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Zeldin Shuts Down the Biden EPA's $4 Million Museum, Apr. 1, 2025

April 1, 2025 · U.S. Environmental Protection Agency · 0:02:11

Embedded from the source channel — never re-uploaded. Watch on YouTube

What happened

EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin announced the shutdown of the National Environmental Museum and Education Center at EPA headquarters in Washington in the EPA’s April 1, 2025 upload, speaking from inside the museum itself. The museum, which he said was built and curated by the Biden administration with $4 million in taxpayer dollars, presented what he described as a road to environmental justice and climate change and omitted any mention of President Trump’s first administration from its timeline, as he characterized it.

Zeldin put the operating figures on the record as he stated them: $600,000 a year to operate, including $123,000 on cleaning, $207,000 on security, $54,000 on maintenance, and $54,000 on storage — for a room, as he put it, the size of an apartment. From May 2024 through the prior month, he said, only 1,909 members of the public had visited, making the cost $315 per external visitor even though admission is free. “I have pledged to be an exceptional steward of taxpayer dollars,” he said, announcing that the museum “will now be shut down for good.”

Why it matters

The museum shutdown is the smallest-dollar and clearest-symbol stewardship action of the Zeldin EPA’s first months: a single room at headquarters carrying a per-visitor cost the Administrator put on the record himself, closed under the same stewardship pledge as the $20 billion grant terminations — the fraud-and-efficiency case in miniature.

Scoreboard watch

Scoreboard watch: the shutdown of the National Environmental Museum Zeldin announced on April 1, 2025, with the $4 million build cost and $600,000 annual operating cost as he stated them. Flagged for the scoreboard editor; no entry is published from this page.

Sources: U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, “Administrator Lee Zeldin Shuts Down $4 Million Biden Administration Pet Project” (Apr. 1, 2025, embedded above; remarks as delivered by Administrator Zeldin; figures are the Administrator’s, as stated).