EPA chief vows to roll back regulations
WASHINGTON — The acting administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, Andrew Wheeler, told the Senate on Wednesday he was working to implement President Donald Trump’s move to roll back environmental regulation “posthaste.”
“The combination of regulatory relief and the president’s historic tax cuts continues to spur economic growth across the country,” Wheeler said. “We have made historic progress at EPA since President Trump took office. But we have more work to do.”
Wheeler appeared before the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, his first appearance on Capitol Hill since taking over the agency following the resignation of Scott Pruitt on July 6. And he was quickly asked how he would handle hot button issues like the ethanol mandate and vehicle efficiency standards.
Regret on ethanol waiver
Sen. Mike Rounds, R-S.D., asked Wheeler what the EPA planned to do to help corn farmers, who could potentially see demand for ethanol and their crop decrease under the administration’s decision to grant waivers to oil refineries from the requirement they blend ethanol into the nation’s fuel supply, currently set at 15 billion gallons each year.
Wheeler acknowledged the waivers have created a problem in the farm belt, saying he had helped write the law while a staffer on the Environment and Public Works committee and wished that “we had taken more time on the details.”
“We’re working to see what we can do to make up the difference when we have to grant a waiver,” Wheeler said. “You have the problem the waivers are being requested and granted after the numbers have already
been set.”
Rounds urged Wheeler to look into allowing the year-round sale of fuel with a concentration of 15 percent ethanol, which is prohibited during summer months because it adds to ozone pollution .
“You’ve taken care of the smaller refineries,” Rounds said. “What about the small farmers?” New fuel efficiency standards
With the agency preparing to release new fuel efficiency standards, Sen. Tom Carper, D-Del., pointed out the largest source of U.S. air pollution is cars and trucks.
Wheeler described the document, to be released later this week, as a “proposal.” He said the agency was considering options ranging from keeping the standard for new cars at its current level of 34.5 mpg to allowing it to increase to 54.5 mpg by 2025, as ordered by former President Barack Obama.
Were the administration to freeze efficiency standards, it would likely spark a legal fight with environmentalists and states like California, which has long set its own efficiency standards. Wheeler said he would welcome a compromise, but he also said such a deal must avoid making cars less safe, as the administration arguesObama’s standard would do. Ethics violations?
Wheeler is seeking to resurrect the image of an agency that has been at the center of controversy through much of the Trump administration. Pruitt resigned while the subject of more than a dozen ethics probes into actions that included renting an apartment from the wife of a prominent lobbyist and enlisting staff to help his wife find a job.
But off the bat, Wheeler was asked by Sen. John Barrasso, RWyo., chair of the Environment and Public Works Committee, about media reports that he had met with former clients from his time working as a Washington lobbyist, a potential violation of federal ethics rules.
Wheeler said he had no meetings that violated ethics regulations, although he gave a public speech during which a former client was in attendance.
“I can’t control the people who attend a public speech,” Wheeler said. Increased transparency In a memo this week, Wheeler ordered staff to make the agency more transparent to media, including making his own appointment calendar available online. Pruitt would “scrub” his public calendar of meetings he considered potentially controversial, Kevin Chmielewski, Pruitt’s former deputy chief of staff for operations, told media outlets in July.
Wheeler reiterated that commitment to transparency to the Senate on Wednesday, saying he was hiring more staff to handle the flood of public information requests received by the agency. Closing his opening statement, Wheeler pledged to make the EPA “transparent, open and accountable.”
“Our success as an agency depends on it,” he testified.