New EPA chief shown to be more methodical

WASHINGTON — Before resigning as the head of the Environmental Protection Agency this year, Scott Pruitt delighted President Donald Trump with his zeal for proclaiming sweeping regulatory rollbacks, even though he left behind a trail of courtroom setbacks.

Andrew R. Wheeler, a former energy lobbyist whom Trump plans to nominate to lead the EPA, has been quietly cleaning up the mess.

Where virtually all of Pruitt’s hastily written rollbacks and suspensions have been blocked by the courts, Wheeler has taken a far more deliberative approach, immersing himself in the legal intricacies — a strategy that could make Wheeler one of the most effective drivers of the Trump administration’s ambitious plan to rewrite the nation’s rule book on the environment and climate.

“He’s done a fantastic job,” Trump said Friday of Wheeler, who has served as the EPA’s acting administrator since Pruitt stepped down in July amid a wave of ethics scandals. Supporters say the White House sees in Wheeler the anti-Pruitt: drama-free, lowkey and, most importantly, able to get the proposed rollbacks through the courts.

In doing this, however, Wheeler has already found himself at odds not only with conservative groups but others within his own administration.

But these tensions underscored what many say is the essential difference between Trump’s first and second choices for EPA chief: Where Pruitt sought the limelight, Wheeler sweats the details. And that could make him a far more formidable weapon than his predecessor in the Trump administration’s vast reshaping of environmental and climate rules.

“Andy Wheeler is one of the few calm spots in the turbulent seas of this executive branch,” said Scott Segal, a fossil-fuel lobbyist for Bracewell who has worked closely with Wheeler. “That must come as a pretty welcome relief to this White House.” He also has “sufficient process understanding to make that agenda stick,” Segal added.

This summer, for instance, the EPA took steps to replace the Clean Power Plan, a major Obama administration policy designed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from power plants. The new version of the plan is significantly weaker.

But Pruitt had wanted to eliminate the program entirely, while Wheeler, according to several industry sources, insisted that the government was legally obligated to have a climate plan. Therefore, eliminating the Clean Power Plan without replacing it could be challenged in court and leave an opening for even tougher regulations under a future Democratic president.

“I got phone calls from conservatives wanting to know, ‘Why did we do anything? Why are we putting forward a proposal at all?’ ” Wheeler acknowledged in an interview last week. His argument, that more restrictive replacement is better than killing off the climate regulation entirely, won the day.

Then, in August, the EPA and the Transportation Department moved to gut another major federal effort to combat climate change by relaxing rules aimed at reducing car tailpipe pollution. The Trump administration plan also voided California’s ability to set its own, stricter standards, triggering a potentially ugly legal battle between Washington and blue states over the ability to fight global warming.