was revealed during the March 3 meeting that the system had in fact been paused for all but about three months over the previous year.

“It was on all of the politicians’ radar, and so items like that, I’m familiar with and sensitive to, and had I known about it [earlier] it would’ve been shared,” Wyatt said.

Currently, the future of the fluoridation system is in a holding pattern, as the City Council said they do not want to make a decision on fixing it until after the Florida Legislature decides on the Farm Bill. The legislative session ends May 2.

Teuchert said there will be continued discussion on the timeline “discrepancies,” but agrees with the communication protocol changes.

“We are only as good as the information we have to make decisions with,” she said. “We definitely need to find an answer and make sure this doesn’t happen again, and why it happened in the first place.”

Through interviews and public records requests that included analysis of more than 900 emails, OCN put together a timeline of the fluoridation communications and long-term issues with the system.

Communication confusion

At the March 3 City Council meeting, Assistant Public Works Director/City Engineer Alexis Stewart and Utilities Manager Steve Santiago told the Council the system had actually only been functioning as expected for three months since at least the beginning of 2024. Prior to their presentation, Wyatt told the Council he had only recently learned of the extent of the issues with the system and told the Council he was copied on an email that made reference to issues with the system’s analyzers, “and I honestly don’t remember it.”

Sladek said that is not an acceptable answer for her.

”It’s not OK to forget at the end of the day,” she said. “It’s not OK to not recall it. It is his job to recall. … The director is the communication key between all the people who are doers and the people who have to set the policy and make sure that the budget is available for the doing to happen. So that’s a critical failure to forget that you have a failed system and just forgot to tell anybody about that.

”I don’t doubt that he really forgot, but it doesn’t make it OK to forget to do a critical component of one’s job,” she said.

The email in question was a response to a Nov. 25 inquiry by an Orlando Sentinel reporter. When OCN initially asked the city for the document Wyatt mentioned, the email provided did not include any discussion of the fluoride dosing analyzers.

A schematic of how the Oviedo’s fluoride system works (diagram via City of Oviedo)

However, through public records requests, OCN obtained the chain of emails that led to those answers being sent back to the Sentinel. In them, the reporter asked the city multiple questions, including, “Has that amount remained consistent, or has Oviedo changed the amount of fluoride?”

On Nov. 26, Wyatt personally directed a staff member over email to “please provide answers to the questions below and then send back only to me and Alexis [Stewart] to review.”

The answer the staff member sent back to Wyatt — with Stewart and two other staff members included on the email — about whether the amount of fluoride had remained consistent, was: “no, due to analyzer and equipment failures.”

Following this, Stewart sent the responses to Oviedo Public Information Officer Lisa McDonald, but the answer to the question regarding the amount of fluoride was different. It had been rewritten to say, simply, “Changed.”

Stewart said she shortened and reworded the answer to more directly respond to the exact question. Wyatt said, “the honest answer is, I forgot about it. And at the time, there was no warning flags about it needing to be replaced right away when I saw it.”

Still “a problem” 

He said he apologized to the Council during the March 3 meeting because there was an email and he “did not remember” it.

“It was an item related to the Council they wanted to discuss, and I honestly did not remember the email,” he said. “That’s the honest, simplest answer. I’m very responsible for my department.”

City Manager Bryan Cobb said department directors “should be informed” on communications that go out to the public or the press, and are expected to have final approval after working with the public information officer on the messaging.

While Deputy Mayor Tuechert said, “I can’t answer to someone’s memory” and Wyatt is “not an absent public works director,” she does say there was a timeline discrepancy and a breakdown in communication.

“It does appear that there was communication about this before we were told about it … that email alludes to that. They knew there was an issue with it as far as when we had discussions in council,” she said. “It is a problem.”

A known issue 

The November 2024 email chain is not the first time staff has discussed issues internally with the Oviedo fluoride system. In fact, the problems with the system seemingly date back years.

The West Mitchell Hammock Water Treatment facility fluoridation analyzer system, part of Oviedo’s fluoride system (Photo via City of Oviedo)

Emails dating back to 2020 and more recently, throughout 2024, show that the West Mitchell Hammock Water Treatment Plant and Public Works staff had long known about the analyzers not functioning properly. There are numerous compliance reports sent to the Florida Department of Health (DOH) that state “equipment malfunction” as the reason fluoride levels are lower than the expected 0.7 mg/L, beginning in November 2023, and emails from at least 2022 mention the analyzer issues.

The emails to the DOH, referencing Hach, a water quality monitoring company, say “the water plant is still working with Hach company to solve the reliability of the online analyzer. The system cannot safely inject fluoride without a reliable online analyzer.”

Greg McCue, compliance and project administrator for Oviedo’s utilities, wrote in a Feb. 28 email that “even during start up [more than 15 years ago] the Hach fluoride analyzers were problematic.”

Through 2024, staff was working on potential fixes, even receiving quotes for potential improvements, but they were never implemented.

The analyzers were being serviced regularly and, according to Wyatt, not mentioned as an urgent need, while another component, the skid, a self-contained fluoride pump system, was brought up in meetings.

Wyatt said non-urgent items that are in need of replacement are programmed into the department’s yearly capital improvement plan.

“All of the equipment has to work together, and the skids were aging infrastructure that needed to be replaced. The analyzers had failures, and they have a semi-annual service contract, and they were continually being serviced,” Stewart said. “They would fall out of service, and then it was a consistent maintenance issue where the skids are operational. They’re on the CIP to [be] replace[d], because they’re aging.

“Each component can be replaced at different times.”

A Feb. 26, 2024 email from McCue shows staff was working on price quotes for both the analyzers and skid system so he could “have this information so if DOH starts inquiring of when our [fluoride] injection system will be up and running again.”

Wyatt said that the optimal time it would have been communicated to him was “if there was a determination that the analyzers were having repeated issues and we were having problems with the maintenance service and how quickly they were getting repaired, at some point they should have brought it up and, just, we replace the whole system.”

Despite the communication confusion, Wyatt said he has full faith in his staff.

“These guys were doing their job, and we’ve now addressed things that I might need to know about and that’s been taken care of,” he said. “You will find no better, competent, capable staff anywhere than the staff we have. They do so much with so little.”

The post Oviedo changes protocols after long fluoride system shutdowns appeared first on Oviedo Community News.

FALLS VILLAGE—Defunding and dismantling has been the order of the day in Washington, but local officials are still waiting to see what the turmoil will mean for the residents of […]

The post Educators, state officials adopt a ‘wait and see’ toward DOE dismantling first appeared on Kent News, Inc.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture announced late Tuesday it will release previously authorized grant funds to farmers and small rural business owners to build renewable energy projects—but only if they rewrite applications to comply with President Donald Trump’s energy priorities.

The move has left some farmers perplexed—and doubtful that they’ll ever get the grant money they were promised, given the Trump administration’s emphasis on fossil fuels and hostility toward renewable energy.

Some of the roughly 6,000 grant applicants have already completed the solar, wind or other energy projects and are awaiting promised repayment from the government. Others say they can’t afford to take on the projects they’d been planning unless the grant money comes through.

A Floodlight analysis shows the overwhelming majority of the intended recipients of this money reside in Trump country—congressional districts represented by Republicans.

