Image by SHTTEFAN.
“Zeldin’s EPA To Relax Drinking Water Rules” was the headline this week in the daily newspaper Newsday on Long Island, New York—from which Lee Zeldin, the administrator of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is from.
The subhead: “Plans to rescind PFAS limits, delay removal deadline.”
The article on two pages began with telling how the EPA is proposing “to rescind federal limits on certain toxic ‘forever chemicals’ in drinking water—established two years ago by the Biden administration….The Trump administration plans to roll back restrictions on four types of these chemicals, known as PFAS. Another proposed rule would allow water suppliers to request two more years to comply with limits on two other PFAS compounds, PFOS and PFOA. Water suppliers were initially given until 2029 to meet the standards under the Biden-era plan, but they will now be eligible for an extension to 2031.”
It went on: “PFAS—or per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances—have been used in thousands of industrial and consumer products, from nonstick plans to artificial turf to fast-food wrappers. There are tens of thousands of PFAS compounds, very few of which are regularly, and they do not easily break down—thus the term ‘forever chemicals.’ They enter groundwater when they are washed down the drains of ordinary households…”
Newsday continued: “Researchers have found long-term exposure to PFAS, even in tiny amounts, increases the risk of prostate, kidney and testicular cancers, developmental problems in infants and children and other health programs.”
It’s difficult to rate who is the worst member of President Trump’s cabinet but, certainly, Zeldin is on the top tier, amid stiff competition.
The New Yorker magazine has just run an article –seven full pages long—which in the magazine is headlined: “Burning Man, Lee Zeldin’s assault on the E.P.A.” and online is headed:
“Can The EPA Survive Lee Zeldin.”
A summary paragraph in the piece: “In a little more than a year Zeldin has transformed the E.P.A. from an agency devoted to protecting human health and the environment into one that, more or less openly, sides with polluters. He has packed the E.P.A.’s upper echelons with former industry lobbyists, scrubbed entire databases of information from its website, and dissolved whole departments. Under his leadership, the agency has ditched a long list of rules that industries had objected to, including regulations aimed at cutting Americans’ exposure to arsenic, a known carcinogen; mercury, a potential neurotoxin; and PM2.5, a form of very fine soot that has been shown to cause asthma and lung disease. The E.P.A. has not only abandoned its own efforts to rein in greenhouse-gas emissions; it has stepped into prevent states from taking action.”
The article was by Elizabeth Kolbert, a winner of the Pulitzer Prize and many other major journalism awards and for nearly 30 years a top staff writer at The New Yorker.
It provides a huge amount of details and concludes with Kolbert writing that the “effects” of Zeldin “will linger long after a new administrator takes over and the E.P.A. returns—or doesn’t return—to its original mission.”
An article last month in The New York Times was headed: “How Lee Zeldin Shifted the Mission—and the Message—of the E.P.A.” It criticized actions and declarations of Zeldin including, it related, his writing on X, formerly Twitter: “The war on beautiful clean coal is OVER!….Natural gas, nuclear, coal, etc. can’t be held back and at the Trump EPA WON’T BE HELD Back,”
The Times article quoted Christine Todd Whitman, who, it noted, is “a former Republican governor of New Jersey who led the E.P.A. under President George W. Bush” saying: “It’s just staggering how far outside the parameters of what the agency is about he has taken it. He is completely undoing the mission of the E.P.A.”
At the start of 2026, in January, the daily newspaper, Newsday, from where Zeldin hails, ran an editorial headed: “An EPA that doesn’t live up to its name.” It began: “The federal government agency in charge of protecting our environment and the people’s health has warped into an entity adrift of that purpose. In the first year of this Trump administration, the Environmental Protection Agency, headed by former Long Island Rep. Lee Zeldin, failed in its core mission of safeguarding and improving the quality of our air, water and food.”
That is no surprise.
When he was nominated by Trump to be EPA administrator, the League of Conservation Voters sent a letter to members of the Senate signed by the Washington-based organization’s president, Gene Karpinski, saying Zeldin’s “abysmal 14% lifetime score on LCV’s National Environmental Scorecard, long history in Congress and the NY state legislature opposing environmental and public health safeguards for our communities, and little environmental experience render him unqualified for the role.” It called for a rejection of Zeldin’s nomination.
The New Republic ran a piece headed: “Trump Picks New EPA Head Guaranteed to Destroy the Environment.” The subhead on its article: “This will be a disaster.”
Environmental organizations are enormously critical of Zeldin as EPA administrator. “A Year of Betrayal: EPA Under Lee Zeldin,” was the heading of a posting this January by the Natural Resources Defense Council.
“The air we breathe, the water we drink…are not abstract concepts: they shape our health, our livelihoods, and our quality of life,” it said. “Under Lee Zeldin, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has made its sharpest turn in decades away from that core mission. Instead of doing its job to keep people safe, the agency is systematically dismantling protections for the environment and human health: weakening safeguards around clean air and clean water; leaving rural and urban communities alike more exposed to pollution from toxic chemicals; and undermining our ability to fight climate change the most existential threat we face today.”
The New Republic published a piece in March that reported on Zeldin giving the “keynote address…at a Heartland Institute conference of anti-environmental, pro-polluter lobbyists and activists who have been working for years to dismantle climate regulations.”
Zeldin was “greeted like a K-pop star at the climate deniers conference because he has delivered for them beyond their wildest dreams,” it said. “He has cut billions of dollars from climate grants the Biden administration has awarded, eviscerated pollution rules and enforcement capacity, and perhaps most significantly wiped out the legal basis of much climate regulation….At the Heartland gathering, a leading anti-climate activist [Marc Morano] called Zeldin ‘the most consequential EPA chief in the agency’s history.’”
Zeldin has been reported to be a leading candidate to replace Pam Bondi, dismissed by Trump as attorney general. But, the journal Politico, referring to that Heartland conference, ran an article headlined: “At climate contrarian gathering, allies urge Trump to keep Zeldin at EPA.”
It began: “There was one overarching message from a large group of climate contrarians gathered…at a hotel near the White House: please keep Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lee Zeldin in place.” It quoted Heartland President James Taylor saying: “Lee Zeldin has been unbelievable as EPA administrator. So selfishly, I would love to see him stay at EPA…This is the first time we have a true champion and cheerleader as head of EPA or this high up in the administration. These are great days.”
Further about the EPA under Zeldin, The Environmental Protection Network published an article this month headlined: “Proposed 55% cut to EPA is a Wrecking Ball that Endangers the Air We Breathe and the Water We Drink.” The reduction, said the organization, “would require mass layoffs at the agency and cripple its core functions.”
Its executive director, Michelle Roos, said: “The cuts are part of a broader administration agenda to put the interests of large polluters ahead of public health and the environment. They have already halted enforcement of the Clean Air Act and other bedrock environmental laws.”