In this edition of Eco Report, Part Three of an interview with David Van Gilder, Senior Policy and Legal Director for the Hoosier Environmental Council, about legislation being proposed in the State Capitol.
The New York Times has indicated that Trump has canceled publication of an important assessment of the environment. The draft was almost ready for submission, due in less than a month. More than 150 scientists and other experts had collectively spent thousands of hours working on the report, a first-of-its-kind assessment of nature across the United States.
But President Trump ended the effort, started under the Biden administration, by executive order. So, on Jan. 30, the project’s director, an environmental scientist named Phil Levin, sent an email telling members of his team that their work had been discontinued. But it wasn’t the only email he sent that day. “This work is too important to die,” Dr. Levin wrote in a separate email to the report’s authors, this one from his personal account. “The country needs what we are producing.”
Now key experts who worked on the report, called the National Nature Assessment, are figuring out how to finish and publish it outside the government, according to interviews with nine of the leading authors. “There’s an amazingly unanimous broad consensus that we ought to carry on with the work,” said Howard Frumkin, a professor emeritus of environmental science at the University of Washington School of Public Health who was leading a chapter on nature’s effects on human health and well-being.
The study was intended to measure how the nation’s lands, water and wildlife are faring, how they are expected to change, and what that means for people. Most of the 12 chapters were written by teams of a dozen or so specialists. While some were federal employees, a vast majority of the authors came from outside government — academia, nonprofit groups and the private sector — and they were already volunteering their time. Most or all the teams were expecting to continue their work, the authors said.
The first completed draft had been due Feb. 11. When the researchers were told the project had been canceled, some had almost finished their chapters and were simply polishing. Others had been racing against the deadline.
Inside Climate News reports President Donald Trump’s freeze on federal funding shows little sign of thawing for climate, energy and environmental justice programs. Despite two federal court orders directing the administration to resume distributing federal grants and loans, at least $19 billion in Environmental Protection Agency funding to thousands of state and local governments and nonprofits remained on hold as of Feb. 14, said environmental and legal advocates who are tracking the issue.
EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin has vowed to seek return of an additional $20 billion the agency invested last year in the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund program, calling for a Department of Justice investigation into what he characterized as a “scheme … purposefully designed to obligate all of the money in a rush job with reduced oversight.”
Environmental advocates said Zeldin was unfairly smearing the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund, or “green bank,” program, on which EPA worked for more than a year with the Treasury Department to design a standard financial agent. Critics believe the Trump administration, thwarted last week in its effort to get an appeals court to reinstate its sweeping government-wide freeze on federal funding, is resorting to a new tactic—labeling individual programs as nefarious or fraudulent. Although that approach has met with some success—a federal judge last week allowed the Federal Emergency Management Agency to freeze $80 million in funding from a migrant shelter program in New York—legal experts said courts will be looking for specifics and evidence, not broad assertions that programs are improper.
“They cannot challenge an entire program based on charges of fraud and waste,” said Jillian Blanchard, a vice president of the nonprofit Lawyers for Good Government. “If they had actual concerns about fraud or waste, they would need to follow clear procedures and protocols in the regulations, going grant by grant to address this, but that’s not what’s happening here. They are challenging entire programs whole cloth without evidence.
The bad news is piling up for climate science. According to The New York Times, The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, one of the world’s leading climate science agencies, has been ordered to identify grants related to global warming and other topics targeted by President Trump’s executive orders, raising fears that those grants are at risk of being canceled.
The instructions were issued last week at the direction of the Commerce Department, which includes NOAA, according to a copy of the document viewed by The New York Times. NOAA staff members were given a list of all “active financial assistant awards” at NOAA and told to identify which of those grants could be “potentially impacted” by one of Mr. Trump’s orders.
One of the directives in question, signed by Mr. Trump the day he took office, is aimed at demolishing federal government programs that address climate change. Based on that order, NOAA staff members have been told to search their existing grants for terms that include “climate science,” “climate crisis,” “clean energy,” “environmental quality” and “pollution.”
According to Inside Indiana Business, Duke Energy Indiana filed a petition with the Indiana Utility Regulatory Commission asking for approval to build two new natural gas-fired units with upgraded transmission lines costing an estimated $3.3 billion at its existing Cayuga Generating Station in Vermillion County. The Plainfield-based utility said the project will coincide with the retirement of the almost 60-year-old coal-fired units at Cayuga—the oldest of Duke’s Indiana coal plants—and once complete would add 470 megawatts in capacity compared with the coal units.
Customers will see a rate increase of about 5.4% between 2026 and 2031 if Duke receives approval to add to electricity rates over time rather than at once. Duke said adding the rates gradually will reduce financing costs, saving about $812 million over the life of the new plant. In its filing, Duke said the first of the incremental rate increases would be about $1.87 for a typical residential customer using 1,000 kilowatt hours.
Goose Pond says Avian influenza has long been present in Indiana. This year, we are seeing an increase in cases of avian influenza across the state, including at Goose Pond Fish & Wildlife Area. As a result, you will see more sick and dead cranes and waterfowl throughout the property. Although the risk to humans is low, we urge visitors to avoid contact with sick or dead birds. The Marsh Madness event was held February 14-15. Originally the event was held the first weekend of March, but with climate change it has moved to earlier dates.
In this week’s feature report, Part Three of an interview with David Van Gilder, Senior Policy and Legal Director for the Hoosier Environmental Council, on bills being considered by the state legislature in the 2025 legislative session. The full interview available online as an Eco Report EXTRA at WFHB.org.
Credits:
On Air………………………………….Julianna Dailey
On Air………………………………………..Zero Roze
Headlines…………………………………..Norm Holy
Feature Report……………………………..Zero Roze
Script…………………………………..Julianna Dailey
Events Calendar………………………Julianna Dailey
Engineer……………………………..Branden Blewett
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