After hearing of the USDA’s latest announcement Wednesday, Minnesota strawberry farmer Andy Petran said he suspects many previously approved projects won’t be funded. He’d been approved for a $39,625 grant to install solar panels on his farm. But like many other farmers nationally, Petran got word from the USDA earlier this year that his grant money had been put on hold.

“It’s not like any small farmer who is looking to put solar panels on their farms will be able to put a natural gas refinery or a coal refinery on the farm,” Petran said. “I don’t know what they expect me to switch to.”

Petran was counting on the benefits that solar power would bring to his farm.

After getting word in September that the USDA had approved his grant application, he expected the solar panels would not only reduce his electricity bill but allow him to sell power back to the grid. He and his wife figured the extra income would help expand their Twin Cities Berry Co. and pay down their debt more quickly.

Petran’s optimism was soon extinguished. A USDA representative told him earlier this year that the grant had been frozen.

His 15-acre farm about 40 miles north of Minneapolis operates on a razor-thin margin, Petran said, so without the grant money, he can’t afford to build the $80,000 solar project.

“Winning these grants was a contract between us and the government,” he said. “There was a level of trust there. That trust has been broken.”

In its announcement, issued Tuesday night, the USDA said grant recipients will have 30 days to review and revise their project plans to align with President Trump’s Unleashing American Energy Executive Order, which prioritizes fossil fuel production and cuts federal support for renewable energy projects.

“This process gives rural electric providers and small businesses the opportunity to refocus their projects on expanding American energy production while eliminating Biden-era DEIA and climate mandates embedded in previous proposals,” the USDA news release said. “… This updated guidance reflects a broader shift away from the Green New Deal.”

USDA Secretary Brooke Rollins said in the release that the new directive will give rural energy providers and small businesses a chance to “realign their projects” with Trump’s priorities.

It’s unclear what this will mean for grant recipients who’ve already spent money on renewable energy projects—or those whose planned projects have been stalled by the administration’s funding freeze.

The USDA didn’t directly answer those questions. In an email to Floodlight on Wednesday, a department spokesperson said the agency must approve any proposed changes to plans—but offered no specific guidance on what or whether changes should be made.

“Awardees that do not respond via the website will be considered as not wishing to make changes to their proposals, and disbursements and other actions will resume after 30 days,” the email said. “For awardees who respond via the website to confirm no changes, processing on their projects will resume immediately.”

IRA funding targeted

The grant funding was put on hold after an executive order issued by President Trump on his first day in office. It froze hundreds of billions of dollars for renewable energy under President Joe Biden’s massive climate law, the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA).

The law added more than $1 billion to the USDA’s 17-year-old Rural Energy for America (REAP) program.

About 6,000 REAP grants funded with IRA money have been paused and are being reviewed for compliance with Trump’s executive order, according to a March 5 email from the USDA’s rural development office to the office of U.S. Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.).

A lawsuit filed earlier this month challenges the legality of the freeze on IRA funding for REAP projects.

Earthjustice lawyer Hana Vizcarra, one of the attorneys who filed the suit, called the latest USDA announcement a “disingenuous stunt.”

“President Trump and Secretary Rollins can’t change the rules of the game well into the second half,” she said in a statement Wednesday. “This is the definition of an arbitrary and capricious catch-22.”

Under the REAP grant program, farmers pay for renewable and lower carbon energy projects, then submit proof of the completed work to the USDA for reimbursement. The grants were intended to fund solar panels, wind turbines, grain dryers, irrigation upgrades and other projects, USDA data shows.

At a press conference in Atlanta on March 12, Rollins said, “If our farmers and ranchers, especially, have already spent money under a commitment that was made, the goal is to make sure they are made whole.”

But some contend the administration is unfairly making farmers jump through more hoops.

“This isn’t cutting red tape; it’s adding more,” said Andy Olsen, senior policy advocate with the Environmental Law and Policy Center, a Midwest-based environmental advocacy group. “The USDA claims to deliver on commitments, but these new rules could result in awarded grants being permanently frozen.”

U.S. Rep. Chellie Pingree, a longtime farmer and Maine Democrat who sits on the House agriculture committee, said she thinks it’s illegal and unconstitutional for the administration to withhold grant money allocated by Congress. Beyond that, she said, it has hurt cash-strapped farmers.

“This is about farmers making ends meet,” she told Floodlight. “It’s not some ideological issue for us.”

GOP lawmakers silent

Using USDA data, Floodlight identified the top 10 congressional districts that received the most grants. They’re all represented by Republicans who have said little publicly about the funding freezes affecting thousands of their constituents. It’s impossible to tell from the USDA data which REAP grants will get paid out.

The congressional district that received the most REAP grants was Iowa’s 2nd District, in the northeastern part of the state. Farmers and business owners there got more than 300 grants from 2023 through 2025. The district is represented by U.S. Rep. Ashley Hinson, who has previously voiced support for “alternative energy strategies.”

“More than half of the energy produced in Iowa is from renewable sources, and that is something for Iowans to be very proud of,” she told the House Appropriations Committee in June 2022.

Hinson’s office did not respond to multiple requests for comment on the matter.

The No. 2 spot for REAP grants: Minnesota’s 1st Congressional District, represented by U.S. Rep. Brad Finstad. In that district, which spans southern Minnesota, more than 260 farmers and rural businesses were approved for REAP grants.

Finstad’s office did not return multiple emails and calls requesting comment. His constituents have been complaining about his silence on funding freezes. They’ve staged at least two demonstrations at his offices in Minnesota. Finstad said he held a February 26 telephone town hall joined by 3,000 people in his district.

In a February 28 letter to a constituent, Finstad said Rollins has announced that the USDA will honor contracts already signed with farmers and that he looks forward to working with the administration “to support the needs of farm country.”

Finstad is no stranger to the REAP program. Before becoming a congressman, he was the USDA’s state director of rural development for Minnesota. In that role, he was a renewable booster.

“By reducing energy costs, renewable energy helps to create opportunities for improvement elsewhere, like creating jobs,” Finstad said in a 2021 USDA press release. That has since been deleted from the agency’s website.

Rollins, meanwhile, called herself “a massive defender of fossil fuels” at her confirmation hearing, and she has expressed skepticism about the findings of climate scientists. “We know the research of CO2 being a pollutant is just not valid,” Rollins said at the Heartland Institute’s 2018 conference on energy.

She has also said that she welcomes the efforts of Elon Musk and his cost-cutting Department of Government Efficiency team at the USDA.

Losing trust in government

Jake Rabe, a solar installer in Blairstown, Iowa, said he has put up more than 100,000 solar modules in the state since getting into the business in 2015. More than 30 of his customers have completed their installation but are awaiting frozen grant funding, he said. At least 10 more have signed the paperwork but are hesitant to begin construction. Millions of dollars worth of his business are frozen, he said.

On top of that, Rabe said, the state’s net metering policies—in which solar users get credits for any excess power they send back to the grid—are set to expire in 2026.

“I kind of feel like it may be the beginning of the end for the solar industry in Iowa with what’s going on,” said Rabe, who owns Rabe Hardware.

Despite it all, he remains a Trump supporter.

“Under the current administration, I think we’re doing things that are necessary for the betterment of the entire United States,” he said.

On March 13, Earthjustice, a nonprofit environmental law group, filed a federal lawsuit against the USDA on behalf of five farmers and three nonprofits. They’re seeking a court order to compel the Trump administration to honor the government’s grant commitments, saying it violated the Constitution by refusing to disburse funds allocated by Congress.

