About 89 percent of the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA’s) workforce was slated to be furloughed as the government shuts down, according to contingency plans that were posted online this week.

According to the plan, just 1,734 of the EPA’s 15,166 employees are slated to continue working during the shutdown, which began Wednesday.

The plan also gives a window into the degree of staffing losses at the EPA in recent months, as the agency had 17,080 employees at the start of the year. 

During the furlough period, the agency will no longer carry out most civil inspections related to potential violations of environmental law. 

It will also no longer conduct most of its research or issue new permits or grants. Some hazardous waste cleanup will be halted if there is no imminent threat to human health and property.

The EPA will still continue emergency and disaster assistance, hazardous waste cleanup where there is an “imminent threat to human life” and criminal investigations.

The Trump administration’s plan is similar to the most recent contingency plan issued by the Biden administration in September 2024. Under that plan, 1,734 employees out of 16,851 would have been expected to continue working.

Under the Biden-era plan, civil inspections, issuance of new grants and permits, research and some hazardous waste cleanup also would have ceased.

Marc Boom, a former EPA senior policy adviser during the Biden administration, said during a press call ahead of the shutdown that if one occurs “nobody will be holding polluters accountable for what they dump into the air we breathe and the water that we drink.”

But Boom also said the Trump administration is making the problem worse.

“Over the past 9 months, the White House and EPA leadership have already been shutting down the agency from within,” he said. “They’ve clawed back hundreds of community grants, rolled back protections against forever chemicals and pesticides, relaxed enforcement for polluters … and they’ve shuttered key programs like the Environmental Justice Office, the Office of Atmospheric Protection and now, they’re closing down EPA’s scientific backbone, the Office of Research and Development.”

The EPA has said that its actions are in support of a deregulatory agenda that seeks to boost the U.S. economy.

—Updated at 2:16 p.m. EDT