EPA head stacks agency with skeptics
WASHINGTON — Days after the Senate confirmed him as administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, Scott Pruitt appeared at the Conservative Political Action Conference and was asked about addressing a group that probably wanted to eliminate his agency.
“I think it’s justified,” he responded, to cheers. “I think people across the country look at the EPA the way they look at the IRS.”
In the days since, Pruitt, a former Oklahoma attorney general who built a career out of suing the agency he now leads, has moved to stock the top offices of the agency with like-minded conservatives — many of them skeptics of climate change and all of them intent on rolling back environmental regulations that they see as overly intrusive and harmful to business.
Pruitt has drawn heavily from the staff of his friend and fellow Oklahoma Republican, Sen. James Inhofe, long known as Congress’ most prominent skeptic of climate science. A former Inhofe chief of staff, Ryan Jackson, will be Pruitt’s chief of staff. Another former Inhofe staff member, Byron Brown, will serve as Jackson’s deputy. Andrew Wheeler, a fossil fuel lobbyist and a former Inhofe chief of staff, is a finalist to be Pruitt’s deputy, although he requires confirmation to the position by the Senate.
To friends and critics, Pruitt seems intent on building an EPA leadership that is fundamentally at odds with the career officials, scientists and employees who carry out the agency’s missions. That might be a recipe for strife and gridlock at the federal agency tasked to keep safe the nation’s clean air and water while safeguarding the planet’s future.
“He’s the most different kind of EPA administrator that’s ever been,” said Steve Milloy, a member of the EPA transition team who runs the website JunkScience.com, which aims to debunk climate change. “He’s not coming in thinking EPA is the greatest thing since sliced bread. Quite the opposite.”
Gina McCarthy, who headed the EPA under former President Barack Obama, said she too saw Pruitt as unique. “It’s fine to have differing opinions on how to meet the mission of the agency. Many Republican administrators have had that,” she said. “But here, for the first time, I see someone who has no commitment to the mission of the agency.”
The agency’s policy agenda is coming into focus: Last week, Trump signed an executive order directing Pruitt to begin the legal process of dismantling a major Obama-era regulation aimed at increasing the federal government’s authority over rivers, streams and wetlands in order to prevent water pollution. Also last week, Pruitt ordered the agency to walk back a program on collecting data on methane emissions, a potent greenhouse gas, from oil and gas wells.
This week, Trump is expected to sign an executive order directing Pruitt to begin the legal process of unwinding Obama’s EPA regulations aimed at curbing planet-warming pollution from coal-fired power plants, and Pruitt is expected to announce plans to begin to weaken an Obama-era rules mandating higher fuel economy standards.