EPA hit by largest round of furloughs yet amid shutdown confusion
Weeks into the federal government shutdown, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency on Monday was hit with a major round of furloughs, with hundreds of employees receiving notices by email in what a union official described as the largest wave so far.
Monday’s furlough news added to the mounting confusion and anxiety across the agency, where Bethany Dreyfus, president of the union representing EPA employees in the Pacific Southwest, said communication about who will continue working, and for how long, has been inconsistent and unclear since the government shutdown.
“Based on the number of offices that reported having furloughs, I’m assuming it was the biggest one so far,” Dreyfus said. “We’re trying to gather the information right now because it hasn’t been a transparent process. People are trying to figure it out through communicating and back channels, trying to find out who received what…it’s inconsistent across the country and across offices and regions.”
According to Dreyfus, the EPA has been relying in part on carryover funds to stay open during the shutdown. Though the amount and duration of those funds are unclear, they have allowed limited operations to continue across the agency.
Stan Meiburg, a former acting deputy administrator who served at the EPA for 39 years, told The Sacramento Bee that today’s news was not surprising, given that he heard last week that the carryover funds were running out.
“I understand that employees inside the agency have been largely kept in the dark, however,” Meiburg said.
In an email, EPA said the agency has been “intentional and aggressive in establishing a structure to ensure EPA is focused on statutory obligations & Presidential priorities,” adding if Congressional Democrats want to re-open the government, “they can choose to do so at any time.”
Civil enforcement inspections, which include monitoring and investigatng possible violations of federal environmental laws at regulated facilities, are halted during a funding lapse “unless necessary for excepted or exempted activities,” according to the EPA’s updated contingency plan. The agency also pauses issuing environmental permits, rules and policies, except in those exempted or excepted situations.
Former EPA staffers J.W. Glass, now a policy specialist at the Center for Biological Diversity, and Peter Murchie, senior director at the Environmental Protection Network, criticized the furloughs as part of the administration’s broader effort to weaken the agency and warned that the cuts could endanger public health.
“Only Trump’s EPA would lay off the people who protect our kids from breathing polluted air and drinking contaminated water but keep the pesticide office open to greenlight more poisons,” Glass said, while Murchie cautioned Monday’s furloughs “will give Americans a taste of the toxic consequences of the deliberate campaign to dismantle EPA piece by piece.”
This story was originally published October 20, 2025 at 6:13 PM.
