The Way We Work Now

I’m a Federal Employee Who Saw Trump Slash Environmental Protections

Already it is a new day at the EPA under Biden

Photo: Brent Lewis/The Denver Post via Getty Images

The Way We Work Now is a series chronicling how people’s lives and careers have fundamentally changed because of the pandemic.

Brian Kelly, 47, is an emergency responder for the Environmental Protection Agency and member of the American Federation of Government Employees Local 704 based in Ann Arbor, Michigan. He spoke with Mai Tran about the shifting dynamic of working on environmental protections under the Trump administration compared to what Joe Biden proposes for his presidency.

I have been doing environmental work for 24 years, more than half my life; 18 of those years I have been working for the EPA. My title is on-scene coordinator. We go out to industrial accidents, train derailments, and abandoned facilities that have heavy contamination that needs to be removed right away. We also deploy nationally. I worked on the anthrax cleanup in Washington, D.C., the recovery of Space Shuttle Columbia in Texas, Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, Superstorm Sandy in New York, and the BP oil spill in Biloxi, Mississippi.