EPA Terminates Nearly 400 Workers Amid US Government Purge

(Bloomberg) -- The Environmental Protection Agency said Friday it had fired 388 workers, part of a wave of terminations across the federal government this week spurred by Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency.

The agency added that the probationary workers were terminated after “a thorough review of agency functions in accordance with President Trump’s executive orders.”

“EPA has followed standard protocols and procedures, ensuring impacted staff received notification of their status,” the agency said in a statement. “President Trump was elected with a mandate to create a more effective and efficient federal government that serves all Americans, and we are doing just that.”

Union officials and environmental groups said the decision would hamstring the the functions of the agency, whose air, water, chemical and biofuel regulations touch nearly every sector of the US economy — from mammoth oil refineries to family farms. 

“These are people we desperately need,” said Nicole Cantello, president of the AFGE 704, a union that represents about 1,000 EPA employees in the Great Lakes region, including some who deployed to help clean up in the aftermath of the wildfires in Southern California. “We don’t think it’s justified and we don’t think it’s necessary.”

The terminations follow a directive from the Office of Personnel Management instructing agency’s to fire probationary employees, which typically refers to ones who started working within the past year. Other parts of the government that cut workers this week include as many as 2,000 from the Energy Department, as well as workers at the Small Business Administration, the General Services Administration and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. 

The latest staff dismissals at the EPA come on top of the 168 let go last week from the agency’s environmental justice office, which closed down following an executive order from the White House to end programs related to diversity, equality and inclusion. 

“The people Trump fired today are hardworking, dedicated civil servants who have elected to devote their careers to protecting our clean air and water, environment and ensuring that our generation and ones to come are safe from toxins, pollution, and other harm,” Sierra Club Executive Director Ben Jealous said in a statement. “Now, more than ever, we need a strong, fully resourced EPA to confront these crises head-on and secure a safer, healthier future for all.” 

Representative Jared Huffman of California, the top Democrat on the House Natural Resources Committee, said in a statement earlier Friday that 3,400 employees had been dismissed from the US Forest Service and 2,300 from the Department of Interior.

In a Friday night text message on the EPA firings Huffman said: “There will be environmental, health and safety consequences to this, and Trump and his GOP enablers will own it.”

(Updates with Huffman comment, in final paragraph.)

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