The Environmental Protection Agency is cutting all of its environmental justice offices, according to a memo from EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin.

Those offices worked to protect disadvantaged communities from being disproportionately impacted by contaminants. Zeldin said more than 160 people will be fired in accordance with President Trump’s executive order targeting diversity, equity, and inclusion.

The environmental justice offices had been part of the EPA for many years, including during the first Trump administration. They were launched via an executive order in 1994 by the Clinton administration and provided grants for communities.

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The EPA’s goal was to ensure all people were “protected from disproportionate and adverse human health and environmental effects (including risks) and hazards, including those related to climate change, the cumulative impacts of environmental and other burdens, and the legacy of racism or other structural or systemic barriers; and [to] have equitable access to a healthy, sustainable, and resilient environment in which to live, play, work, learn, grow, worship, and engage in cultural and subsistence practices.”

The changes reflect a reversal for the second Trump administration, as the president’s first administration was supportive of the EPA’s environmental justice efforts.

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“Under the Trump Administration, at EPA, we remain committed to ensuring that environmental justice is integrated into EPA’s programs and activities to strengthen environmental and public health protections for low-income, minority, indigenous, and disadvantaged communities that are more likely to live near contaminated lands or be disproportionately impacted by environmental hazards,” then-EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler said in 2019. “Among our accomplishments, EPA made notable progress in accelerating the remediation of Superfund sites to address environmental risk. We also deleted all or part of 27 sites from the Superfund’s National Priority List, the largest number of deletions in a single year since FY 2001. I look forward to working together with states, local communities, tribes, and private parties as we continue the environmental and economic development work happening across the nation.”