By Suzanne Downing 
The Environmental Protection Agency under President Donald Trump marked 300 days of what Administrator Lee Zeldin calls “major environmental wins,” releasing a new list accomplishments.
The agency says the achievements demonstrate that it can strengthen environmental quality while supporting energy development, lowering costs, and returning power to states and local communities.
Zeldin highlighted actions ranging from a newly proposed definition of “waters of the United States” (WOTUS) to accelerated cross-border wastewater projects near Tijuana, Baja Mexico.
The proposed WOTUS rule aims to give states and landowners more clarity by setting a “clear, durable, common-sense” boundary around federal jurisdiction under the Clean Water Act, undoing the ambiguity created by years of litigation and shifting interpretations.
EPA says it shaved nine months off the schedule for Tijuana–San Diego wastewater-fix projects agreed to in the 2025 U.S.–Mexico memorandum of understanding and intensified enforcement at the border to stop illegal pesticide imports. These are changes Zeldin used as examples of “meeting statutory duties while Powering the Great American Comeback.”
Across the country, the agency reported 1,778 enforcement cases the EPA says will reduce or eliminate nearly 86 million pounds of pollution, 6,457 inspections, 3,807 off-site compliance reviews, and major cleanups in dozens of states. EPA highlighted Superfund settlements totaling $714 million, hazardous-site removals, lead-abatement crackdowns in public housing complexes, and new technical support for rural water systems and flood-risk communities.
Within the list of 100 actions, several directly involve Alaska or the broader region. EPA approved Alaska’s Air Quality Plan for Fairbanks North Star Borough, a long-sought revision aimed at improving wintertime air conditions while avoiding the costly mandates federal regulators had previously pushed.
The agency also issued Cooperative Agreements to advance cleanup of contaminated Alaska Native Corporation lands, part of a long-running effort to remediate legacy military and industrial contamination that predates statehood. EPA reports that of nearly 1,200 identified contaminated sites on ANCSA lands, 296 remain to be verified, meaning the process is entering its final phases.
Zeldin said the combined actions, from chemical-safety rules to hazardous-waste removals, PFAS treatment systems, and training of state and Tribal partners, reflect an EPA focused on “commonsense policies” rather than sweeping federal mandates.
“The Trump EPA is showing that we can be exceptional environmental stewards while Powering the Great American Comeback,” he said, adding that the agency will “keep working tirelessly.”
The accomplishments also reflect a strategic policy shift: EPA is emphasizing cooperative federalism, streamlining permitting, speeding reviews, and prioritizing cleanups that have stalled for decades. Whether dealing with urban lead contamination, new Superfund actions in the Midwest, or emergency responses from Kentucky to Maui, EPA says its pace is accelerating.
For Alaska, the developments are an unusual instance of alignment between federal regulators and state priorities—especially on air quality, land cleanup, and streamlining the rules that affect resource development, rural communities, and Tribal land management.
See the full list of 100 accomplishments of the EPA this year at this link.
The EPA should be shut down, along with the Dept. of Education.
The EPA should be shut down completely. It serves no good purpose in our country. All rules the EPA manages with are not the rules of congress but their own making expecting the whole USA to abide by those rules. EPA is a circus today, yesterday and tomorrow. Every decision they made in the past has caused mayhem but that is what the left has intended with the making of the EPA. EPA lies to the public and to its own employees. It is the saddest of all the federal agencies showing incompetence to the extreme and EPA cannot keep up with its open commitments due to its internal confusion of management and where it stands in the federal government. How do I know this? I use to work for them. EPA needs to be dissolved.