January 12, 2026 11:23 AM UTC

EPA Now Means "Environmental Pollution Agency"

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• by: Colorado Pols

As Colorado Public Radio’s Sam Brasch reports, the mission of Richard Nixon’s Environmental Protection Agency has shifted under President Donald Trump to something decidedly other than its original purpose when established in 1970 after the passage of the National Environmental Policy Act:

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency announced on Friday it will reject Colorado’s latest plan to protect air quality over wilderness areas and national parks, citing the state’s attempt to shutter coal-fired power plants.

The disapproval marks the latest example of the Trump administration using its authority to buoy the state’s struggling coal industry. Over the last decade, utilities have agreed to shutter all six of Colorado’s coal-fired power plants by 2031 due to state-level climate laws and high costs associated with maintaining the aging facilities…

In an interview with CPR News, Cyrus Western, director of EPA Region 8, said the federal government determined the state could meet federal regional haze standards without shuttering the coal plants.

“We absolutely will have clean air,” Western said. “The state did not need to shut down these coal plants to be compliant.”

If you haven’t met EPA Region 8 Director and former Wyoming state Rep. Cyrus Western, who succeeded former Democratic Colorado Rep. KC Becker in the job, he’s a Central Casting Trump appointee–best known for an insanely racist Tweet about his state’s first African-American sheriff that somehow managed to not derail Mr. Western’s political career. The Colorado Sun’s Michael Booth reports that objections from…you guessed it, the conservative stronghold of Colorado Springs over the closure of a coal plant serving the city was the pretext for the EPA’s rejection of Colorado’s clean air plan:

The EPA on Friday said the state’s haze plan “did not properly consider and explain whether the nonconsensual closure of Colorado Springs Utilities’ Nixon Unit 1 power plant would be an act of taking private property without compensation.”

Cyrus Western, the EPA’s Region 8 administrator for Colorado and surrounding states, said in an interview Friday that Colorado Springs Utilities “has made it clear” they don’t want to close Nixon as scheduled.

It’s just the latest case of the Trump administration rolling back years of progress the state of Colorado has made on our own initiative to clean up our notoriously dirty air, but this one carries a particular stench due to the use of the Environmental Protection Agency to force major pollution sources to continue polluting–an outcome so far removed from the EPA’s original mission that it seems like a parody.

But that’s how the EPA rolls in Trump’s New Golden Age.