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This story was produced by Floodlight and republished with permission. 

President Donald Trump and his administration have called it the “Great American Comeback.” But environmental advocates say the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s reversing course on enforcing air and water pollution laws is more of a throwback — one that will exacerbate health risks for children who live and study in the shadows of petrochemical facilities. 

The American Lung Association has found that children face special risks from air pollution because their airways are smaller and still developing and because they breathe more rapidly and inhale more air relative to their size than do adults.

Environmental lawyers say Trump and EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin’s slashing of federal protections against toxic emissions could lead to increased exposure to dangerous pollutants for kids living in fenceline communities.

Community advocates like Kaitlyn Joshua, who was born and raised in the southeast corridor of Louisiana dubbed “Cancer Alley,” say they are horrified about what EPA’s deregulation push will mean for the future generation.  

“That is not an exaggeration; we feel like we are suffocating without the cover and the oversight of the EPA,” Joshua said. “Without that, what can we really do? How can we really save ourselves? How can we really save our communities?” 

Ashley Gaignard knows how hard it is to keep kids safe when pollution is all around. 

When Gaignard’s son was in elementary school, a doctor restricted him from daily recess, saying the emissions from an ammonia facility located within 2 miles of his playground could be exacerbating a pre-existing lung condition, triggering his severe asthma attacks. 

“I had asthma as a kid growing up, and my grandfather had asthma, so I just figured it was hereditary; he was going to suffer with asthma,” said Gaignard, who was born and raised in Louisiana’s Ascension Parish, also located within Cancer Alley. She’s now chief executive officer of the community advocacy group she created, Rural Roots Louisiana. 

“I just never knew until the doctor said, ‘Okay, we have to think about what he is breathing, and what’s causing him to flare up the minute he’s outside’,” she said. 

Gaignard said the further her son got away from that school, as he moved through the parish’s educational system, the less severe his attacks were. She said he’s now an adult living in Fresno, California — and no longer suffers from asthma.

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Zeldin sent shockwaves throughout the environmental justice sector on March 12 when he announced that the EPA was rolling back many of the federal regulations that were put in place under the administration of Joe Biden — many built around environmental justice and mitigating climate change. 

Those included strengthening the Clean Air Act by implementing more stringent controls on toxic air emissions and increased air quality monitoring in communities near industrial facilities. The new standards were expected to reduce 6,000 tons of air toxins annually and reduce the emissions related to cancer risks in these communities in Texas, Louisiana, Delaware, New Jersey, the Ohio River Valley and elsewhere. 

A new memo from the Office of Enforcement and Compliance Assurance, which serves as the law enforcement arm of the EPA — circulated the same day as Zeldin’s announcement — states that environmental justice considerations would no longer factor into the federal agency’s oversight of facilities in Black and brown communities. 

Zeldin said the goal was “driving a dagger straight into the heart of the climate change religion.”

That means the EPA will no longer target, investigate or address noncompliance issues at facilities emitting cancer-causing chemicals such as benzene, ethylene oxide and formaldehyde in the places already overburdened with hazardous pollution. 

“While enforcement and compliance assurance can continue to focus on areas with the highest levels of (hazardous air pollutants) affecting human health,” the memo reads, “…to ensure consistency with the President’s Executive Orders, they will no longer focus exclusively on communities selected by the regions as being ‘already highly burdened with pollution impacts.’”

The agency also will not implement any enforcement and compliance actions that could shut down energy production or power generation “absent an imminent and substantial threat to human health.” 

In is prepared video statement about the EPA’s deregulation measures, Zeldin said, “The agency is committed to fulfilling President Trump’s promise to unleash American energy, lower cost of living for Americans, revitalize the American auto industry, restore the rule of law, and give power back to states to make their own decisions. ”

Related: How Trump is disrupting efforts by schools and colleges to combat climate change

Top officials with the nonprofit environmental advocacy group Earthjustice recently said there is no way for the Trump administration to reconcile what it’s calling “the greatest day of deregulation” in EPA’s history with protecting public health. 

Patrice Simms, vice president of litigation for healthy communities for Earthjustice, went a step further pointing out during a press briefing that the reason EPA exists is to protect the public from toxic air pollution. 

“The law demands that EPA control these pollutants, and demands that EPA protect families and communities,” Simms said. “And these impacts on these communities most heavily land on the shoulders of children. Children are more susceptible to the harms from pollutants, and these pollutants are often happening right in the backyards of our schools, of our neighborhoods and our playgrounds.”

A 2016 report published by the Center for Effective Government found that nearly one in 10 children in the country attends one of the 12,000 schools located within 1 mile of a chemical facility. These children are disproportionately children of color living in low-income areas, the report found. 

For the past several years, Joshua has been leading the opposition to a hydrogen and ammonia facility being built within 2,000 feet of an elementary school in Ascension Parish. Air Products plans to start commercial operation in 2028 where an estimated 600,000 metric tons of hydrogen will be produced annually from methane gas.

The $7 billion project has been touted as a clean energy solution because the company intends to use technology to collect its carbon dioxide emissions, and then transport them through pipelines to be stored under a recreational lake 37 miles away. 

Carbon capture technology has been controversial, with skeptics highlighting the possibilities for earthquakes, groundwater contamination and CO2 leaking back into the atmosphere through abandoned and unplugged oil and gas wells or pipeline breaches. Pipeline ruptures in the past have also led to communities having to evacuate their homes. 

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Joshua said these communities need more federal regulation and oversight — not less.

“We had a community meeting … for our Ascension Parish residents, and the sentiment and the theme on that call was very much like ‘Kaitlyn, there is nothing we can do.’ Like, we just had to literally lie down and take this,” Joshua said. “We had to kind of challenge people and put them in the space, in time, of a civil rights movement. We have to get creative about how we’re going to organize around it and be our own version of EPA.”

Sarah Vogel, senior vice president of health communities with the Environmental Defense Fund, said the move toward deregulation comes as the U.S. Department of Justice announced on March 7 that it was dropping the federal lawsuit the Biden administration lodged against Denka’s Performance Elastomer plant in Louisiana. That plant had been accused of worsening cancer risks for the residents in the surrounding majority-Black community. 

The DOJ said its decision was tied to Trump’s moves to dismantle all federal programs tied to diversity, equity and inclusion.

“What they’re trying to do is just completely deregulate everything for oil and gas and petrochemical facilities, just absolutely take the lid off,” Vogel said. “We have long known that children are uniquely susceptible to air pollution and toxic chemicals. Like they’re huge, huge impacts. It’s why what they are doing is so devastating and cruel in my mind.”

Floodlight, which produced this story, is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates the powers stalling climate action.