A new U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Office of Inspector General (OIG) audit reveals how the Biden Administration recklessly sent thousands of poorly structured grants out the door with little to no oversight, needlessly putting over $38 billion in precious taxpayer funds at risk of waste, fraud, and abuse. These funds were appropriated by Congress to improve drinking water, wastewater, stormwater infrastructure, and Superfund and brownfield cleanup, but, as the OIG audit noted, the Biden Administration’s lack of oversight made it impossible to verify if “grant recipients are complying with federal regulations, EPA policy, and grant requirements.” Under Administrator Lee Zeldin’s leadership, EPA is working closely with OIG to implement the necessary accountability measures that were absent over the past four years.
This is just the latest example of the Biden EPA’s egregiously wasteful spending habits. Upon taking office, Administrator Zeldin moved quickly to terminate the Biden Administration’s “gold bars” scheme to frantically rush billions of dollars out the door at the end of 2024. The $27 billion in Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund money was riddled with self-dealing, conflicts of interest, unqualified recipients, and intentionally reduced government oversight. This included the shockingly wasteful and poorly designed Solar for All program, which directed $7 billion through layer after layer of pass-through entities before the ultimate recipient received their diluted grant. Additionally, Administrator Zeldin canceled billions of dollars more in spending on DEI and “environmental justice” initiatives.
“This audit reveals just how deeply ingrained the culture of waste was during the previous administration. The American people put President Trump in office with a mandate to stamp out this rot. We will work throughout the agency, including with the Office of the Inspector General, to strengthen the financial controls and accountability measures that were missing under the Biden administration. The days of colossally wasteful spending and subjecting hard-earned American tax dollars to waste and abuse are over,” said Administrator Lee Zeldin.
OIG audited EPA grants awarded from calendar year 2021 through 2024 under the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA), which were appropriated by Congress to improve the nation’s environmental infrastructure, like building new municipal wastewater or drinking water treatment facilities. As of September 30, 2024, EPA regional offices had a total of 7,877 active grants with a total value of about $38.1 billion, with 1,669 grants valued at $22.6 billion being IIJA grants.
In their report, EPA OIG auditors detailed the previous administration’s stunning lack of oversight, including:
- “[R]egional offices did not submit eight of their 40 annual post-award monitoring plans that are required by EPA policy for calendar years 2021 through 2024.”
- “[P]ost-award monitoring plans that were submitted did not always include all the required elements.”
- “Of the 80 baseline monitoring reports we selected for review, 35 did not provide sufficient documentation of post-award status or progress. We were unable to review 18 since they were not completed.”
- “[O]f the 40 grant files we reviewed, 39 were not maintained in accordance with regional policy.”
- “These deficiencies occurred because the EPA did not have controls in place to ensure that its regional offices sufficiently completed the baseline monitoring reports, that supervisors reviewed those reports, or that regional offices’ grant files were properly maintained.”
OIG auditors concluded that “[b]ecause of the deficiencies we identified, these grant funds are at a greater risk of fraud, waste, and abuse since the EPA cannot ensure that grants are consistently monitored, which means that it cannot provide assurance that grant recipients are complying with federal regulations, EPA policy, and grant requirements.”
Read the EPA OIG audit here.