Vizcarra, the Earthjustice lawyer, said she is disturbed by the lack of concern from Congress, whose powers appear to have been usurped by the administration.

She added, “These are real people, real farmers and real organizations whose projects have impacts on communities who are left with this horrible situation with no idea of when it will end.”

One of the plaintiffs, Laura Beth Resnick, grows dahlias, zinnias and other cut flowers on a small farm about 30 miles north of Baltimore.

Florists are her customers, and demand for her flowers blooms during cold-weather holidays like Thanksgiving. Each of her three greenhouses is half the length of a football field and heating them during those months isn’t cheap, Resnick said. The power bill for Butterbee Farm often exceeds $500 a month.

So a year ago, Resnick applied for a USDA renewable energy grant, hoping to put solar panels on her barn roof—a move that she estimated would save about $5,000 a year. In August, the USDA sent word that her farm had been awarded a grant for $36,450.

The cost of installing solar panels was $72,000, she said. So she paid a solar contractor $36,000 upfront, expecting that she’d pay the rest in January when the federal grant money came in. The solar panels were installed in December.

But the federal government’s check never arrived. A February 4 email from a USDA representative said her request for reimbursement was rejected due to the Trump administration’s recent executive orders.

Resnick said she sought help from her elected representatives but got “pretty much nowhere.”

After hearing about the USDA’s announcement Wednesday, Resnick said that based on the response she’s previously gotten from the USDA, she’s not confident she will get her grant money.

“I’ve lost my trust in the USDA at this point,” she said. “Our project is complete, so we can’t change the scope of it.”

Van Hollen, the Maryland Democrat, said he supports the legal fight against the funding freeze.

“Donald Trump and Elon Musk are scamming our farmers,” Van Hollen said in a statement to Floodlight. “By illegally withholding these reimbursements for work done under federal grants, they’re breaking a promise to farmers and small businesses in Maryland and across the country.”

Renewable projects on hold

Since 2023, when IRA funding became available, the USDA has given or loaned about $21.3 billion through programs to support renewable energy in rural areas, according to a Floodlight analysis of agency data, including the REAP program.

Those grant payments were processed until January 20, when the Trump administration announced its freeze.

Trump’s decision was in line with Project 2025, a conservative blueprint crafted by the Heritage Foundation aimed at reshaping the U.S. government. That document called for repealing the IRA and rescinding “all funds not already spent by these programs.”

Environmental groups have sharply criticized the administration’s move, and several lawsuits are challenging the legality of the freeze of IRA funding.

At a recent public roundtable, Maggie Bruns, CEO of the Prairie Rivers Network which supports Illinois communities’ transition to clean energy, listed REAP grants that have been held up in Illinois, where her multifaceted environmental nonprofit is based. A $390,000 grant for a solar array at the grocery store in Carlinville; $27,000 for solar panels at an auto body shop in Staunton; $51,000 for a solar array for a golf course in Alton.

Since 2023, farmers and businesses in Illinois have been approved for more than 590 REAP grants, making the state the third highest in number of recipients in the United States, Floodlight’s analysis shows. In an interview with Barn Raiser, Bruns said the decision to freeze such grants has caused unneeded stress for farmers. Before the executive order, USDA’s rural development team had worked hard to bring dollars for renewable energy projects to Illinois farmers, she said.

“That’s the thing we should be celebrating right now,” Bruns said, “and instead we have to fight to make sure that money actually does land into the pockets of the people who have gone ahead, jumped through all these hoops and are attempting to do the right thing for their businesses and their farms.”

In January, Dan Batson’s nursery in Mississippi was approved for a $400,367 REAP grant—money that he planned to use to install four solar arrays. He intended to use that solar energy to power the pumps that irrigate more than 1 million trees, a move that would have saved the company about $25,000 a year in electricity costs.

Seated in a wooded area about 30 miles north of Biloxi, his 42-year-old GreenForest nursery ships potted magnolias, hollies, crepe myrtles and other trees to southern states. Until a couple of months ago, Batson had been excited about what the grant money would mean for the business.

But when he saw news about the funding being held up earlier this year, he called a local USDA representative who confirmed the funds had been frozen. Batson had already sent the solar contractor $240,000. Now, his plans are on hold.

“I just can’t do the project if I don’t get the money,” he said.

Tuesday’s announcement from the USDA makes him no more confident he’ll get the money, he said.

Batson said he’s a fiscal conservative, so he understands the effort to cut costs. “But,” he said, “the way they’ve gone about it has disrupted a lot of business owners’ lives.”

Floodlight is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates the powers stalling climate action.

The post Farmers in Trump Country Were Counting on Clean Energy Grants. Then the Government Changed the Rules. appeared first on Barn Raiser.

The Trump administration has canceled orders for truckloads of food — including cases of milk, eggs, cheese, chicken and fruit — that had been slated for Missouri and Kansas food pantries and hunger outreach groups beginning in April.

As part of an ongoing campaign to slash the federal budget, the U.S. Department of Agriculture pulled the plug on $500 million worth of government commodities designated for food banks nationwide.

Caught in the fray were scheduled deliveries to Harvesters, the food bank that serves the Kansas City area and helps supply food to area food pantries, community kitchens and shelters. The organization got word on March 25 that orders coming to both Kansas and Missouri had been called off. 

For Kansas, Harvesters said canceled commodity orders included 4,176 cases of foods like canned vegetables and soup, along with 11,736 packages of items like containers of eggs, packages of cheese and cartons of milk. The organization had not learned details about what orders to its Missouri service area had been called off, but officials said the entire state is destined to lose 45 truckloads of shelf-stable and perishable commodity food.

Karen Siebert, public policy and advocacy adviser at Harvesters, said no explanation came with word of the canceled shipments, which had been slated to arrive between April and August. It’s possible some of the food was already en route, she said. 

Siebert hopes the orders can be reinstated if they are shifted to a different federal funding source — one that hasn’t been slashed by the Trump administration. But any shipments that are lost, she said, will be a blow to people who rely on food pantries.

The high-protein staples that come from the U.S. government aren’t easily replaced by donations or other sources.

“It’s some of the best food that we receive,” Siebert said. “I heard someone here call it ‘center of the plate food.’ … It’s a really healthy, important resource for families.”

The canceled shipments represent only a portion of the food Harvesters is expecting from the federal government. And Harvesters is less dependent on government shipments than food banks in other parts of the country. About $7.6 million of its $27.3 million in 2024 revenue came from government programs. Meanwhile, $18.6 million came from private support.

But at a time when the cost of food and other basic needs continues to increase, any loss of government support will be felt. News of the canceled deliveries comes as Congress seems poised to cut safety-net programs like Medicaid and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), which gives low-income Americans money to buy food.

Harvesters distributed 60 million pounds of food in 2024, down from the 77 million pounds it distributed in 2021 during the height of COVID-19, but still more than the 53 million pounds it distributed in 2019, the year before the pandemic. 

The food bank operates in 27 Missouri and Kansas counties, working with 489 food pantries, 69 school pantries, 54 community kitchens and dozens of other programs that connect those in need with food.

Epidemic of food insecurity

Food insecurity is a growing issue nationally.

