Compliance Advisor: What to Expect from EPA in 2025

Much speculation is growing about what to expect from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in 2025 under the Trump administration. Donald Trump’s presidential campaign focused on downsizing the federal government, especially the EPA. The first Trump administration tried hard to cut the agency’s workforce and funding while working to decrease regulations it viewed as burdensome. 

The new administration will likely follow a similar path, taking significant steps to roll back climate initiatives and environmental justice policies implemented under Biden-Harris. 

While environmental justice will not disappear, there will be markedly less emphasis on it and reliance upon Title VI of the Civil Rights Act to achieve its goals.

Open Season for Federal Oil, Gas Exploration  

Similarly, the Trump team is expected to de-emphasize the EPA’s climate agenda. The administration is likely to slow the transition to renewable energy and more openly support traditional fossil-fuel energy initiatives. As part of this initiative, the administration is expected to open federal lands for oil and gas leases and pipelines and to withdraw from international climate engagements and treaties. 

Use of the Congressional Review Act (CRA) to repeal disfavored rules in this area and others is likely. Targeted rules include the methane fees rule for oil and gas sources, the air toxics rule, the dust lead standard and the lead service line rule requiring replacement lines within 10 years. We expect also to see use of “day one” executive orders and other such tools to promote the Trump agenda, without regard to possible court challenges. 

Finally, while the EPA and other federal agencies generally are expected to exhibit a more business-friendly perspective on regulatory matters, some cabinet and other appointments telegraph a somewhat surprising support for more chemical regulation in pesticides and food-use chemicals. The nomination of Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. as U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary-Designate raises interesting issues.

EPA Administrator-Designate Zeldin

Former Republican Rep. Lee Zeldin of New York was an unexpected nominee for EPA administrator. His positions on environmental issues are relatively unknown. He served as a member of the House PFAS Task Force and supported the 2021 PFAS bill setting limits on drinking water for several PFAS. Zeldin was also a member of the Climate Solutions Caucus and Conservative Climate Caucus, although he is expected to change the climate policies of the Biden administration.

No potential nominees have been identified to lead the EPA’s Office of Chemical Safety and Pollution Prevention (OCSPP) or the other program offices. We would expect faithful supporters to be placed in charge. What impact this will have on EPA staff is unclear, but many career federal employees may be resistant to Trump’s revised policies and dismantling of the climate agenda. 

The Project 2025 Blueprint

Project 2025 identifies specific areas of interest to the Trump administration and signals significant change. This could affect OCSPP even if not directly cut, as agency-wide staffing and budget cuts would have some distribution across all media programs. 

These include reorganizing or eliminating certain offices, such as EPA regional centers and the enforcement and compliance-assurance office, moving Washington, D.C.-based program offices and regional staff; and dismantling the Biden-Harris climate policies. 

This would be accomplished by reorienting research away from climate change, eliminating the Interagency Working Group on Social Cost of Carbon, redirecting all agency focus on climate issues and revisiting EPA regulation of greenhouse gases and hydrofluorocarbons, among other initiatives.

Also expected is a shift in the focus on scientific integrity. The Trump administration will likely embrace “citizen science” and “deputize” the public to subject science to greater scrutiny. This could, ironically, increase tort liability for certain issues if it gives more credibility to “citizen” scientific “studies” regardless of the underlying scientific rigor. 

The new administration is expected to reduce the number and role of EPA advisory boards (there are 21 Federal Advisory Committee Act boards) and review or reverse default assumptions regarding current risk assessment practices, such as linear low-dose/non-threshold models for carcinogenicity and related worst-case default assumptions. The administration also may defund the Integrated Risk Information System program.

Office of Chemical Safety and Pollution Prevention

Expected TSCA changes under the Trump administration could include restoring risk-based decision-making over a “whole chemical” approach to risk characterization. The whole-chemical approach looks at a chemical’s safety profile as a whole rather than basing determinations on individual uses. The administration also may seek to overturn previous decisions that evaluated chemical exposure risks assuming workers are not using personal protective equipment (PPE) and instead factor in the presence of PPE when assessing workplace chemical exposure. 

Another potential change involves redefining the term "reasonably foreseen" conditions of use to incorporate more practical scenarios, while reducing the emphasis on extreme worst-case outcomes when evaluating chemical risks. As it remains unclear how the incoming administration intends to prioritize the many issues it is being asked to address, the burden will be on industry to push hard for what it wants from TSCA.

How these policy positions will be implemented and over what timeframe are unclear. At a minimum, we expect the Trump administration to pause the judicial challenges to, or seek remand of, the EPA’s final rules under TSCA on asbestos, methylene chloride and the risk-evaluation framework. Risk-management rules issued recently, including those for trichloroethylene, perchloroethylene and carbon tetrachloride, and risk-evaluation rules under development almost certainly will be paused and reconsidered.

Stay tuned. 2025 will, at the least, be eventful and interesting.