Green groups sue Trump administration over climate webpage removals

Green groups have sued the Trump administration over the removal of government webpages containing federal climate and environmental justice data that they described as “tantamount to theft”.

In the first weeks of its second term, the Trump administration pulled federal websites tracking shifts in the climate, pollution and extreme weather impacts on low-income communities, and identifying pieces of infrastructure that are extremely vulnerable to climate disasters.

“The public has a right to access these taxpayer-funded datasets,” said Gretchen Goldman, president of the science advocacy non-profit Union of Concerned Scientists, which is a plaintiff in the lawsuit. “From vital information for communities about their exposure to harmful pollution to data that help local governments build resilience to extreme weather events, the public deserves access to federal datasets.”

“Removing government datasets is tantamount to theft,” Goldman added.

Filed in a Washington DC district court on Monday, the litigation was brought against federal agencies by the Union of Concerned Scientists, the Sierra Club and the Environmental Integrity Project climate groups; the consumer advocacy group Public Citizen; and the anti-pollution group California Communities Against Toxics.

It identifies six crucial government-run sites that have been pulled, arguing they must be restored. They include a Biden-era screening tool created to identify disadvantaged communities that would benefit from federal climate and clean energy investments, and an Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) mapping tool called EJScreen which showed the disparate burdens of pollution alongside socioeconomic indicators.

The lawsuit also highlights the Department of Energy’s map of resources for energy affordability in low-income communities, and a Department of Transportation Equitable Transportation Community interactive map of transportation insecurity, climate risk and economic vulnerability. Another now defunct tool it spotlights: the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s future risk index, meant to help cities, states and businesses prepare for worsening extreme weather, which was re-created by the Guardian last month.

“Simply put, these data and tools save lives, and efforts to delete, unpublish or in any way remove them jeopardize people’s ability to breathe clean air, drink clean water, and live safe and healthy lives,” said Ben Jealous, executive director of the Sierra Club.

Though publications including the Guardian, as well as advocacy groups, have published some recently pulled datasets on newly created webpages, in the absence of resources to continue gathering and publicizing new data, these datasets cannot be updated.

Last month, groups also sued the Trump administration over the US Department of Agriculture’s removal of climate data.

The lawsuit comes as federal officials also fire swaths of federal employees working on climate, environmental and justice-related initiatives, and enact sweeping rollbacks of green policies and regulations.

“The removal of these websites and the critical data they hold is yet another direct attack on the communities already suffering under the weight of deadly air and water,” said Jealous.

The EPA, one of the agencies named in the suit, declined to comment on the litigation.