At least $60 million in federal funding for climate projects across the Bay Area is at risk, potentially stalling wildfire prevention efforts, trail building and more. That’s according to a survey by Together Bay Area, which represents dozens of the region’s nonprofits, tribes and public agencies.
“We found out that nature-based solutions to the climate crisis are slowing down and stopping because of the federal administration’s orders,” said Annie Burke, the group’s executive director. “That’s not a good thing. Climate change doesn’t care about what’s happening in Washington, D.C.”
Administration officials have targeted diversity, equity and inclusion programs, calling them wasteful spending that needs to be cut to align with orders from President Donald Trump. The agency shuttered its environmental justice offices nationwide.
Lee Zeldin, EPA’s administrator, said in a statement that environmental justice has been used “primarily as an excuse to fund left-wing activists instead of actually spending those dollars to directly remediate environmental issues for those communities.”
A rally denouncing President Trump and Elon Musk’s attacks on environmental laws and environmental justice programs in front of the USEPA’s Regional Headquarters in San Francisco on March 25, 2025. (Gina Castro/KQED)
Zeldin also announced 31 actions meant to assign more authority to the states and relax federal regulations. The administration argued that this would lower the cost of living while supporting the energy and automobile industries.
“We are driving a dagger straight into the heart of the climate change religion to drive down cost of living for American families, unleash American energy, bring auto jobs back to the U.S. and more,” Zeldin said.
Kamillah Ealom, director of All Things Bayview, said these policies will be devastating to residents in her shoreline community, which already contends with the lasting environmental and health effects of historic toxic waste dumping.
“Elon and Trump are coming for our fight,” Ealom said. “We already had to motivate the EPA to do their jobs. Now, Trump has just silenced and intimated them even more.”