NC leads nation in shrinking environmental agency, leaving water, land unprotected

After years of staffing cuts, North Carolina’s Department of Environmental Quality likely doesn’t have the resources to take on the extra enforcement work it would need to do if the Trump administration keeps slashing the Environmental Protection Agency, a new report says.

The Environmental Integrity Project released findings Wednesday showing North Carolina cut the greatest percentage of jobs from its lead environmental agency of any state in the country from 2010 to 2024. The state cut 32% of employees at DEQ, formerly the Department of Environment and Natural Resources. The 386 job losses came through firings and the elimination of unfilled positions and have left the protection of air, water and land quality in the state at risk, the report says.

The Environmental Integrity Project, a nonprofit watchdog group started by the former head of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Office of Civil Enforcement, said it looked at funding and staffing trends in environmental agencies in every state to see how they would be able to take on additional oversight work as President Donald Trump proposes additional severe cuts to the EPA.

“Because of budget cuts, the North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality is ill-positioned to confront the growing pollution footprint from the state’s rapidly expanding factory farming industry or the threat of climate-driven storms and flooding in its coastal communities,” the report says.

The study looked at state budget documents from 2010 to 2024 and found that 27 states cut the budgets of their environmental agencies over the past 15 years and 31 states also have cut staffing.

Congress has not approved a 2026 budget, and it’s not clear how much of the White House’s request for an additional $4.2 billion in cuts to the EPA lawmakers will approve. Since the start of Trump’s current term, more than 3,000 EPA staffers have retired or been fired, according to reports.

The Environmental Integrity Project’s report argues that additional EPA cuts will combine with cuts at the state level to leave enforcement of environmental protections almost impossible.

“These deep reductions mean that the Trump administration’s proposed downsizing of the EPA would have an increased impact on pollution control efforts across the country,” the report says. “Not only will the federal pollution cop no longer be on the beat, state authorities may not show up either. Many states will not be able to shoulder more environmental oversight responsibilities because of years of their own cost-cutting, with a gradual erosion of their capacity for managing pollution often as bad or worse than the downsizing at the federal level.”

North Carolina as a case study

A section of the report focuses on North Carolina’s DEQ, which was formed from DENR by the Regulatory Reform Act of 2015, signed by then-Gov. Pat McCrory. Lawmakers said at the time that the changes eliminated unnecessary regulation. Environmentalists said it eliminated rules designed to safeguard public health.

The report says the state agency lost more than 200 jobs under McCrory, a Republican, but that it also lost more than 200 jobs under Gov. Beverly Perdue, a Democrat. During Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper’s two terms, the report says, DEQ held relatively steady, losing jobs in some budget years and gaining them in others.

Republicans have held control of the legislature throughout the 15-year period.

Growing pains

Over those years, North Carolina’s population grew, along with its economy, its budget and, the report notes, its factory farming industry.

As of March 2025, the USDA reported there were 8.1 million hogs in North Carolina in concentrated animal feeding operations, also known as CAFOs, making N.C. the third largest hog-producer in the nation, behind Iowa and Minnesota. North Carolina’s broiler chicken industry is the fourth-largest in the country, producing nearly a billion birds for meat each year.

All those animals produce millions of tons of manure each year. Runoff from farms can send that and other agricultural waste into streams during heavy rain events such as hurricanes and tropical storms, which scientists say are likely to continue to be more intense as the climate warms.

‘A regulatory vacuum’

In the report, Drew Ball, director of the Natural Resources Defense Council’s Southeast Campaigns team, said there’s “a regulatory vacuum” in the state where large hog and poultry farms are concerned.

“The unchecked expansion of hog and poultry farms has left the state environmental agency unable to even evaluate the cumulative impacts,” Ball said. “At this point, policy experts and advocates can’t even get the information they need to protect the public. You can’t respond if you don’t know what’s coming online.”

During an online press conference to announce the release of the report Wednesday, Ball said that with cuts to DEQ and EPA, North Carolina residents may find there is no one to call when their tap water is cloudy or smells like ammonia, or when flooding sends industrial chemicals or animal waste downstream to their neighborhood.

Environmental protections, he said, are seeing “shrinking staff, shrinking budgets and shrinking political support.”

This story is available free to all readers thanks to financial support from the Hartfield Foundation and Green South Foundation, in partnership with Journalism Funding Partners, as part of an independent journalism fellowship program. The N&O maintains full editorial control of the work. If you would like to help support local journalism, please consider a digital subscription, which you can get here.