6 former EPA bosses call for agency reset after election
Six former Environmental Protection Agency chiefs called Wednesday for a “reset” at the agency after President Donald Trump’s regulation-chopping, industry- minded first term, backing a detailed plan by former EPA staffers that ranges from renouncing political influence in regulation to boosting climate-friendly electric vehicles.
The current administrator, Andrew Wheeler, immediately rejected the recommendations, and his spokesman James Hewitt accused Wheeler’s predecessors of having “botched” environmental matters during their tenures.
Most living former EPA heads signed on; one notable exception was Trump’s first EPA chief, Scott Pruitt. The group — William Reilly, Lee Thomas, Carol Browner, Christine Todd Whitman, Lisa Jackson and Gina McCarthy — served under Republican and Democratic presidents.
The Environmental Protection Network, a bipartisan group of more than 500 former EPA senior managers and employees, crafted the hundreds of pages of recommendations for a change of course at the agency.
The group said the road map was meant to guide whatever administration the Nov. 3 presidential election puts in place, although many of the proposals are implicitly or explicitly critical of the Trump EPA’s actions. The former EPA heads’ accompanying statement did not mention Trump but said they were “concerned about the current state of a airs at EPA.”
Hewitt, the EPA spokesman, said Wheeler “is proud of our record addressing environmental problems impacting Americans.” He cited the EPA’s work on Superfund sites, lead contamination and air.
Wheeler “won’t be taking ‘ reset’ advice from administrators who ignored the Flint lead crisis, botched the Gold King Mine response, and encouraged New Yorkers to breath contaminated air at Ground Zero,” Hewitt said in an email, referencing the drinking water contamination in Flint, Michigan, and a waste water spill in Colorado.
Whitman, EPA chief under President George W. Bush, said Wheeler’s reaction “shows that EPA has a long way to go to get back on track.”
“It should start by welcoming input from experts instead of being dismissive and insulting,” she said.
Some of the reset recommendations were aimed at the Trump era, such as minimizing industry and political influence on science- based decisions in regulatory actions, combating climate change and cutting air pollution with electric vehicles, and others. The proposals are in line with critics’ complaints about Trump and with many of Democratic presidential rival Joe Biden’s proposals.
The EPA under Wheeler, a former coal lobbyist, has been an avid agent of Trump’s drive to cut regulations he sees as unnecessarily burdensome to business, including the coal, gas and oil industries. The administration says it is rolling back rules without increasing risk to the public health and environment.
Nationally, many public health officials, environmental groups, Democratic lawmakers, scientists and others disagree, saying
Trump’s regulation- cutting, combined with sharp drops in many areas of enforcement against polluters, is increasing air and water pollutants and industrial toxins and jeopardizing the health of Americans.
When it comes to the EPA’s mandate of protecting peoples’ health and the environment, “the last few years, the agency has been derailed from that mission,” Browner, who led the agency in the Clinton administration, said in a statement.
Saying environmental and health protections were essential to economic growth, Browner called the reset recommendations “rea rmations of our environmental laws, and return to where the Clean Air Act and Clean Water Act are respected and enforced and where policy is science-based and aimed at protecting our health and environment.”