Health, the economy and farming will be impacted by increasingly common high temperatures, sea-level rise and “more frequent and intense precipitation events,” according to “The First Virginia Climate Assessment,” a recent report from George Mason University.
As President Donald Trump nears the end of his second term’s first year, policies he’s implemented will affect how that plays out.
“They're really just taking a fine-tooth comb and looking at every single thing — whether that be justifiable, whether that be a knee-jerk reaction to, ‘Well this came out of the previous administration, so we want to see it,’” an EPA employee who works on water issues said while discussing how the Trump administration oversees the department.
Radio IQ is not identifying the federal employee — who’s been with the agency for more than 20 years — to protect them from potential retribution for speaking with media.
During the recent government shutdown, the employee said all functions of the department critical to public health remained in operation. They added that EPA leadership has been clear that the department will “be doing things that we are statutorily required to do.”
That doesn’t mean the tenor of the office hasn’t changed.
“Let's say, we've got a proposal or a project that is focused on providing resources and information related to climate change effects,” they said. “Instead of focusing on ‘climate change,’ let's talk about ‘extreme weather events.’ We've been talking [about] ‘sunny day flooding.’ … It's climate-change effects, but we don't just say the blanket term, ‘climate change.’”
Dozens of executive orders and federal policy changes have impacted funding for environmental initiatives, but the EPA employee said it’s going to take more time to see the real effects of those adjustments.
The changes are still being assessed in Virginia, too.
“We don't yet have that full picture of how all of the programs we rely on will be impacted,” said Adrienne Kotula, Virginia director of the Chesapeake Bay Commission, while discussing the impact of changing federal funding on cleanup measures. “We're certainly keeping track of it at the federal level on a case-by-case basis. But the full scope of everything is yet to be seen.”
Another unknown is the availability and accuracy of federal data; Kotula pointed specifically to information from the U.S. Geological Survey, and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. She said the annual release of pertinent data is just beginning and she’d “start taking the longer view of what's available to us, and how we need to adjust moving forward — and whether or not that's necessary.”
In that vacuum, state lawmakers have begun prefiling proposed legislation for the upcoming General Assembly session that begins on Jan. 14. Among those bills are a few introduced by Democrats focused on energy efficiency and home weatherization, as well as allowing solar canopy requirements in some nonresidential parking developments.
In contrast, Republican lawmakers are aiming to repeal some restrictions on single-use polystyrene food containers and ease penalties on utilities if they’re unable to meet renewable energy portfolio standards.
Trump has maintained his policies will bring down utility bills, though recent data refutes that. The administration also has asserted lower gasoline prices are the result of its “commitment to American energy production.”
A former advisor to President George W. Bush recently told Politico that Trump “could claim an assist, not a total responsibility, for lower oil prices.”
“The actions that this administration is taking [has] set us back decades,” said Lee Francis, chief program and communications officer at the Virginia League of Conservation Voters, an environmental advocacy group. “The ‘One Big Beautiful Bill’ reversed almost entirely the Inflation Reduction Act, which is the biggest piece of climate legislation ever passed in our nation's history. And in doing so, it undermined … investment in Virginia, set us back years on our climate goals and is going to raise energy costs.”
Francis interpreted November’s election results to mean voters were concerned about affordability and energy costs, swinging control of state government to Democrats after four years under Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s administration.
After decades as a federal worker, the EPA employee seemed familiar with that kind of shift: “Every four years, it's going to swing back in the other direction to a certain extent … . Because that's what's going to happen. I mean, that always happens.”
This report, provided by Virginia Public Radio, was made possible with support from the Virginia Education Association.