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Los Angeles (AP) – Just more than a mile from where Patricia Flores has been living for almost 20 years, a plant for a melting battery has ejected toxic elements in the environment for nearly a century.

Exide Technologies in Southeast Los Angeles pollutes thousands of lead with lead and contributes to groundwater contamination with trichlorethylene or TCE, a chemical causing cancer.

As Exide announced bankruptcy in 2020, California has invested over $ 770 million to clean up various properties. But it takes a lot more cleaning and with the return of Donald Trump to the White House these efforts are uncertain.

“The groundwater that has been found to be spreading,” says Flores in Spanish. “This will not only affect us – other people will be affected by pollution. And he worries that we will not be added to the list of priorities to make cleaning. “

Residents, environmental and state and federal legislators have called on the Environmental Protection Agency to list the output as a Superfund site that will unlock federal resources for long -term, constant cleaning. Last year, the EPA determined that the plant qualified due to TCE in groundwater, which is advocating for worries, was to control drinking water.

But toxic cleaning experts say the Trump administration can make it difficult for dangerous sites to determine, create a lag, reduce program financing and loosen the pollution standards.

The purpose of the Superfund program, which began more than four decades ago, is to clean the most polluted sites of the nation to protect the environment and people-often in color communities and communities. Once a site has been added to the list of national priorities, crews evaluate pollution, create a cleaning plan and execute it. Once this happens, EPA deletes the site from the list, which can then be converted. There are currently 1341 Superfund sites, according to December EPA data.

While the program has historically received bilateral support, changes in administration influence the way it works, funding and supervision. In a statement to the Associated Press, the EPA spokesman Molly Vasseliu said the agency “compiled a managerial team composed of some of the most brilliant experts and legal minds of their areas, all of which will maintain the EPA to protect human health and the environment S

It is too early to understand how Trump’s second Presidency will affect the program, but some experts indicate his previous clue mandate.

The delay in Superfund toxic cleaning has grown even when Trump has announced the priority program as he seeks to release it and EPA. Vasseliu said Trump’s EPA “Clean More Toxic Sites than its Predecessor by Deleting Fully or Partial Delete 82 sites from the Superfund national priority list.” Unjustified cleaning loan when they made such statements in such statements within similar statements in similar statements in similar statements in similar statements in similar statements in similar statements in similar statements in similar statements in similar statements in similar statements in similar statements in such statements Similar statements in similar statements in such statements when they made similar statements in such statements in 2019, it may take decades to clean a Superfund site, which means that by the time it has been removed from the list, a new administration is in power S

If Trump strives to release the EPA again, this can have a great impact on cleaning the site in countries with less money. Some countries do not have the staff or economy to deal with these sites themselves, “and so they need the federal government as a partner to do so,” says Michael Blumental, co -chairman of the McGlinchey Stafford Environment Group, who is He was the group of McGlinchey Stafford, which was a group of cases for Superfund.

“Pollutants pay” the taxes that impose fees on polluting companies to clean up super funds that have expired in 1995. They were restored by the Bilan-Haris Bilateral Infrastructure Act. Many hoped that renewed funding would cancel decades of slow cleaning, but some now worry that they can be canceled, reducing the funding of the program. Trump has already moved to career staff at EPA and other agencies, eliminating scientific advisers and closing an office that helps minority communities disproportionate to fight pollution.

Gazayama, a lawyer and partner at King & Spalding, said the reduced number of EPA employees will have a “dramatic effect” because “you just don’t have the bodies to really start the program at the level at which they worked historically in. “

If the Federal Government does not make the same efforts, the state cleaning programs will have to decide whether they will intervene to raise the groin, added Nakayama, who was the assistant administrator of the EPA for the fulfillment service and a guarantee for compliance with the requirements. “Some countries have more political will than others.”

In his first term, Trump also canceled the surveillance and environmental protection, including the air and waterways of the nation. Trump signals that this time he can do the same when he signed an enforcement order for the annulment of 10 provisions for anyone who comes into force. Experts say environmental deregulation can weaken the frame that supports Superfund cleaning.

Bloamal said there may be efforts to review the dangerous ranking system, which makes it difficult to list the sites. He also said that countries like California, in anticipation of a decision, would not receive it immediately. “It may be months,” he said, adding that sites like Exide can be listed as a low priority.

Some people working on cleaning already see influence. Connie Westfal, a lawyer and founder of the Westfall Law Firm, works on the US oil recovery website in the United States in Texas. Her team is waiting for the EPA to abandon the reports of the site so that they can go to the next stage.

“I’ve never seen anything like that,” she said. “Delay is worth money.”

Aleja Cretcher, a legal associate of ecological groups for a better environment, said they had worked closely with the EPA for years, including in Exide. The loss of this support would be a “retreat”.

“Decades of poisoning without accountability have passed,” she said, “and everyone deserves clean soil in their yards and clean air, clean water.”

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