The administration has decided that museum’s exhibits are not worth the estimated $600,000 in annual taxpayer-funded operating costs.

Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator Lee Zeldin is shuttering the National Environmental Museum and Education Center on Monday, National Review has learned, citing taxpayer-funded operating costs and low visitor attendance as reasons for closure.

According to Zeldin’s estimates, the new EPA museum cost $4 million to build in accordance with Smithsonian standards but has seen fewer than 2,000 external visitors walk through its doors from May 2024 through February 2025. The administration has decided that the 15,000 square-foot space exhibit is not worth the estimated $600,000 in annual taxpayer-funded operating costs, which include magnetometer maintenance, cleaning and landscaping fees, artifact storage, and security guard contracts, among other fees. The museum is free admission for visitors.

Zeldin has also criticized the exhibit’s references to “environmental justice” as well as the Biden administration’s decision to omit climate-related policy changes made during the first Trump administration when curating the new museum.

Before the latest iteration of the museum opened in May 2024 on the ground floor of the William Jefferson Clinton Federal Building, the center’s artifacts were stored near the EPA Credit Union in a one-room exhibit that opened at the end of the Obama administration. Following closure of the new museum, the agency is now exploring options with the U.S. General Services Administration about what to do with the current federal building space.

The agency will display some of the museum’s artifacts inside the EPA headquarters and move others into the agency’s archives, an EPA spokeswoman tells National Review. Other museum materials will be returned to their owners.

The museum closure comes on the heels of other cost-cutting and deregulatory initiatives at the agency in keeping with the White House’s executive actions to roll back scores of Biden-era climate programs and policies. In February, Zeldin canceled roughly $60 million in contracts relating to what he called “wasteful” diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) and environmental justice initiatives.

And earlier this month, Zeldin reversed the “Endangerment Finding,” an Obama-era rule that declared greenhouse gases constitute a threat to public health. Zeldin’s Endangerment Finding reversal coincided with a massive overhaul of climate-related initiatives and rules earlier this month, including slashing regulations governing vehicle standards, power plants, mercury and toxic air standards, wastewater, and the oil and gas industry.