Feeding America, an organization that focuses on hunger, estimates that in 2023 more than 47 million Americans, including one in five children, were experiencing food insecurity, meaning that they didn’t have the money or other resources necessary to get enough food. That was a 38% jump from 2021.

Organizations that work to mitigate hunger said the problem is only growing. Even before federal aid cuts, food banks and other hunger organizations were struggling to keep up, Siebert said.

“It’s not like it’s easy now,” she said. “We are just nervous about what’s coming down the pike.”

The cuts affecting Harvesters, involving commodities purchased through a program overseen by the secretary of agriculture, come on top of $1 billion in cuts the Trump administration made to federal funding that was designated to help schools and food banks buy fresh food and meat from local farmers. 

Thomas Smith, chief business officer with The Kansas City Food Hub, a cooperative association of small urban farmers, said many of his organization’s members increased production based on a belief that those federal programs would provide a reliable market. One farmer sold meat to school districts in Kansas, for example, while others sold produce to food banks. 

The programs, set up by the Biden administration to help bolster local food production markets during the COVID pandemic, supported farmers and brought a nutritious food source to hunger outreach programs. Eliminating the programs, Smith said, will be devastating.

“We’re going to lose some of the few small farmers we have,” he said.

A Kansas program modeled after the federal farm-to-food-bank program has also been eliminated, Siebert said. During recent budget negotiations, state legislators eliminated $900,000 that would have funded the program next year.

Other Kansas City-area hunger outreach groups are also seeing federal funding go away.

Double Up Food Bucks, a program administered by the Mid-America Regional Council, hasn’t lost federal funding yet, but two grants that were up for renewal have been put on hold. Donna Martin, the program’s director, said most of the program’s budget is at stake, but the government isn’t explaining anything, including whether funding will return.

The program, which reached about 180,000 people in 2023, gives people in Missouri and Kansas who receive SNAP benefits matching funds to spend on fresh produce at farmers markets or grocery stores. Like many food assistance programs, Double Up Food Bucks doesn’t just support people in need of food. It also puts money in the pockets of local farmers and grocers.

Cultivate KC, which promotes urban farming and runs a program to help immigrants become farmers, has already seen several of its 14 federal grants frozen, said Brien Darby, the organization’s executive director. 

Federal grants provide three-quarters of Cultivate KC’s funding, but right now the organization is sitting on $80,000 in bills that haven’t been reimbursed under those federal grants. Darby said the organization has enough funding to make it until June. After that there will have to be changes if federal dollars aren’t restored.

Darby is trying to remain hopeful. Cultivate KC has joined other farming organizations in a lawsuit filed last week against the Trump administration.

“It feels like we’re in a time right now where that’s the best way to keep the government accountable,” Darby said.

The post Trump administration’s cuts cancel food deliveries to Harvesters appeared first on The Beacon.

Wyoming’s lone congressional Rep. Harriet Hageman will no longer appear at town halls set for later this week in Cheyenne and Torrington, opting instead for virtual events, she announced Tuesday.

Her office blamed the change on “public events, credible threats to Hageman, and the related national outbursts of politically motivated violence and attempts at intimidation,” according to a statement posted to the congresswoman’s website. 

In response, Wyoming Democrats said Hageman and other conservatives were seeking to distract from widespread frustration with President Donald Trump and Elon Musk’s dismantling of some federal agencies. 

“I don’t think she expected the pushback that she received,” Democratic Party Chairman Joe Barbuto said. “In every community of every size that she visited, there were people of all political stripes there to say ‘hey, we’re really concerned.’”

Hageman had scheduled events in Cheyenne on Friday and Torrington on Saturday. Her decision to move them to a virtual format comes six days after a raucous crowd of more than 500 jeered the congresswoman during a tense town hall in Laramie. Though people in the crowd booed and cursed Hageman, no one was asked to leave or escorted out amid a heavy law enforcement presence, a Laramie police officer told WyoFile that night. No arrests were reported.

At one point during the back-and-forth, Hageman told her constituents that “it’s so bizarre to me how obsessed you are with the federal government. You guys are going to have a heart attack if you don’t calm down,” she said. “I’m sorry, you’re hysterical.”

Hageman cites other incidents 

More than 20 law enforcement officers were assigned to a town hall the following night in Wheatland, the statement from Hageman’s office said. “Despite the law enforcement presence, an attendee followed Hageman leaving the venue and initiated a physical confrontation with staff, into which local police were forced to intervene,” the statement reads. 

WyoFile has reached out to the Wheatland Police Department and is awaiting more information on the events described by Hageman. 

“I thank our wonderful law enforcement community for their willingness to support the public and myself while participating in our government process,” Hageman said in a statement. “It has become apparent, however, that the continuation of in-person town halls will be a drain on our local resources due to safety concerns for attendees.”

The congresswoman further alleged that her office received a number of credible threatening calls and emails, which are now the subject of a law enforcement investigation.

The Wyoming Democratic Party “certainly does not condone any kinds of violence or threats or harassment of any kind,” Barbuto said. Both elected officials and their staff in both political parties should be able to operate free from fears for their physical safety, he said.

“But at the same time, we have a fundamental right to protest,” he said. “The idea that protest is the same as chaos and using that to justify cancelling these public events is a disservice.” 

Hageman said she’s held 75 in-person town halls since running for Congress, with events in all 23 of Wyoming’s counties. All but the most recent two were held without incident, she said. 

The move to a virtual format for future events will continue “at least in the short-term,” her office said.

“It’s no secret that I am willing to engage with citizens on any topic, in any place. But I draw the line when organized protestors intentionally create confrontation and chaos, escalating tensions to a point where violence seems inevitable,” Hageman said in a statement.

Lawmakers often host town hall events in their communities during congressional downtime. In a conservative state like Wyoming, those gatherings often draw many supporters of the state’s all-Republican congressional delegation. 

But amid Trump and Musk’s dramatic cuts to federal programs and mass layoffs of government workers, upset constituents have been appearing in growing numbers at town halls across the country to demand answers from lawmakers. Republican leaders in Congress urged members to stop hosting town halls to avoid confrontations with angry constituents going viral. 

History of protests

After the Laramie event, some conservative politicians and pundits, citing the raucous nature of the event in a conservative state, suggested that the protesters weren’t legitimate constituents. But Laramie, one of the few blue-leaning communities in deeply red Wyoming, has a history of civil disobedience for left-leaning causes. During the summer and fall of 2020, for instance, hundreds of people marched through downtown to protest police brutality and the police shooting of local resident Robbie Ramirez.

One of the city’s House representatives, Karlee Provenza, described those making assertions about protesters flocking into town from other places as ignorant to Laramie’s civic nature. 

“Welcome to House District 45,” she said, “where we think a little different than the people who are sent to Washington D.C. on our behalf.”

In Laramie, Provenza continued, “people have continued to show up for things that matter to them. And they are fed up and they’re your constituents. And instead of acknowledging their concerns you [Hageman] were dismissive, so of course they were upset.”

To Provenza, the overarching message of Hageman’s tour through Wyoming, and the pushback she has seen in various towns and cities, is not that the state’s few Democrats are somehow unruly or dangerous. It is instead that certain actions of the Trump administration, and Elon Musk’s DOGE cost-cutting initiative in particular, are upsetting people, she said.

