A new Trump administration could derail the EPA’s response to the Jackson water crisis, freezing out what could otherwise be a significant change to how drinking water is regulated across Mississippi and the rest of the country, a former EPA official is warning.
Ken Kopocis, who led the EPA Office of Water during the Obama administration, told the Mississippi Free Press in an interview that the election of Donald Trump could prevent accountability for MSDH’s lack of enforcement, which he described as years of total disregard for the capital city’s residents. “What (we’ve seen) is a level of indifference that actually stunned me,” he said.
Plans in Project 2025, an extensive Heritage Foundation policy proposal that numerous former members of the Trump administration drafted, also point toward a reduced role for the EPA.
Currently, the EPA is set to review the authority that the Mississippi State Department of Health has over drinking water regulations in Mississippi. That assessment follows a damning report by the EPA Office of the Inspector General and an extensive investigation by the Mississippi Free Press and ProPublica detailing years of inspections of the Jackson water system that failed to detect the program’s dramatic slide toward failure.
The OIG report found that MSDH failed to consistently enforce the Safe Drinking Water Act and to detect and report serious failures in the Jackson water system, compounding failures that contributed to the Jackson water crisis’ most acute collapses in 2021 and 2022. “The EPA may have taken enforcement action sooner had the MSDH conveyed information (in a timely fashion) and accurately,” the agency wrote.
‘They Don’t Want the Big, Bad Federal Government Messing Around’
The Mississippi State Department of Health has yet to respond to the Office of Inspector General’s report, citing ongoing lawsuits. But in January of this year, when the Mississippi Free Press queried the agency about many of the failures later included in the OIG’s report, the agency called the findings “patently false.”
The consequences for MSDH could be stark. “If the Mississippi State Department of Health is not implementing enforcement procedures as required by Safe Drinking Water Act section 1413, (the EPA should) consider whether procedures for rescinding state primacy for water systems should be initiated,” the report explains.
A full revocation of MSDH’s regulatory authority would be mostly unprecedented in the history of modern U.S. drinking water oversight; in the past, at least one state has voluntarily rejected primacy for budgetary reasons. Other states have had their primacy reviewed but have usually come to an agreement with the EPA to change how they regulate, Ken Kopocis said.
“States bend over backward to maintain primacy under the Safe Drinking Water Act,” Kopocis explained, “because they don’t want the big, bad federal government messing around at the local level.”
‘It Would Just Disappear’
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the Office of Inspector General continue to debate the scope of the changes needed in Mississippi’s flawed water regulatory program. But both broadly agree that serious, proactive alterations to how the state enforces the Safe Drinking Water Act are necessary.
A change in administration, however, could obliterate those plans. Any pressure on MSDH to strengthen its regulation would require the engagement of the EPA. President Joe Biden has made the Jackson water crisis one of the centerpieces of his administration’s broader infrastructure platform. On multiple occasions during Biden’s tenure, EPA Administrator Michael S. Regan has visited Jackson directly, a level of personal involvement unlikely to carry over to a regulation-averse administration like Donald Trump’s.
Ken Kopocis said Trump’s potential non-consecutive terms provide a perfect vision of what his approach would likely be. “We’ve seen this movie before,” Kopocis said. “It’s very staunchly (about) reducing the federal role and allowing the states to do what they want to do. It’s, ‘The states will best protect the health and welfare of their citizens because they’re close to them, and the people in Washington don’t know what they’re doing.’”
Indeed, Project 2025 directly addresses the EPA. The author of that section is Mandy Gunasekara, a Mississippian who served as the EPA chief of staff during the Trump years. She ran for a seat on the Mississippi Public Service Commission in 2023 until the Mississippi Supreme Court ruled she was ineligible to appear on the ballot.
In the document, Gunasekara lambasts an “EPA under the Biden administration
(that) has returned to the same top-down, coercive approach that defined the Obama
administration,” characterizing the agency as “a breeding ground for the expansion of the federal government’s influence and control across the economy.”
Even a Democratic victory would not ensure perfect synchronicity with the Biden EPA’s objectives. There is no guarantee that a Harris administration would maintain EPA leadership with the same commitment to the Jackson water crisis as Biden’s has been.
But Kopocis was blunt in his assessment that a Trump victory could have real consequences for Jackson. “I would just expect that any kind of potential follow-up from EPA, whether it’s headquarters or the regions—in a Trump administration, it would just disappear.”
One of the top priorities for such an EPA would be a “greatly circumscribed” role, reduced to assisting state leadership rather than imposing upon them, Project 2025 suggests.
“EPA should build earnest relationships with state and local officials and assume a more supportive role by sharing resources and expertise, recognizing that the primary role in making choices about the environment belongs to the people who live in it,” Gunasekara wrote.
Though Trump recently sought to distance himself from Project 2025 after it became controversial, he said in a 2022 speech to the Heritage Foundation that the organization would “lay the groundwork” for his next administration.
Inspector General Could Not Force EPA to Act
While the Office of Inspector General may enjoy more independence, it cannot force a totally intransigent EPA to impose its will. “The OIG does not have the authority to force an agency action,” Kopocis said.
Neither MSDH nor EPA Region 4, the recipients of the inspector general’s report, could comment at length on the OIG’s findings or how the election might affect changes to enforcement.
But from MSDH’s perspective, such a review is already in process. “The reviews that are mentioned in the OIG report have already occurred,” MSDH Director of External Affairs Greg Flynn explained in an Oct. 30 email to the Mississippi Free Press in response to a phone call. “The MSDH response to those reports is under review and should be transmitted to the EPA by the end of this week. It is our understanding that the EPA will respond to their portion of the reviews to the OIG independently.”
But that may not be enough for the OIG. Terry Johnson, Press Officer for EPA Region 4, told the Mississippi Free Press last week that the review MSDH was referring to was a separate review of all Region 4 drinking-water programs, predating the release of the OIG’s report. It’s unclear to what degree such a review would incorporate more recent findings.
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