Environmental and Science Groups Sue Trump Admin for Deleting Environmental Justice and Climate Information From Federal Agency Websites

Environmental and science groups are suing the Trump administration for removing public information concerning climate and the environment from federal agency websites.

The Sierra Club, the Environmental Integrity Project, California Communities Against Toxics and Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) filed a complaint on Monday in the United States District Court for the District of Columbia.

“The removal of these websites and the critical data they hold is yet another direct attack on the communities already suffering under the weight of deadly air and water,” said Ben Jealous, executive director of Sierra Club, in a press release from the grassroots environmental organization. “Simply put, these data and tools save lives, and efforts to delete, unpublish, or in any way remove them jeopardize peoples’ ability to breathe clean air, drink clean water, and live safe and healthy lives. The Trump administration must end its efforts to further disenfranchise and endanger these communities.”

The administration started going through agency websites and removing mentions of climate change days after President Donald Trump began his second term. These actions were coupled with the closing of environmental and climate offices and other activities meant to undermine environmental justice throughout the federal government.

Sierra Club v. EPA challenges the administration’s removal of important environmental justice tools such as the Climate and Environmental Justice Screening Tool and EJScreen. Both websites have been frequently used by regulators, advocates and academics to identify communities disproportionately impacted by climate change and pollution.

“Removing public information from websites creates dangerous gaps in the data available to communities and decisionmakers about health risks from industrial pollution,” said Jen Duggan, Environmental Integrity Project’s executive director, in the press release. “Pulling down EJScreen from the web obscures the real impact of toxic releases on low-income communities and communities of color from big polluters like oil, gas, and petrochemical operations, which is pretty ironic coming from an administration that claims to champion transparency.”

The essential tools track burdens related to energy, housing, health, climate change, legacy pollution, water and wastewater, transportation and workforce development.

“The agencies’ actions represent an attempt to sell out the health of Americans and the environment, and also to deny access to the information that allows people to advocate for change,” said Zach Shelley, lead counsel for the plaintiffs and an attorney with Public Citizen Litigation Group. “These resources were developed for public use, and the government has a duty to keep them available. Stripping the public’s access to these resources is part of an unlawful attempt to undermine key environmental protections.”

The lawsuit — filed against the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), the Council on Environmental Quality, the U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT) and the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) — also challenges the removal of climate, environmental and energy justice tools like DOE’s Low-Income Energy Affordability Data Tool and Community Benefits Plan Map, FEMA’s Future Risk Index and DOT’s Equitable Transportation Community Explorer.

Many nonprofit organizations and researchers use the tools to advocate for and educate about agency actions or policies to address the disproportionate harm inflicted upon overburdened communities. They use them as resources in compiling reports on disproportionate energy burdens in certain states; proposed gas pipeline projects; and long-form reports on online retail shipping practices’ environmental impacts, such as Sierra Club’s LNG tracker and Environmental Integrity Project’s tracker for oil and gas operations.

“The public has a right to access these taxpayer-funded datasets,” said President of UCS Gretchen Goldman, in the press release. “From vital information for communities about their exposure to harmful pollution, to data that help local governments build resilience to extreme weather events, the public deserves access to federal datasets. Removing government datasets is tantamount to theft.”

Last week, Trump signed executive orders that would attempt to keep coal-fired power plants running while pushing the expansion of mining the dirty fuel on public lands.

The Trump EPA announced last month a plan to revoke or roll back over 30 crucial environmental standards that help safeguard everything from clean air to safe drinking water.

“We cannot just erase the impacts that pollution is having on communities hosting our industrial infrastructure. This pollution is causing increases in asthma, COPD, low birthweight, and earlier death. Understanding these impacts allows us to reduce pollution, and protect public health,” said Jane Williams, executive director of California Communities Against Toxics. “These are essential tenets of a healthy society, and the information being disappeared by this Administration is essential to protect the public from these adverse health impacts.”