“Quite frankly, I think it’s lazy to say that their anger and suffering is not valid and has no place here,” she said of Hageman’s characterization of the reaction seen on her tour. “That’s what someone says who doesn’t have to work for their vote.” 

The post Hageman cancels in-person town halls, opts for virtual events citing safety concerns appeared first on WyoFile .

Trump administration funding terminations, freezes and layoffs are keeping some North Dakota farmers and rural nonprofits from continuing USDA and other federally funded projects.

In some cases, projects long in the making were terminated or thrown into uncertainty, washing away months and even years of work.

In others, promised funds haven’t been released, leaving some footing the bill for equipment purchased and work half completed. 

Nonprofit groups that work with local farmers across the state, like the Foundation for Agricultural and Rural Resource Management and Sustainability (FARRMS), are also losing their ability to deliver on projects. 

For FARRMS executive director Stephanie Blumhagen, one frustration has been a lack of information, particularly since funding can go through multiple layers of entities. 

The situation also causes issues where contracts were already agreed upon, meaning work must continue on projects that may not be funded. 

FARRMS, almost entirely funded by USDA grants, had three programs frozen and one large project terminated – unless funding eventually comes through. 

It was also involved in the North Central Regional Food Business Center, a project promoting partnerships with farmers and local economic development commissions and other stakeholders to build stronger local food systems. The project had already been active for two years and involved 35 partner organizations in North Dakota, Minnesota and South Dakota.

This included regranting of $205,000 by the Region Five Development Commission to five farms and local food businesses in North Dakota to build out the program last year. FARRMS had to dissolve all contracts related to the program because of funding uncertainty.

“Not only does that represent a financial loss to all of these organizations who had restructured their budgets, (but) we were gearing up to do this work of providing technical assistance to local businesses in their communities,” Blumhagen said. “We’ve lost all this momentum, and potentially, partnerships.” 

Blumhagen said funding to programs like these run by small rural nonprofits are a “percentage of a percent” of the USDA budget. 

“We’re really efficient. We leverage other resources, we work together, we network. So this funding freeze is creating roadblocks and inefficiencies,” Blumhagen said. “It’s making us spend time restructuring. It’s the opposite of creating efficiency.” 

Program terminations 

So far, federal and USDA program terminations include three in North Dakota. 

Two of those are the USDA’s Local Food Purchase Assistance (LFPA) program and the Local Food for Schools and Child Care (LFSCC) program. 

Great Plains Food Bank was a participant in the LFPA, using the funding to purchase food from local farmers, growers and ranchers to support children, families and seniors suffering from food insecurity, according to Darby Njos, communications manager at the organization. 

“Unfortunately, with these cuts now in place, we had to have difficult conversations with farmers expecting to participate in the program,” Njos said. “While this does impact us as a food bank, it more significantly affects our local farmers, growers, and ranchers who were relying on these funds.”

For the LFSCC program targeting schools and childcare facilities, the state would have been awarded $1.8 million to help cover purchases of locally produced food for schools and around $870,000 for purchases for childcare facilities. 

The state applied for the funds but was never approved for the final award since it overlapped with the incoming administration and intensive budget cuts. 

Another termination is the Working Lands Conservation Corps, which supported conservation and agricultural resilience projects by training youth in careers related to climate-smart agriculture and conservation. 

For North Dakota, that means the loss of an internship at the U.S. Geological Survey office in Jamestown under the National Ecological Observatory Network for ecological field data collection.

Dakota Angus, a beef producer near Drake, had been awarded nearly $500,000 under a separate Local Food Promotion Program (LFPP), which was reportedly frozen in some states. 

Ashley Bruner, a member of the family operating the ranch who manages the grant, said the full amount was awarded and the ranch hasn’t been impacted by any freeze.

Reflecting some of the confusion others feel about a lack of information, however, ranch owner Blaine Bruner said it was uncertain if future funding would come through the program.

“Nobody knows,” he said. “Whether it’s markets or whatever, the whole damn country doesn’t know what’s going on. That’s the problem we got.” 

Attempts to get clarity from the USDA office in Bismarck about what programs have been impacted were routed to a national USDA spokesperson. 

The spokesperson said U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins is carefully reviewing all Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) and Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA) implemented during the Biden administration and will continue providing updates on what funding is going forward. 

Funding freezes, layoff disruptions 

Funds for the Partnerships for Climate-Smart Commodities Program and the Rural Energy Assistance Program (REAP) are frozen, according to people impacted by those freezes and federal data available about ongoing awards. 

Other programs, such as the Conservation Stewardship Program (CSP) and Environmental Quality Incentives Program (EQIP) were reviewed and approved by Rollins and are going forward. 

“In terms of CSP and EQIP, we are still accepting applications and fulfilling contracts,” Anna Bahnson, outreach coordinator for the USDA National Resources Conservation Service in North Dakota, said. 

“There was a pause initially, and often in any transition there is a pause, but that’s no longer the case,” Bahnson said. 

For those involved in the Climate-Smart and REAP programs, it is uncertain if those funds will be unfrozen. 

Impacted by the freeze of the Climate-Smart program is a $5.75 million cost-share project involving between 150-200 farmers in northeastern North Dakota and northwestern Minnesota, according to Walsh County district conservation manager Josh Anderson, who was instrumental in securing the grant. 

This project would have incentivized farmers to plant multispecies cover crops and incorporate livestock grazing on cropland to improve soil health, as well as promote locally raised, grass-fed livestock. 

Parts of the state have lost up to 50% of their rich topsoil over the past century, and programs like this are meant to help restore some of that loss or reduce further erosion. 

Funding was frozen just weeks before the first batch was expected to roll in, Anderson said. 

While not yet terminated, a delay means waiting a full growing season if the funds eventually materialize – also still uncertain – setting the project back by a year. 

The proposal was accepted a year ago after several solid months of planning.

“It was locally designed, it would have had a lot of input from farmers and ranchers and conservation districts all pulling together, working together,” Anderson said. “There’s a lot of folks here that were really interested and excited about the prospect of being able to convert some of their acres to this kind of model, which would promote soil health.” 

Brian Mothershead, a farmer and soil conservation board member in Rolette County, is also impacted by the freeze to the Climate-Smart funding. 

He’d been selected for a grant under the program to promote no-till farming and rotational grazing of cattle. Because of this, he purchased a used no-till air seeder, intending to use the funding to help pay for it. 

With the final $8,000 he was owed now frozen, however, he’s stuck with equipment he might not use. 

“I’m unsure whether the program grant has been eliminated or just suspended,” he said. “The only real effect it has on me is this air seeder payment, which I will either figure out a different way to pay for, or sell it.” 

A freeze on $410 million in REAP payments impacts farmers across the country and in North Dakota. The majority had already started implementing energy efficiency and renewable energy projects with expectations the funding would come through. 

REAP was created in the 2008 Farm Bill and absorbed a similar program included in the 2002 Farm Bill. 

NDNC called or left messages with around a dozen farmers who still have unprocessed payouts, but did not get anyone on the phone or receive call backs. 

Several farms in the state are owed between $250,000 to $500,000 in unprocessed REAP payments, according to federal data.

Another area of impact is the on and off again firings or layoffs of federal workers. 

Todd Leake, who farms near Emerado, was concerned after catching wind in recent weeks that several researchers at the USDA’s Agricultural Research Service based at universities in the region had lost their positions in Trump administration government efficiency orders. 

