https://nypost.com/2025/03/31/us-news/epa-shuttering-museum-that-cost-315-per-visitor-to-stay-open/
Excerpt:
Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lee Zeldin is canceling a year-old museum dedicated to the EPA’s history — citing its $315-per-visitor cost to operate.
The museum is located on the ground floor of the environmental agency, but recorded very little foot traffic, despite its prime location just a block north of the Smithsonian’s Natural History and American History museums on the National Mall.
“The scarcely visited museum cost a whopping $4 million taxpayer dollars to build in accordance with Smithsonian standards and more than $600,000 annually to operate,” an EPA official said.
“It had less than 2,000 external visitors between May 2024-February 2025 and while the museum was free, the cost to taxpayers per external visitor amounted to nearly $315 per person.”
The museum logged just 1,909 external visitors during the 10-month period. Counting EPA staff visits lowers the per-person operating cost slightly to $190.37.
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The EPA opened the attraction in unused office space after Trump appointees axed a prior Obama-era museum in an even less-trafficked spot nearby during the Republican’s first term.
Although the location was ideal for a museum, it wasn’t obvious to would-be visitors that it was even there, meaning that tourists were unlikely to enter its heavy doors without specifically seeking out the visit. Sometimes people would enter the doors mistakenly thinking it was the EPA’s offices.
The museum is located inside the EPA’s DC headquarters and logged fewer than 2,000 visitors in 10 months.
Annual costs associated with the museum included about $207,000 for a two-person security guard team, $124,000 for cleaning and landscaping, $123,000 for utilities and $54,000 for artifact storage.
The cuts come as Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency initiative seeks to trim $4 billion a day from federal spending — with a goal of reducing the annual budget deficit by $1 trillion.
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Rod Law, communications director of the Functional Government Initiative, praised the EPA museum’s demise.
“There is something ironic about the EPA wasting money on a museum about itself when it is supposed to be focused on toxic waste,” Law said.
