President Trump revoked a decades-long rule that required federal agencies to address environmental justice for low-income and minority populations.
HOUSTON — Right after President Donald Trump took office for his second term, he signed a series of executive orders – and one major change coming out of those orders could impact environmental policies in underserved communities in Houston.
The Environmental Protection Agency has started investigating cancer clusters in Houston’s Fifth Ward. The agency ordered Union Pacific to test for dangerous levels of chemicals in homes and businesses. Residents blamed a nearby railyard, which used the wood preservative creosote for decades until 1984, for people in the community getting sick and being diagnosed with cancer. The EPA labels creosote as a probable carcinogen.
Trump signed an executive order that revoked several executive actions of past administrations. That included an action issued by former President Bill Clinton that required federal agencies to address environmental justice for low-income and minority populations.
Harris County Attorney Christian Menefee said Trump’s decision to dismantle the EPA’s environmental justice team is a devastating setback for vulnerable communities, adding that it could completely stall the EPA’s work to investigate cancer clusters in the Fifth Ward.
“The many, many communities, such as many here in the Houston area, that have higher instances of cancer, of asthma, lower life spans because of over pollution, they’re no longer going to get the benefit of the federal government taking those things into account when they are protecting our air and our environment, and it’s incredibly important, because we’ve seen communities like Fifth Ward, we’ve seen communities like Manchester, where people don’t live as long as other areas of Harris County. It has to be a solution that considers people over pollution and their race, because the problem includes those things. But unfortunately, we’re seeing the president move us in a different direction,” Menefee said.
Trump has called diversity, equity and inclusion policies and programs within the federal government as discriminatory, adding that those policies were “absolute nonsense.”
“I signed an order that will end all of the lawless diversity, equity and inclusion nonsense, all across the federal government and the private sector,” Trump said at a rally in Nevada.
But residents of the Fifth Ward, such as Sandra Edwards, said policies that help underserved communities are crucial, especially when it comes to environmental issues that can negatively and disproportionately impact communities of color.
“If you don’t see the need that we have over here, something is definitely wrong with you,” Edwards said.
Edwards has a personal connection to the toxic chemicals she says are polluting the Fifth Ward. She said her father died from cancer in 2010, and that he likely got it due to the carcinogens that have seeped into the ground, water and air around her family’s home.
“He used to sit out in the yard. He stopped wearing his shoes, coming outside, just to feel the grass on his feet. About six months later, he had bone cancer. And I’d say, 12 months later, he was gone,” Edwards said. “We have lost a lot of people around here to that. The same thing, different scenarios, but the same outcome. And you want to say that we’re not going through this, and they’re not going through that, this the way our life is, or whatever? That’s a lie. That’s a lie. We’re hurting out here. We’re hurting out here. We’re tired of it. We’re sick and tired of being sick and tired.”
Just as Menefee said, Edwards said that she fears the EPA’s work investigating cancer clusters in the Fifth Ward will be halted due to Trump’s executive orders.
“I believe it will come to a complete halt,” Edwards said. “We started trying to move forward in life, but you instead are trying to take us back. You keep trying to take us back to where we’re not going to go. So, this is just crazy,” Edwards said, tearing up. “I think it’s going to come to a complete halt. I do. And I’m going to fight for it that it doesn’t, but I believe it will come to a complete halt.”
Edwards added that she prays local leaders come up with a way to protect and prioritize her community.
“I hope they find a way and we get through this, because this is not what we’re looking for. We worked too hard to go back,” Edwards said.
Menefee told KHOU 11 News that he and other Harris County officials are looking into what they can do, including taking possible legal action.
“We’re going to continue to work to protect the environment, in the air and the water, of communities like Near Northside, like Aldine, like Fifth Ward, some of these Black and Latino neighborhoods that have traditionally been overburdened. We’re going to do that work regardless of what President Trump’s executive orders say,” Menefee said. “You’re going to see an increased number of lawsuits from governments across this country that are stepping in to try to protect their communities from these harmful executive orders by President Trump. If we find an angle to file lawsuits, we absolutely will. But for now, I think we’re all going to have to sit back and wait and see how the federal government rolls out these programs.”
Menefee also said it is unclear right now what Trump’s executive orders could mean for the funding of environmental protection work in the Houston area. But he said he suspects the investigations into cancer clusters in the Fifth Ward will not be a priority.
KHOU 11 News reached out to several Republican representatives to get their thoughts on President Trump’s executive orders. But we either did not hear back or were told those representatives were unavailable.