EPA staff challenged safety of administration mileage freeze

WASHINGTON — The Environmental Protection Agency privately challenged the Trump administration’s rationale for freezing Obama-era mileage standards, saying the proposal would increase U.S. highway deaths.

In announcing the mileage proposal earlier this month, officials with the EPA and Department of Transportation contended the mileage freeze would save about 1,000 lives a year. But in a June 18 email released Tuesday, senior EPA staffers told the Office of Management and Budget, which is charged with evaluating regulatory changes, that it would slightly increase highway deaths, by 17 annually.

The Obama-era rules, which lay out years of increasingly toughened mileage standards, were one of the former administration’s biggest efforts against climate-changing tailpipe emissions and were also meant to lessen Americans’ overall dependence on the gas pump.

Essentially, the Trump administration argues in part that the mileage freeze would make vehicles cheaper, because automakers would not have to spend as much on fuel efficiency. As a result, the Department of Transportation argued, safer, newer vehicles would get on the road more quickly.

The June EPA email says the administration’s proposal miscalculates the amount of vehicle turnover as a result of any mileage freeze.

A former EPA senior staffer, Jeff Alson, said the documents released Tuesday made clear that “EPA career staff were totally ignored, despite DOT trying to deceive the public into thinking that EPA supports the analysis.”