This included researchers critical to monitoring ever-evolving wheat and sugar beet diseases. Most have been hired back, he said, but there’s still uncertainty about some of the positions. 

While firings like this might not have had a direct near-term impact, they do have long-term consequences, he said. 

“These researchers are at the forefront of cereal wheat diseases and make it so we can overcome these constant barrages of wheat disease,” Leake said. “It’s extremely important.”

The North Dakota News Cooperative is a nonprofit news organization providing reliable and independent reporting on issues and events that impact the lives of North Dakotans. The organization increases the public’s access to quality journalism and advances news literacy across the state. For more information about NDNC or to make a charitable contribution, please visit newscoopnd.org. Send comments, suggestions or tips to michael@newscoopnd.org. Follow us on Twitter: https://twitter.com/NDNewsCoop.

Environmental justice efforts at the ten U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) regional offices have stopped and employees have been placed on administrative leave, per an announcement from EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin earlier this month. Former EPA employees involved with environmental justice work across the country say rural communities will suffer as a result. 

Before being shuttered in early March, the EPA’s environmental justice arm was aimed at making sure communities were being treated fairly and receiving their due protection under the Clean Air Act and Clean Water Act. Zealan Hoover, former senior advisor to the EPA administrator under the Biden administration, told the Daily Yonder that this work had big implications for rural places since there are pollution concerns in rural areas across the country. 

“EPA was very focused on making sure that not just on the regulatory side, but also on the investment side, we were pushing resources into rural communities,” said Hoover. 

According to Hoover, most of the pollution challenges the U.S. faces are not new. He said that the employees—now on leave—who staffed the EPA’s regional environmental justice offices were deeply knowledgeable on the issues affecting communities in their regions; issues which can go on for decades. Hoover said he worries about recent changes to the agency under the Trump administration, which also include a series of deregulatory actions and a proposed 65% budget cut. 

“I trust that the great folks at EPA who remain will still try valiantly to fill those gaps, but the reality is that this administration is pushing to cut EPA’s budget, pushing employees to leave, and that’s going to restrict EPA’s ability to help rural communities tackle their most significant pollution challenges,” Hoover said. 

One rural community that has faced years of environmental challenges is where Sherri White-Williamson lives in rural Sampson County, North Carolina. In 2021, the county’s landfill ranked second on the list of highest methane emitters in the U.S. The county is also the second-largest producer of hogs nationwide, and in 2022, it accounted for nearly three percent of all U.S. hog sales. 

The hog industry is known for its pollution from open waste storage pits that emit toxic chemicals into nearby neighborhoods. For years, concerns about North Carolina’s hog industry have centered on the disproportionate harm that its pollution does to low-income communities and communities of color since hog farms frequently locate their operations adjacent to such communities in rural counties. 

White-Williamson is also an EPA veteran. She worked on environmental justice initiatives at the agency’s Washington, D.C. office for over a decade before moving back home to southeastern North Carolina. She is now the executive director of the Environmental Justice Community Action Network, or EJCAN, which she founded in Sampson County in 2020 to empower her neighbors amidst environmental challenges like those wrought by the hog farms and the landfill.

In her early work with EJCAN, White-Williamson said she noticed that conversations about environmental justice often centered on urban areas. Since then, White-Williamson said she has focused on educating the public about what environmental justice looks like in rural communities. 

“A lot of our issues have to do with what the cities don’t want or dispose of will end up in our communities,” said White-Williamson. “The pollution, the pesticides, the remnants of the food processing all ends up or stays here while all of the nice, clean, freshly prepared product ends up in a local urban grocery store somewhere.”

Another misconception about environmental justice, according to White-Williamson, is that it exists exclusively to serve communities of color. During her time at the EPA, White-Williamson said she spent time in communities with all kinds of racial demographics while working on environmental justice initiatives.

“I spent a lot of time in places like West Virginia and Kentucky, and places where the populations aren’t necessarily of color, but they are poor-income or low-income places where folks do not have access to the levers of power,” White-Williamson said. 

When pollution impacts local health in communities without access to such “levers of power,” the EPA’s regional environmental justice offices were a resource—and a form of accountability. Without those offices, it will be more difficult for rural communities to get the services they need to address health concerns, said Dr. Margot Brown, senior vice president of justice and equity at the Environmental Defense Fund. 

“They’re dismantling the ecosystem of health protections for rural Americans, and by dismantling them, they’ll make them more susceptible to future hazards,” Brown said of the Trump administration’s decisions at the EPA. “It will impair health and well-being for generations to come.”

Brown worked at the EPA for nearly ten years under President Obama and then under President Trump during his first administration. Her time there included a stint as Deputy Director of the Office of Children’s Health Protection. She, along with Hoover and White-Williamson, said that community members will likely need to turn to their state governments or departments of environmental quality in the absence of the regional environmental justice offices.

But White-Williamson noted that state governments, too, receive federal funding. Frozen funds across federal agencies and cuts to healthcare programs, including Medicaid, could wind up compounding challenges for rural communities trying to mitigate environmental health impacts. 

“The communities that most need the assistance and guidance will again find themselves on the short end of the stick and end up being the ones that are suffering more than anybody else,” White-Williamson said. 

Hoover described it as a “one-two punch” for rural communities. On the one hand, he said, rural places are losing access to healthcare facilities because of budget cuts.

“And on the other hand, they are also sicker because the government is no longer stopping polluters from polluting their air and their water.”

The post Closures of EPA’s Regional Environmental Justice Offices Will Hurt Rural America appeared first on The Daily Yonder.

Jason Myers-Benner wants answers. Most of the time, the Virginia farmer feels “unsettled” by the lack of communication and clarity surrounding the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s funding freeze. During the quieter moments he’s spent staring at an empty inbox, awaiting word about his pending grant, he’s felt “disgusted” by how the government has treated him and many of his peers.

“It’s a sort of powerlessness, that it doesn’t feel like there’s anything that I can do about it,” said Myers-Benner. “Like, can you count on these systems or not?” 

Myers-Benner owns a family-run six acre farm in Keezletown, Virginia. Last spring, the USDA’s National Institute of Food and Agriculture awarded him a little more than $18,000 to support the farm’s work breeding winter peas that could increase soil’s ability to trap carbon. The grant is through the Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education program, or SARE, which has supported farmer-led research initiatives nationwide for decades. The money represented an opportunity to expand work he and his family have been bootstrapping for years, growing crops that help feed lower-income, rural communities like his while preserving the planet.

Then, in late January, the Trump administration began freezing funds for programs across a broad swath of the government. Shortly after, his SARE representative at the University of Georgia fell silent. That’s when he started to worry: Without the grant, which reimburses expenses already incurred, he would need to line up part-time work to pay the bills. “There’s just a deflated feeling of ‘Okay. We were just about getting this rolling,’” he said. “And then … one change at the top has the potential to just completely wipe that out. And so we’ll have to pick up and hard-scrabble our way through it.” 

Myers-Benner finally got an answer on Monday, though one riddled in ambiguity. “You may continue your research or you are welcome to put your research on hold given the uncertainty of the situation, and once we learn more we can communicate that to you,” he was told by email, which he shared with Grist. “If this situation delays your research and outreach per your grant timeline we can offer a no-cost extension if you still have monies left in your budget. Feel free to reach out with any questions. If you decide to hold your project let us know so we can note that in your files. That’s about the best information we can provide at this time while we wait to receive further guidance from USDA.”

