On Earth Day, Bay Area EPA Workers Rally Due to ‘Constant Threat of Termination’

Under the shadow of a giant sculpture of a bow-and-arrow along San Francisco’s Embarcadero, more than 100 federal environmental workers and protesters gathered late Tuesday afternoon to send off an arrow of their own aimed at the Trump administration.

They rallied in defense of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and its mission, warning that the administration’s plans to dismantle it would significantly harm residents of the Bay Area.

Many of the protesters work for the EPA’s Pacific Southwest office, a few blocks away, responsible for enforcing federal environmental laws throughout California, Arizona, Hawaii, Nevada, the Pacific Islands and about 150 Native American tribes.

“I have seen more people in tears in the last 100 days than I’ve seen in 20 years,” said Zac Appleton, an EPA employee and lead steward for Chapter 295 National Treasury Employees Union, one of at least three unions representing workers at the Pacific Southwest office. “It’s an absolutely shocking, abusive display of power that’s creating a very hostile work environment.”

Appleton said as many as 60 employees received notifications Monday about looming staffing reductions and a reorganization. Organizers of Tuesday’s rally said in a release that they are concerned that the president will lay off more employees and “recklessly endanger the health and safety of all Americans.”

“These past three months under the Trump administration have been hell,” said Kelly Andreuzzi, an EPA employee who works in the agency’s tribal clean water sector. “Every day we go to work for the good of our country under the constant threat of termination.”

Gutting the EPA would harm Americans across the country, protesters said, particularly in the Bay Area, where the agency plays a significant role in cleaning up toxic sites, approving climate adaptation projects and reducing pollutants that cause air quality and water pollution issues.

“Once we are gone, the work that we do for the American people is gone, and none of us wants that work to stop,” said Bethany Dreyfus, president of the American Federation of Government Employees Local 1236, which represents many of the at-risk EPA employees in San Francisco.

Administration officials have targeted diversity, equity and inclusion programs, calling them wasteful spending that needs to be cut to align with orders from President Donald Trump. The agency shuttered its environmental justice offices nationwide, including in San Francisco.

EPA press officials said they were unaware of Tuesday’s rally.

EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin has said that environmental justice has been used as an “excuse to fund left-wing activists instead of actually spending those dollars to directly remediate environmental issues for those communities.”

Dreyfus said “all the workers who do environmental justice” were “basically given layoff notices letting them know that very soon they will be told that there’s no work for them at the EPA anymore,” after many were put on administrative leave earlier this year.

In February, EPA officials terminated $20 billion in climate grants issued by the Biden administration. The money was meant to finance clean energy and environmental projects through a so-called green bank. Environmental groups filed a lawsuit in response.

Among the billions of dollars in funding terminated by the agency in recent months were 63 grants representing nearly $260 million for projects and organizations across California, according to a KQED analysis of a list compiled by a group of Democratic senators.

Climate groups across the Bay Area have seen federal grants canceled or frozen over the last few months. Some told KQED they do not know their funding status because agency staffers have been ordered not to communicate with them. Others are blindly billing for their projects with no assurance that they will be reimbursed.

Zeldin also announced 31 actions aimed at assigning more authority to the states and relaxing federal regulations. The administration argued that this would lower the cost of living while supporting the energy and automobile industries.

“We are driving a dagger straight into the heart of the climate change religion to drive down cost of living for American families, unleash American energy, bring auto jobs back to the U.S. and more,” Zeldin said.