In my dev environment I cannot pull environment variables

.env is at the top level

I have a .env variable VITE_DB_PASSWORD=12345

I am pulling it into a different file to connect with my database

const pw: string = import.meta.env.VITE_DB_PASSWORD;

this is the console error

const pw: string = import.meta.env.VITE_DB_PASSWORD;
                                   ^


TypeError: Cannot read properties of undefined (reading 'VITE_DB_PASSWORD')

vite.config.ts

import { defineConfig } from "vite";
import react from "@vitejs/plugin-react";

// https://vitejs.dev/config/
export default defineConfig({
  plugins: [react()],
  build: {
    // Ensure the output is in ES module format
    target: "esnext",
    rollupOptions: {
      output: {
        format: "esm",
      },
    },
  },
});

tsconfig.json

{
  "compilerOptions": {
    "target": "ESNext",
    "useDefineForClassFields": true,
    "lib": ["DOM", "DOM.Iterable", "ESNext"],
    "allowJs": false,
    "skipLibCheck": true,
    "esModuleInterop": true,
    "allowSyntheticDefaultImports": true,
    "strict": true,
    "forceConsistentCasingInFileNames": true,
    "module": "ESNext",
    "moduleResolution": "Bundler",
    "resolveJsonModule": true,
    "isolatedModules": true,
    "noEmit": true,
    "types": ["node"] // Add this line to include Node.js types
  },
  "include": ["src", "node_modules/@types"]
}

First the typescript compiler was giving an error about commonjs files, which I fixed by adding

 "module": "ESNext",

to tsconfig.json

I am not sure why the error is happening.