The USDA administers SARE through four regional offices hosted in universities. Daramonifah Cooper, a spokesperson for Southern SARE at the University of Georgia, which oversees Myers-Benner’s grant, told Grist it is holding all calls for proposals until it hears from its federal funding source. When asked, Cooper could not clarify the funding status for grants already awarded.

Since late January, the USDA has frozen, rescinded, or cancelled funding supporting everything from donations to food banks to climate-smart agricultural practices. The move aligns with the administration’s goal of rolling back diversity, equity, and inclusion mandates and climate benchmarks. These steps prompted the termination of thousands of federal employees before courts intervened, pressuring the USDA to reinstate many of them, albeit temporarily, and federal judges have repeatedly ordered the administration to release gridlocked funds. Such abrupt and sweeping moves by the agency, and wider administration, have thrown the world of publicly-funded agricultural research into a tailspin. 

A USDA employee, whom Grist granted anonymity to protect them from retaliation, said “basically all” of the agency’s programs that fund agricultural research, including SARE grants, have been put on standstill due to the freeze. This person called the environment within the agency “a shitshow” and said, “It’s all really unknown right now. Even internally.” 

“We know that, yeah, things have been paused. Some political appointee at some level is reviewing our calls for proposals” this person added. “We know that DOGE is in the system, reviewing, doing searches of our databases, but we don’t know like … are they going to massively cut things right now? Things are on hold. But is the shoe gonna drop, and is lots of stuff getting canceled?” 

“Trump doesn’t really care about farmers or delivering services or efficiency or cost-savings. This is all politics. And we’re caught in the middle of it.”

At least 19 university labs have ceased agricultural research work because the Department of Government Efficiency dismantled the U.S. Agency for International Development in February, a move one federal judge said may be unconstitutional. These decisions by the administration have impacted research programs nationwide. 

Kansas State University shut down two labs that were developing drought-resilient varieties of wheat and sorghum crops and pest-resistant plants. Johns Hopkins, the largest university recipient of federal research funding, cut roughly 2,200 jobs. USDA staffing cuts forced a federal project in Maryland investigating unprecedented managed honeybee losses to ask others to carry on its work. Seed and crop research being conducted across the nation’s network of gene banks have also been hobbled by layoffs and grant application suspensions, and grape breeding programs and work on crops affected by wildfire smoke in California have reported disruptions. The administration then announced an abrupt withdrawal of millions in federal funds for multiple universities, triggering a new round of layoffs, lab closures, and project suspensions across the country.

The federal government provides roughly 64 percent of the country’s public agricultural research and development funding. “With federal funding, especially research dollars, being on the chopping board for the current administration, the consequences of that, coupled with layoffs … means that at a time when we need innovation the most to deal with climate change, to make our food systems more resilient, that capacity is going to be lost,” said soil scientist Omanjana Goswami of the nonprofit the Union of Concerned Scientists. 

There will likely be economic fallout, too. A study published March 11 finds that the compounding effects of climate change and lagging investment in research and development has U.S. agriculture facing its first productivity slowdown in decades. 

The researchers modelled the eroding effects of climate change on American agriculture and the decades-long stagnation of spending for publicly funded research and development, using the estimates to quantify the research investment necessary to avoid agricultural productivity declining through 2050. To offset an imminent climate-induced productivity slowdown, federal agricultural research spending, which includes expenditures from every USDA agency except the U.S. Forest Service, and state agricultural experiment stations and schools, must replicate the unprecedented boom in public spending that followed both world wars. The government currently allocates approximately $5 billion annually to ag research and development, a figure that grew less than 1 percent annually from 1970 to 2000 before leveling off. Adding at least $2.2 billion per year to that tally would offset the climate-induced slowdown, the paper found.

If the current investment trend doesn’t change, the costly impacts of warming, including higher inputs, reduced yields, and supply chain shocks, will result in lower productivity, leading to more government bailouts and increased U.S. reliance on other countries for food, said Cornell University climate and agricultural economist Ariel Ortiz-Bobea. Without action, agricultural productivity is estimated to drop up to 12 percent with each passing year by 2050. This will cost the U.S. economy billions annually. American farms contributed roughly $222.3 billion to the economy in 2023 alone. 

“This is like a double whammy. They’re both human-caused, inflicted wounds. One because we’re failing to invest in R&D, the other because we’re emitting so much that it is actually slowing down productivity itself. So it’s like it’s being compressed from both sides,” said Ortiz-Bobea, who led the new study. 

Experts worry that the Trump administration is heading in the wrong direction with its layoffs, funding freezes, and efforts to roll back scientific initiatives. House Republicans, for example, have been pushing to cut some $230 billion in agriculture spending over 10 years. Millions of dollars in reductions to the USDA’s research, inspection, and natural resources arms were included in the funding stopgap bill Trump signed March 15. 

Most of the foundational agricultural research that happens in the United States is through some kind of USDA funding mechanism. The USDA is made up of multiple agencies and offices with their own research pipelines that support universities, nonprofits, businesses, farmers, ranchers, and foresters, among others. SARE grants are one of the ways the wider agency has funneled money into agricultural research conducted on farms nationwide, awarding nearly $406 million across 8,791 initiatives from its inception.

Jon Kasza runs an organic vegetable farm in New York’s Hudson Valley and relies on SARE funds to conduct his agricultural research. He doesn’t understand why the agency is still freezing that funding, given all of the administration’s promises to put farmers first. “I can’t say enough about how fragile it all looks to me,” said Kasza. He’s thinking about the excessively volatile bouts of rain that battered his fields in summer of 2023, followed by a smattering of dry periods last year that dried his soil so much he couldn’t plant his cover crops on-time in the fall. That’s where research grants like SARE, which he said allow farmers to bypass the typically “sluggish” timelines of conventional scientific trials to develop things like drought-resistant crop varieties, are critical. 

In November, he submitted his first SARE grant proposal of nearly $30,000 to grow multiple varieties of rice on hillsides in raised beds with biodegradable plastic mulch to conserve water and expand where the crop can be produced. Earlier this year, he was notified by a regional representative that the grant had been approved. “We’re moving forward as if some of the funding is going to be there, but we know that that’s uncertain,” said Kasza, who called the messaging surrounding the freeze a “rollercoaster” of confusion. A local land conservation group has promised to step in to save about 20 percent of the project if federal funding falls through. Still, that is “not nearly enough” to complete the work, he said.

“It’s already hard enough just to have an agricultural business, but then to have climate change as a factor on top of that, and then have this administration who’s wreaking havoc?” he said. “Cutting research, particularly our farmer-driven research, off at the knees, just seems like such a silly and short-sighted thing to do.”

On the Hawaiian island of Kauai, another SARE grant recipient has also been stuck in limbo. Rancher Don Heacock spent decades working as an aquatic biologist for the Hawaii Division of Aquatic Resources before retiring and launching his nearly 40-acre farm in the late 1980s. Ever since, he’s raised a herd of water buffalo, grown crops like taro, and cultivated ponds of tilapia. He does it all with local food systems, soil health, and water conservation at the forefront, maximizing crop diversity, maintaining living roots in the ground year round, and integrating livestock farming. 

