President-elect Donald Trump thinks the federal government is way too big, and he’s tapped the world’s richest man, Elon Musk, to help dismantle its bureaucracy.

The Environmental Protection Agency is expected to be in the crosshairs. Under President Joe Biden, the EPA prioritized the consequences of climate change and put a new emphasis on poor, often nonwhite communities living close by industry.

Trump, meanwhile, has pledged a “drill, baby, drill” approach to oil and gas development, calls climate change a “hoax,” and tapped former New York Congressman Lee Zeldin, whose record on environmental issues is thin, as EPA administrator.

All of this bodes for big change at the EPA, which is still rebuilding from the previous Trump presidency, and for Adam Ortiz, the top regulator in the agency’s mid-Atlantic region and a Biden appointee. A former small town mayor and environmental chief in Prince George’s and Montgomery counties, Ortiz met with community groups last month during a visit to Baltimore that doubled as a kind of farewell tour.

After stopping at a few East Baltimore sites, Ortiz sat down with The Banner to discuss Trump’s return, demands to regulate coal dust pollution in South Baltimore and an anticipated meeting on the Chesapeake Bay restoration effort. The conversation has been edited and condensed for clarity.

What were your priorities for Maryland and for Baltimore when you came into this role? How much progress did your office make on those goals?

Coming into this role, especially as a Marylander, my focus has been on the Chesapeake Bay — and making sure that all states, especially upstream states, are doing their part — and [on] environmental justice. Overall, in the time that we’ve had, I think we’ve gotten both of those issues pointed in the right direction.

On the Chesapeake Bay, all the states are stepping up. The partnership among the states, including Pennsylvania and New York and West Virginia, has never been stronger, and the data supports that.

On environmental justice, there’s a lot of work to do. But for the first time, the federal government in earnest has made it a priority. Forty percent of our funding has gone to [historically disinvested, frontline] communities. The initiative that we have here in the mid-Atlantic is unique in that we’re putting, I would say, an exceptional level of emphasis among all divisions at EPA on frontline communities.

So the good news is that we made a lot of progress. Communities feel engaged and listened to. Our hope in this administration is that we’ve been successful in making that ethic part of the culture, part of the DNA of the agency, that it’s impervious to political winds.

When it comes to cleaning up the Chesapeake Bay, you have praised Pennsylvania in the last couple of months. What are you seeing from Pennsylvania and those upstream states that gives you confidence?

Pennsylvania has a long way to go; there’s no question about it. But in recent years, for the first time, they’ve made serious investments in controlling pollution from farms, both crop farms and livestock.

Pennsylvania is the largest state by far in the Chesapeake Bay watershed. They have the most industry. They have the greatest population. They have the most miles of highway. And they have the most farms — almost 40,000 farms, which is by several factors greater than Maryland or Virginia. And they’re historically small farms, not industrial operations like you see in the Midwest or even on the Eastern Shore. So it’s a unique challenge to get small family farms to invest sometimes up to $100,000 in controls.

But that’s where the state has finally stepped up where it wasn’t before. They passed an agricultural conservation assistance program in 2022. A lot of that was the result of our pressure, which included enhanced enforcement measures in Pennsylvania.

This year the Bay received a C+ in its environmental report card, its highest score in two decades. You see this as a real marker of progress, not just a flash in the pan.

It is a marker of progress. Depending on weather patterns and climate change, drought conditions, it can still be up and down. But the trajectory is good, and that’s the first time we can say that in a long time.

Leadership of Chesapeake watershed states — including Gov. Wes Moore, Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin and maybe Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro — will convene in Annapolis next month to decide on a long-term strategy for cleaning up the bay. Just how important is that meeting?

It’s critical that we get the commitment from all of the states and the federal government to accelerate the progress that we’ve made so far. The partnership has never been stronger, and things are working. This is a decision point, whether we’re going to increase the velocity of those improvements.

One of the things on the agenda is to support an agriculture advisory committee, which hasn’t existed before, which I think has been a real deficiency in the bay program historically — that farmers were not at the table. How can we expect them to make improvements in the sector when they aren’t at the table?

The other thing is a more rigorous focus on non-point sources [of pollution, like farms and urban stormwater]. My request is that we have to double and triple down on figuring out how to see real, meaningful progress on non-point sources, because it’s just not consistent.

You said that the EPA has all this scaffolding to protect against the winds of different administrations. At the same time, Trump is coming in pretty forcefully, creating a whole office to dismantle bureaucracy. Project 2025, the blueprint for a Trump administration drafted by his former appointees, talks explicitly about cutting EPA staff dedicated to frontline, marginalized communities.

Are you worried about those things? What are you telling communities like the one you visited today?

There’s no question that the rhetoric is concerning. The question is: What’s really doable, practically and politically?

We’ve been very intentional at EPA in making sure that we’re paying attention to all communities that are in environmental distress, and those include very urban, Black and brown communities, as well as very rural, overwhelmingly white communities. The particular factors might differ among that spectrum, but the issue is generally the same.

I think the environment, and especially environmental justice, should always be a politics-free zone. Because this is the most basic responsibility that we have as a community and as a country, to look at the people that aren’t being treated fairly.

Are you concerned about the possibility of the staff in your office being cut under the Trump administration?

It’s hard to accomplish a lot of the things that have been said. I’m not gonna say it’s impossible, but it’s much easier said than done.

The work that the agency has been doing is bread-and-butter public health stuff for communities and people of all backgrounds. It’s basic stuff.

Everywhere we go, people are glad we’re showing up to help them.

There’s been a big push in South Baltimore’s Curtis Bay community against the coal export terminal there, operated by CSX. The terminal falls under the state’s purview, but the railroad is federally regulated. This year advocates began to push the EPA to require that coal cars passing through their neighborhood are covered so they don’t spread dust pollution. What do you think of that request?

I think that’s the right conversation to have, and I applaud the communities for pushing in a thoughtful way. Frontline communities are all over the country and facing similar issues. I know there are conversations that are taking place with the rail industry about feasibility.

As we evolve as a society, it stands to reason that we’re also more sophisticated, providing more protection to the community. So it’s the right conversation taking place. I’m not going to be in this federal role much longer to see where it goes, but I’m glad it’s happening.

Do you know what’s next for you?

No. [Laughs]. I’ve been focused on addressing our staff and our leadership about how important is to continue to do the work.

Our work is not only solving real problems, but it’s also supporting statutory requirements that we have, whether it’s the Clean Air Act or the Clean Water Act or different laws on toxics and pesticides, and we have to have the ability to do that work.

That’s not a bureaucratic exercise. That’s a democratic exercise.