This story was originally published by Louisiana Illuminator.
As the Trump administration sheds staff and funding at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, a new analysis places Louisiana among states that have notably slashed their pollution regulation resources even as industry expands.
The report from the Environmental Integrity Project evaluated staffing and changes in operating budgets at Louisiana’s Department of Environmental Quality and comparable agencies in other states. From 2010 through 2024, the numbers show the agency’s personnel count decreased 24% with 222 positions eliminated from the agency. The department’s budget shrank 26% over the 14-year period, pulled from an analysis of public records provided by the department.
“These cuts increase the risk that residents will face higher levels of pollution, especially if the EPA lacks the funding and capacity to do its job,” Environmental Integrity Project executive director Jen Duggan said Wednesday during a news conference for the report’s release.
“In Louisiana, we feel them deeply,” said Anne Rolfes, director of the Louisiana Bucket Brigade who also took part in the news conference.
The report focused on the Department of Environmental Quality’s operating budget, or the money it spends to handle day-to-day tasks such as paying employees, maintaining facilities, lab analysis and grants to local governments. Large loans and federal grants, which are considered as capital costs, were excluded from the analysis where possible to avoid outliers because they vary widely from year to year and “do not measure a state’s capacity” to limit pollution, according to the report’s methodology.
The staffing cuts at Louisiana’s Department of Environmental Quality are “among the most of any state,” according to the report. Other standouts included Mississippi, which reduced its environmental agency funding 71% from 2010 to 2024.
On the other end of the spectrum is California, which increased its environmental operating budget by 364% over the same 14 years.
At the federal level, the Trump administration has said it intends to bring the EPA’s employee count down to levels last seen during the Reagan era, when the agency had between 11,000 and 14,000 people of staff, NPR reported. It began Trump’s second term with about 15,000 employees.
The majority of environmental agency staffing cuts in Louisiana happened during Bobby Jindal’s terms as governor from 2008-16. The Department of Environmental Quality has not seen significant hiring or funding boosts dating back to Edwin Edwards’ fourth term as governor from 1992-96.
The agency’s boldest policy moves came after Gov. Buddy Roemer took office in 1988. He placed environmental scientist Paul Templet in charge of Environmental Quality, and the administration tied industrial incentives to benchmarks for reducing pollution. Since Roemer lost his reelection bid in 1991, governors who have succeeded him have, to varying degrees, urged cooperation with industry.
The Environmental Integrity Project report points out cuts in Department of Environmental Quality staff and funding come as Louisiana sees a boom in industrial investment. The number of facilities seeking air pollution control permits from the state rose 29% from 2016-24, with 1,906 applications last year according to the report’s analysis of public records.
A spokesman for the Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality responded to the report in a statement, saying the department meets all federal grant requirements and performance expectations while prioritizing “efficiency” and remaining “fully committed” to environmental protection.
The department has implemented an expedited permitting program to make up for its staffing shortages, allowing applicants to pay for agency staff members’ overtime as they work on the approval process.
Rolfes cites issues with this process in the report, saying it creates a conflict of interest.
“When you cut the resources of the agencies, you further depend on the companies themselves as the source of payment for permit writers — and that is an inherent conflict,” Rolfes wrote in the report. “When you have the company paying your overtime, you are just not going to ask the questions and scrutinize it the way you would if your salaries were being paid by the public.”
The analysis also identified Louisiana as having the highest amount of toxic air emissions per square mile of any state in the country. Staffing shortages also play a role in delayed response time to pollution issues, according to the report.
In 2019, the Environmental Integrity Project report counted only 10 LDEQ employees who handled all air enforcement actions at more than 500 major industrial facilities and hundreds more smaller locations. A Louisiana Legislative Auditor’s report from 2021 also found the department was understaffed and could do more to address air pollution violations.