Trump administration upends Chesapeake Bay cleanup work

Like many federal programs amid Donald Trump’s first months back in office, the Chesapeake Bay cleanup is in turmoil.

Federal offices helping to restore the Chesapeake Bay and its watershed are being thinned out, fueling fears that the job losses could derail an effort that has spanned 42 years and seven presidential administrations.

Meanwhile, Trump’s orders to pull back on climate work and cancel DEI (diversity, equity and inclusion) initiatives show signs of trickling down into the Bay cleanup’s goals.

Bay advocates also wonder whether funding to the Chesapeake Bay Program will be slashed or shut off entirely. The Bay Program is a multi-governmental partnership that sets goals, manages strategies and coordinates scientific work for the restoration effort. It includes the federal government, led by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency; the states of Maryland, Pennsylvania, Virginia, Delaware, New York and West Virginia; the District of Columbia; and the Chesapeake Bay Commission, an advisory body comprised of state legislators.

Core funding for the program flows through the EPA’s Bay Program office with additional support from Bay states and other federal agencies.

During Trump’s first term, his administration proposed deep cuts to the Bay Program, but Congress rebuffed them each time. His second administration, though, has shown less interest in dealing with Congress, moving unilaterally, for example, to freeze hundreds of millions of dollars in grants related to the Bay cleanup.

The chaos comes at a critical moment. The effort has fallen short of reaching many of the goals in the 2014 cleanup agreement before its self-imposed 2025 deadline, including critical targets for reducing nutrient pollution. State and federal officials are now working on revising the pact by the end of this year.

The situation has cast a shadow over the work being done to bring the nation’s largest estuary back to life.

“You’re the second reporter to ask me today how I feel, and I don’t even have words for it,” said Kim Coble, executive director of the Maryland League of Conservation Voters. After a brief pause, she replied, “Disheartened and discouraged.”

In recent interactions with Bay Program staffers, one of the Chesapeake region’s top environmental scientists said has a noticed a subtle but concerning shift in mood.

“When you work in a tight group and you lose people for arbitrary reasons, everyone’s on their toes and not saying things,” said Larry Sanford, a professor at the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science and chair of the Bay Program’s Scientific and Technical Advisory Committee. “One of the things that has really struck me is that nobody’s talking about this. I think they’re just scared.”

EPA administrator expresses support

During a Feb. 28 visit to Annapolis to discuss the Bay Program, Lee Zeldin, the EPA’s new administrator, declared his support for the partnership. Most media, including the Bay Journal, weren’t given notice of the appearance.

“It’s important that we are making sure that Chesapeake Bay Program has the funding that [it] needs to survive and thrive,” he told the Baltimore TV affiliate FOX45. “It’s an important priority of mine.”

Two days earlier, though, Trump suggested that the EPA should cut its spending by 65%. It’s unclear whether any of those cuts would be directed at the Bay Program.

A Bay Journal request for an interview with Zeldin in the wake of his Annapolis trip resulted in this written response from the EPA’s press office: “President Trump and EPA Administrator Zeldin are in lockstep in creating a more efficient and effective federal government …

“Compared to 2024, the total amount spent year over year at EPA will deliver significant efficiencies to American taxpayers by cutting wasteful grants, reassessing the agency’s real estate footprint, and delivering organizational improvements to the personnel structure. In his first term, President Trump advanced conservation and environmental stewardship while promoting economic growth for families across the country and will continue to do so this term.”

Staff loss at federal agencies

The situation has been clouded by the administration’s vague statements and shifting guidance as well as by pending court actions. Here is what was known about the Bay Program’s affairs as of late March.

Two Bay Program staffers accepted the administration’s “fork in the road” buyout, named after the subject line of the email that went out to 2 million federal employees in January. It offered full pay through September in exchange for their resignations.

Those two buyout departures came from the EPA and U.S. Geological Survey, according to a Bay Program spokesperson.

Meanwhile, five staffers who worked at the Bay Program’s Annapolis headquarters or were closely involved with it were laid off — and then, at least temporarily, brought back. All five hold probationary status, either new to federal government or in new roles. The layoffs affected four USGS employees and one U.S. Forest Service employee, according to a program spokeswoman.

After judicial rulings in March ordered the Trump administration to rehire those and other employees, the Forest Service employee was expected to return to the office during the week of March 24. The USGS staffers had been reinstated — but, as the Bay Journal went to press, they had not been given a start date. The administration has appealed the rulings.

The Bay Program has overseen the cleanup of the estuary and its watershed since 1983. Before the layoffs, the program was at one of its highest staffing levels in its history, with more than 100 employees. So, the loss of those seven staff members represented less than a 10% reduction in its workforce.

But those figures don’t present a full picture of the federal staffing cuts’ impacts to the Bay effort. That’s because thousands of additional federal employees are engaged with the cleanup at some level, even though they don’t work directly for the Bay Program.

Along with the EPA, USGS and U.S. Forest Service, the Bay-related impact reaches other agencies such as the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, U.S. Department of Agriculture, USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service and U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, which are also facing current and future staff reductions.

The loss of federal workers on the environmental front lines in the Bay region, said U.S. Rep. Sarah Elfreth (D-MD), is “very alarming and threatens to set us back decades in our progress.” Many of those cast off in the probationary cuts were younger employees who, in many cases, represented the future of the federal workforce, she added.

