March 9, 2026 – In a report released last week, the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) internal watchdog office said it found no issues with the way the agency implemented a grant program under President Joe Biden that funded solar-powered greenhouses, composting, regenerative farms, and community gardens in under-resourced communities.

President Donald Trump’s EPA canceled $1.5 billion in Community Change Grant Program contracts in May 2025 and shuttered the Office of Environmental Justice and External Civil Rights, which had administered the program.

It was one of several programs terminated last spring by EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin, who called environmental justice programs under Biden “scams.” “Under the ‘environmental justice’ banner, the previous administration’s EPA showered billions on ideological allies, instead of directing those resources into solving environmental problems and making meaningful change,” Zeldin wrote in a New York Post op-ed at the time.

After receiving a hotline complaint in February 2025, the EPA’s Office of the Inspector General (OIG) started an investigation into the Biden EPA’s administration of the Community Change grants. But instead of finding fraud, the office found no issues in the way the grants were handled.

“The EPA adhered to its grant application review and selection requirements and designed the Community Change Grants Program in a manner that assured an appropriate selection process,” the OIG concluded.

Advocates at the Environmental Protection Network (EPN) and Lawyers for Good Government said last week that the report shows Zeldin’s cancellations were not based on evidence of waste, fraud, or abuse. “The Trump EPA didn’t terminate these grants because something was wrong with them—they terminated them because they refused to help communities that are overburdened and under-resourced address pollution and climate threats,” EPN Executive Director Michelle Roos said in a statement. (Link to this post.)

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