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EPA funds still frozen despite agency memo, lawmakers’ pressure

Funding for several key Environmental Protection Agency programs remained on hold Wednesday despite an internal directive calling for agency staff to comply with a court ruling to disburse the money and intervention from lawmakers concerned about projects in their states and districts.

An internal EPA memo issued Tuesday that was obtained by POLITICO directed agency officials to “enable the obligation” of funds under the bipartisan infrastructure law and Inflation Reduction Act that had been paused by the Trump administration since it took office. The EPA memo cited a ruling by a federal judge on Monday that barred agencies from enforcing any remaining elements of the administration’s spending freeze.

However, EPA has not issued information on which of the programs funded by the two laws have been unfrozen, sparking confusion among award recipients and on Capitol Hill, where lawmakers from both parties are pushing the administration to allow the money to flow to particular programs.

EPA declined to comment for this story, citing the pending litigation.

“It’s hard to tell what is incompetence and what is confusion and what is basically contemptuous trickery,” said Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island, the top Democrat on the Environment and Public Works Committee. “But it does seem that they say one thing, and then the funds don’t move.”

EPW Chair Shelley Moore Capito (R-W.Va.) has been in contact with EPA in a bid to get funds released, she and other lawmakers said.

Awards under EPA’s brownfields remediation program, which was funded by the infrastructure law, were flowing again on Wednesday after Capito and Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) intervened, the two lawmakers said in a hearing. Most of the programs that EPA initially targeted to be unfrozen were from the infrastructure law, POLITICO previously reported.

But the internet portal to access funds from EPA’s $5 billion Clean School Bus program, which was created by the infrastructure law, remained inaccessible on Wednesday, according to two recipients.

Chris Kilbride, the superintendent of the Ritenour School District outside St. Louis, Missouri, told POLITICO the district was unable access the EPA funds it was planning to draw down this week to pay for 21 new electric buses, all of which are built and ready to be delivered.

“Our grant is still frozen,” Kilbride said. “We’ve got our CFO checking three times a day on the portal.”

The district also received a $830,000 bill this week for EV charging stations it installed for the buses — costs that are meant to be funded by the program. It is working with its contractor to delay payment until it gets clarity on the federal funds. “We’re committed to not using local tax dollars to make this happen,” Kilbride said.

Neither Kilbride nor Rep. Wesley Bell , a Democrat who represents the district, have been able to get information from EPA on if or when the grant will be unfrozen.

“There’s no guidance — I’m a congressman, and we’re scrambling to figure out what the administration is trying to do,” Bell said. “We should not be wondering if a school district can buy school buses that are ready and waiting for it.”

Capito said she had also discussed the Clean Bus Program with people in the Trump administration after GreenPower, a bus manufacturer in her state that has received orders funded by the program, told her it is “concerned” about losing funding.

“We are trying to help them work through it to figure out what the status is,” Capito said.

One person who works with state governments on climate policies said on Wednesday all the IRA money was frozen, including the $7 billion Solar for All program and the $5 billion climate pollution reduction grants programs.

Another official with a state energy office also told POLITICO on Wednesday that it still could not access EPA climate funds despite the new agency memo.

Whitehouse accused EPA of purposefully creating a “fog bank of confusion and uncertainty and uncommunicativeness” around the status of the funds.

He praised Capito for her effort “to work through individual jams of Republican and Democratic members” by flagging issues to the Trump administration, but said those interactions have not led “all the way to money flowing.”

Sen. Martin Heinrich of New Mexico, the top Democrat on the Energy Committee, said he had seen some “surprising and positive” progress on unfreezing funding for his state, but money for some other programs was still held up.

“It’s chaos, and that’s the point,” Heinrich told POLITICO Wednesday.

Energy Committee staff members familiar with the situation had previously told POLITICO that recipients of money from the Interior Department’s Bureau of Reclamation had informed the committee that their awards for several projects funded under the IRA and infrastructure law were on hold. Those included projects enhancing drought resilience, erosion mitigation and sediment removal.

Other Democrats said they are fearful the Trump administration could start unlocking funding for Republican-led states, but not theirs.

“At what point is he [Trump] going to start picking winners and losers?” said Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto (D-Nev.). “And at what point is he gonna decide if you’re from a Republican state you get to keep some of this funding but if you’re a Democrat from a blue state, you don’t? That’s not how this should work.”

Sen. Kevin Cramer (R-N.D.), a Trump ally, said the administration is coming to terms with the challenge of clawing back obligated funds appropriated in laws passed by Congress.

“What they are probably finding is it’s not as easy as you might think to take a scalpel at a law that has passed,” Cramer said. “He [Trump] throws this stuff out and sees where it lands and it’s already working itself through.”