Up until now, Heacock had heard nothing about his pending SARE grant, a $59,000 funding proposal submitted last year to expand his farm’s agrotourism education, buffalo raising, and soil conservation work. Then, suddenly, late last week, he was told the proposal was denied. He believes that rejection is linked to the federal funding freeze.

After reaching out to SARE representatives for all four regions and the national arm of the program, Grist has learned that the USDA-NIFA has frozen funding for all pending grant applications this fiscal year, which began in October. When asked, a national spokesperson confirmed those funds were still “under review” while regional representatives told Grist that all new calls for proposals have been paused as a result. None of the representatives specified a timeline for when those funds were disbursed nor whether already-awarded grant funding will be released. 

For farmers like Heacock, the stakes of the administration grounding agricultural research initiatives like his is far bigger than the work happening on one lone project or farm. “Trump has got it all wrong. Climate is a real issue and it’s hitting us right in the face,” he said. “If we don’t become sustainable real quick, we’re dead in the water.”

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Farmers are reeling from Trump’s attacks on agricultural research on Mar 25, 2025.

Libby Lindsay spent 21 years working underground as a miner for Bethlehem Steel in West Virginia. She saw many safety improvements over the years, and always felt grateful that she could call the local Mine Safety and Health Administration office whenever she wondered whether a rule was being followed. She joined the safety committees launched by the local chapter of the United Mine Workers, which collaborated with the agency to watchdog coal companies. She understood the price that had been paid for the regulations it enforced. “Every law was written in blood,” she said. “It’s there because somebody was injured or killed.”

Still, she and others who work the nation’s mines worry President Trump is about to limit the agency’s local reach. As his administration targets federal buildings for closure and sale, 35 of its offices are on the list. Fifteen are in Appalachian coalfields, with seven in eastern Kentucky alone and the others concentrated in southern West Virginia and southeastern Pennsylvania. Of the remaining 20 offices, many are in the West, in remote corners of Wyoming, Nevada, and Colorado. Miners’ advocates worry these closures could reduce the capacity of an agency that’s vastly improved mining safety over the past 50 years or so and could play a vital role as the Trump administration promotes fossil fuels like coal, and as decarbonization efforts increase the need for lithium and other metals.

Since its inception in 1977, the agency has operated under the auspices of the Department of Labor to reduce the risks of what has always been one of the world’s most dangerous jobs. Before Congress created the agency, known as MSHA, hundreds of miners died each year, in explosions, tunnel collapses, and equipment malfunctions. (The number was far higher through the 1940s, often reaching into the thousands.) Last year, 31 people died in mining accidents, according to the agency’s data. Even after accounting for coal’s steady decline, that tally, while still tragic, reflects major strides in safety.

“Coal mining is a tough business. It’s a very competitive business. There’s always a temptation to compete on safety, to cut corners on safety, to make that your competitive advantage as a mine operator,” Christopher Mark, a government mine safety specialist who has spent decades making the job safer, told Grist. “And it’s our job to make sure that nobody can do that.”

Trump’s pick to lead MSHA, Wayne Palmer, who is awaiting confirmation, previously was vice president of the Essential Minerals Association, a trade association representing extraction companies. The Department of Labor declined to comment on the proposed lease terminations. A representative of the U.S. General Services Administration, which manages federal offices, told Grist that any locations being considered for closure have been made aware of that, and some lease terminations may be rescinded or not issued at all. 

Many of the country’s remaining underground coal mines – the most dangerous kind – are located in Appalachia. MSHA has historically placed its field offices in mining communities. Although the number of coal mines has declined by more than half since 2008, tens of thousands of miners still work the coalfields. Many of them still venture underground.

The dwindling number of fatalities comes even as the MSHA has been plagued by continued staffing and funding shortfalls, with the federal Office of the Inspector General repeatedly admonishing the agency for falling below its own annual inspection targets. It also has recommended more frequent sampling to ensure mine operators protect workers from toxic coal and silica dust. After decades of work, federal regulators finally tightened silica exposure rules, but miners and their advocates worry too little staffing and too few inspections could hamper enforcement. 

“There are going to be fewer inspections, which means that operators that are not following the rules are going to get away with not following the rules for longer than they would have,” said Chelsea Barnes, the director of government affairs and strategy at environmental justice nonprofit Appalachian Voices. The organization has worked with union members and advocates for those with black lung disease to lobby for stricter silica dust exposure limits.

Last month, the United Mine Workers’ Association denounced the proposed office closures. As demand for coal continues to decline, it worries that companies could pinch pennies to maximize profits — or avoid bankruptcy. ​​”Companies are completely dependent upon the price of coal,” said Phil Smith, executive assistant to union president Cecil Roberts. ”[If] it’s bad enough, they think, ‘Well, we can cut a corner here. We can pick a penny there.’”

The Biden administration made an effort to staff the agency. In the waning days of Biden’s term, Chris Williamson, who led the agency at the time, told Grist he was “very proud of rebuilding our team” because “you can’t go out and enforce the silica standard or enforce other things if you don’t have the people in place to do it.” The union worries that the Trump administration, which has pursued sweeping layoffs throughout the government, will target MSHA, where many of the Biden hires remain probationary employees. Despite the previous administration’s attempts to bolster the agency, it still missed inspections due to understaffing.

Anyone who isn’t terminated will have to relocate to larger offices if Trump shutters local outposts, placing them further from the mines they keep tabs on. In addition to inspecting underground mines at least quarterly and surface mines biannually, inspectors make more frequent checks of operations where toxic gases are present. They also respond to complaints. Work now done by people in the offices throughout eastern Kentucky likely would be consolidated in Lexington, Kentucky, or Wise County, Virginia, which are 200 miles apart. 

Field offices have been consolidated before, and mining experts acknowledged there may be a time and a place for such things, but it’s highly unusual to close so many without due process. In early March, the House Committee on Education and Workforce submitted a letter to Vince Micone, the acting secretary of labor, requesting documents and information on the closures and expressing concern that as many as 90 mine inspection job offers may have been rescinded. Their letter specifically referred to the agency’s history of understaffing that led to catastrophes like the Upper Big Branch mine explosion that killed 29 people in 2010, the nation’s worst mining accident in four decades.

“One of the lessons of the Upper Big Branch Mine disaster, according to MSHA’s own internal investigation, is that staffing disruptions at the managerial level resulted in MSHA’s inspectors failing to adequately address smaller-scale methane explosions in the months leading up the massive explosion that killed 29 miners fifteen years ago this April,” read the letter, which was signed by Democratic representatives Bobby Scott of Virginia and Ilhan Omar of Minnesota.

The impact of potential cuts stretches far beyond coal, into the mines that will extract the lithium and other metals needed for clean energy and other industries. As of last year, the nation employed almost 256,000 metal and nonmetal miners who pull copper, zinc, and other things from the earth. “It’s an agency that matters, regardless of how we’re producing our energy,” said Chelsea Barnes of Appalachian Voices.

After spending so much time in the mines, Lindsay is concerned by the direction the Trump administration is heading, even as lawmakers in states like West Virginia and Kentucky have in recent years attempted to roll back regulations. “That’s going to be the future of MSHA,” she said. “They’re going to be in name only. Miners are going to die. And nobody but their families are going to care.”

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Trump administration moves to shutter mine safety offices in coal country on Mar 25, 2025.