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Op-Ed: EPA Chief — If re-elected, Trump will dump our environmental laws

In a speech commemorating the 50th anniversary of the EPA’s founding, Wheeler also laid out what a second term under President Donald Trump would look like, and it is not very pretty.

“While the focus of the next 50 years should not be like the last 50, it should be informed by it,” Wheeler said in a speech from the Nixon Presidential Library in Yorba Linda, Calif., an homage to the president who founded the EPA in 1970, according to The Hill.

To this end, Wheeler promised to continue Trump’s agenda of limiting consideration of some scientific research as well as another that would change the way the agency evaluates how its policies affect climate change.

File photo: EPA s Andrew Wheeler is a former coal lobbyist.

File photo: EPA’s Andrew Wheeler is a former coal lobbyist.
EPA


In Trump’s nearly four years in office, his administration has moved to reverse more than 100 major climate and environmental rules that it has deemed burdensome to the fossil fuel industry, even as climate change accelerates and global greenhouse gas emissions rise, according to CNBC News.

Wheeler went on to say: “Unfortunately, in the past decade or so, some members of former administrations and progressives in Congress have elevated single-issue advocacy – in many cases focused just on climate change – to virtue-signal to foreign capitals, over the interests of communities within their own country,” according to the Associated Press.

Wheeler also pledged that Trump’s EPA would require cost-benefit analyses for proposed rules and make public the scientific justification for regulations, adding that it would “bring much-needed sunlight into our regulatory process” and saying opponents “want decisions to be made behind closed doors.”

Few people living in America today will remember how it was in the 1940s. This is an image of a wart...

Few people living in America today will remember how it was in the 1940s. This is an image of a wartime production plant. LOC – CALL NUMBER LC-USW36-376, reproduction number LC-DIG-fsac-1a35072.
Library of Congress


“The Obama-Biden administration only focused on climate change at the expense of the communities here in the United States and the expense of reducing pollution where people live,” Wheeler said.

Clean-up of pollution in disadvantaged communities
Wheeler said that if Trump is re-elected, EPA would support “community-driven environmentalism” that emphasizes on-the-ground results such as faster cleanup of Superfund toxic waste dumps and abandoned industrial sites that could be used for new businesses.

There are some 40,000 federal Superfund sites across the country, and approximately 1,600 of those sites have been listed on the National Priorities List (NPL). Sites on the NPL are considered the most highly contaminated and undergo longer-term remedial investigation and remedial action (cleanups).

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#superfund sites – Twitter


From 2000-2015, Congress allocated about $1.26 billion of general revenue to the Superfund program each year. This resulted in less than half the number of sites being cleaned up, compared to before. The decrease in funding continued during the Obama Administration.

The preliminary 2018 Trump Administration Superfund budget cut the program by $330 million out of its nearly $1.1 billion budget, a 30 percent reduction to the EPA program

Many, if not most of these superfund sites are located in disadvantaged African American and Latino communities. The Afton community of Warren County, North Carolina is one of the most prominent environmental injustice cases and is often pointed to as the roots of the environmental justice movement.

EPA staff and contractors are cleaning up hazardous waste at the Former Kaiser Smelter Site near Spo...

EPA staff and contractors are cleaning up hazardous waste at the Former Kaiser Smelter Site near Spokane, to help protect people, nearby homes & businesses from asbestos, PCBs and other harmful chemicals.
EPA – Region 10


PCB’s were illegally dumped into the community and then it eventually became a PCB landfill. Although community leaders demanded that the site to be cleaned up, it took a decade to detoxify the area.

The whole point is that while Wheeler claims there will be more emphasis on cleaning up superfund sites under Trump’s second term, further rollbacks of environmental laws will not help those communities that already bear the burden of higher rates of pollution, cancer, asthma, and overall higher health hazards than other regions where better housing can be found.

“Based on their own record and the Trump EPA’s lack of any positive agenda to reduce air and water pollution, the Trump EPA is easily the worst in the 50 year history of EPA,” said John Walke, a senior advisor to NRDC Action Fund, the political arm of the Natural Resources Defense Council.

Scott Pruitt signing the proposal that would begin the lengthy legal process of rolling back the Cle...

Scott Pruitt signing the proposal that would begin the lengthy legal process of rolling back the Clean Power Plan rules enacted under president Obama.
Scott Pruitt – EPA


“I can’t think of agency rulemaking in EPA’s 50 years of rulemaking history that was so obviously designed to prohibit future safeguards through censorship of science.”

Gina McCarthy, who led the agency during the Obama administration, along with five other former EPA chiefs whose terms date as far back as the Reagan administration, issued a statement this month saying Trump had abandoned the agency’s “core mission of protecting human health and the environment,” per the AP.

“Actions during the Trump administration have further decreased public confidence in the agency’s credibility, undercut its historic dedication to high ethical standards, and affected employee morale,” they said in the joint statement.

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We are deeply saddened to announce the passing of our dear friend Karen Graham, who served as Editor-at-Large at Digital Journal. She was 78 years old. Karen's view of what is happening in our world was colored by her love of history and how the past influences events taking place today. Her belief in humankind's part in the care of the planet and our environment has led her to focus on the need for action in dealing with climate change. It was said by Geoffrey C. Ward, "Journalism is merely history's first draft." Everyone who writes about what is happening today is indeed, writing a small part of our history.

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