WASHINGTON — The shock of the Trump administration’s sweeping cuts to the federal workforce are being felt across the country, including in the Lone Star State, which is home to nearly 130,000 federal workers. Employees who have not been on the job for long are among those first targeted.

Whether it was a rural town or a big city, Haley Densler helped communities strengthen their clean water infrastructure. 

“It's just kind of ensuring that every community everywhere at this point has access to clean water, clean soil. It's kind of at the top of my priorities, kind of feels like my life's purpose,” Densler said.  

She administered grants as a Dallas-based employee for the Environmental Protection Agency. Densler told Spectrum News she worked on community outreach and enjoyed bonding with different stakeholders. 

“It's kind of a different approach to ensuring access to clean water that way these communities that received the funding had clean pipes, and they could have the funds to repair their pipes and create new wastewater treatment plants or expand or improve them,” Densler said. 

It is a personal mission because Densler grew up on a farm in Kentucky. She said her family grew all kinds of fruits and vegetables to feed their family, as well as neighbors. It was also their source of income. 

“We actually lost the farm due to infertile soil, so that was as a result of a nearby manufacturing site, so it's kind of always been a passion to remediate sites that have a history of contamination,” Densler, who earned a bachelor’s degree in environmental science and a minor in chemistry, said. 

“I really wanted to work for the EPA in particular, just because they have that authority to regulate that sort of action. It kind of hits home for me,” she continued.  

Densler has been doing her job for just over a year, but on Valentine’s Day she received an email saying she was terminated.  

“I unfortunately lost my grandfather, so I had just landed back home here in Kentucky that morning, so I was kind of already going through a flurry of emotions, just trying to cope and be there for my family, but seeing that was kind of icing on the cake. It kind of instilled a state of shock,” Densler said.

In the effort to shrink the federal workforce of 2.3 million people, the Trump administration has been targeting probationary workers. There are more than 200,000 probationary workers in the U.S., according to the latest data by the Office of Personnel Management. Such workers typically have fewer job protections.

“The probationary period is a continuation of the job application process, not an entitlement for permanent employment,” McLaurine Pinover, a spokesperson for the Office of Personnel Management, told The Associated Press. 

Densler said she was technically five days beyond her probationary period. She has been working with the federal workers union to get reinstated and is in communication with the office of Rep. Julie Johnson, D-Dallas, about the situation. Johnson told Spectrum News she was “appalled” by the mass firings.

“We have some fabulous, very talented folks that work in our civil service, that work in our government because they have a passion for whatever the area or the industry that they're involved in. Haley's passion is environmental and clean water and making sure people have access to that, and that's a passion that's worthy, that we should all celebrate,” Johnson said. “We should all be grateful that we have people in our government that want to make sure we have safe drinking water.”

Johnson added she is also worried about what the layoffs would mean for the country's national security and the economy.

“It adds to our unemployment claims and really adds to the struggles of American families, and it also makes our government non-functioning,” Johnson said. “We have to have employees in order to make the functions of government work.

Densler is confident she could find a job elsewhere, but she said this work is not about the money.

“I would even to this day be reinstated and take a significant pay cut just to be implementing that mission,” Densler said. “It really is just about the personal values and the ability to help our fellow citizens in that way.”