“These actions today are going to have lasting impacts on who are going to be the leaders of our civil service in 20, 30 years,” Elfreth said.

Opposition and impacts

Opposition has been fierce. Thousands of federal employees have joined protests outside agency buildings. Some lawsuits have begun to gain traction in federal courts. In a rare show of bipartisanship, a handful of Republicans have joined Democrats in pushing a bill that would enable fired employees to retain the time they accrued during their probationary period — if and when they’re rehired.

“It’s an opportunity for me to reach out across the aisle and talk to my colleagues on the Republican side,” Elfreth said. The first-term congresswoman is the lead sponsor of the House version of the bill. But she acknowledged that it faces an uphill battle because her party is in the minority in both chambers.

Greg Allen, the EPA staffer who accepted the resignation offer, was one of the Bay region’s top experts in toxic contaminants, such as mercury, polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) and per– and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS or “forever chemicals”). Under the circumstances he was facing, Allen said he felt like he had little choice but to take the buyout.

He had been working remotely from Charleston, SC. But that arrangement couldn’t continue because, in a separate action, the Trump administration had ordered the 228,000 federal employees who teleworked to return to the office.

Allen was overseeing the recommended revisions to the program’s toxic contaminants policy. In a recent poll commissioned by the Chesapeake Bay Foundation, 2,000 watershed residents ranked toxic pollution as the estuary’s biggest health threat, surpassed only by plastic waste. Other hazards, such as climate change and polluted stormwater runoff, were classified as slightly lower priorities.

Allen said he has full confidence that his former colleagues will carry the effort across the finish line. “I think the spirit of the partnership and the commitment of the partners is strong,” he said. “We know [restoring the Bay] is the right thing to do for all the right reasons, including economic well-being.”

Jake Shaner was let go as a probationary employee in February from NOAA’s lab in Oxford, MD. Now he finds himself in limbo on paid “administrative leave” amid the appealed court ruling.

Interviewed after he was laid off but before put on leave, Shaner described himself as the Eastern Shore facility’s “Swiss Army knife.” He was working with the low-lying town of Oxford to make sure a newly installed living shoreline was working as intended and was in the final stages of activating a new monitoring system that would help emergency services respond better amid tidal flooding emergencies.

He also was working with colleagues on a method of planting oysters that could accelerate the labor-intensive effort and save money by eliminating the need to use recycled oyster shells. Through “direct setting,” scientists release the tiny oyster larvae, known as spats, directly onto existing oyster reefs.

In addition, Shaner was part of the team that rescued stranded sea turtles and dolphins, one of the agency’s most popular initiatives.

The lab is likely to face some immediate problems in his absence, he said. He was the de facto boat mechanic, for instance. Who will fix the boats now? “There are a couple [of employees] that will try,” he said.

“It’s one of those things where we were already shorthanded, so some things are going to have to fall off a little bit,” Shaner said.

Like all probationary employees, he received an email informing him that he was “not fit for continued employment because your ability, knowledge and/or skills do not fit the agency’s current needs.” He received the notice at about 3:45 p.m. and had to leave the office by 5 p.m., he recalled.

“Selfishly, it was a dream job. NOAA is well respected in the international science community,” Shaner said, adding that he worries about the future of his field. “There’s a realistic issue where my industry is in jeopardy. I’m going to be competing with a lot of people for not a lot of jobs.”

DEI and climate

As the Bay Program revises its 2014 cleanup agreement, the partnership is facing federal directives to end DEI programs and reduce or end climate-related science and resilience initiatives. The situation is complex because the Bay Program is not solely in federal hands but also includes six states and the District of Columbia.

As part of the yearlong update process, the program’s Management Board on March 13 considered a proposal from an internal review team to nix the effort’s “diversity” goal. Most board members are representatives from state and federal agencies.

The current agreement calls for “identifying stakeholder groups not currently represented” in the program and working to bring them into the fold. In 2020, the program’s leadership amended the document to outline specific steps, including ensuring that scientific and restoration efforts are fairly distributed across various communities.

The proposed revision would replace the existing language with a “workforce” outcome to recruit and train workers who would help meet Bay cleanup goals.

The board’s official vote on the revision is slated for March 27. If it passes, the proposal will move further up the review chain. But during the preliminary discussion on March 13, the vast majority of board members agreed with the change.

Anna Killius, a Management Board member and director of the Chesapeake Bay Commission, supported the move. She said in an interview days before the meeting that she stands firmly behind promoting diversity but that there’s no reason it can’t be accomplished by increasing the region’s environmental workforce.

“I don’t think that has to be the antithesis of where this administration is going,” Killius said.

Meanwhile, the Management Board mostly appeared to be in favor of retaining but updating the climate adaptation goal. But at least twice during the meeting, federal officials requested that the group use the phrase “changing environmental conditions” instead.

A representative from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said the agency is waiting for guidance from new leadership on whether it can engage in that issue and therefore could not take a position. NOAA has been a leading source of climate science and weather-related data for decades.

Environmental groups are already pushing back against moves to downplay climate impacts, contending that it threatens to undermine the entire cleanup.

“It’s hard to separate climate change and restoring the Bay at this point,” said Hilary Harp Falk, president and CEO of the Chesapeake Bay Foundation. “It doesn’t make sense to separate them.”

Editor’s note: The Bay Journal receives some support through a federal grant from the Chesapeake Bay Program to support public outreach. The grant is currently frozen. The Bay Journal has always maintained complete editorial independence.