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Scott Pruitt, speaking from his custom soundproof booth behind his wall of bodyguards on the entire floor of the EPA building that he has dedicated to himself, has declared a major reorganization of the Environmental Protection Agency. In furtherance of his plan to turn the EPA into a footstool for corporations and a mouthpiece for polluters, The Hill notes that a few things are going to have to go.
Perhaps best known for its handling of fellowships that study the effects of chemicals on children’s health, [National Center for Environmental Research] will be dissolved and science staff serving there will be reassigned elsewhere within the department, EPA said.
Both the 2018 and 2019 budgets put forward by Trump cut funding for NCER, making it clear that someone at Trump’s White House is determined that no one look into how pollution harms kids. But Congress failed to actually enact those cuts, so Pruitt is left to take care of destroying the office on his own.
NCER is largely known for the funding it provides through its premiere program, Science To Achieve Results (STAR). Under the STAR program, grants are given to the Children's Environmental Health and Disease Prevention Research Centers, which were established in 1988 to discover methods to reduce children's health risks from environmental factors.
The announced reorganization would see the staff of the NCER dispersed across the EPA as the center and several other areas of the EPA are eliminated in the reorganization. It’s not clear when or if the grants will resume, or who will service them. Pruitt is trying to sell this change as an increase in the efficiency of the EPA. Though the real problem with NCER and the other groups targeted for destruction seems to be that they got things done.
A report released by the National Academy of Sciences last year that was compiled at EPA’s request, championed the STAR program for its "numerous successes."
There’s another group that’s being squeezed into the single group that will remain when Pruitt’s “efficiency” forces workers with disparate functions under one umbrella.
Other EPA functions consolidated into the new office include the handling of Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests, records management and budget formulation functions.
As it happens, Pruitt’s EPA is already facing a record number of lawsuits over their unwillingness to comply with FOIA requests.
The suits have come from open government groups, environmentalists and even conservative organizations that have run into a wall trying to pry information out of Pruitt’s agency. The documents they’re seeking involve a broad swath of decisions, ranging from EPA’s reversals of the Obama administration’s landmark climate change and water rules to pesticide approvals and plans for dealing with the nation’s most polluted toxic waste sites.
And even as the EPA prepares to toss this function into a heap with every other function, it’s already admitting that it’s failing at this task.
EPA has recently acknowledged a slow-down in the rate of FOIA requests answered, citing a backlog in previous requests made under the Obama administration and an uptick in FOIA requests sent since President Trump took office.
The “previous request” ploy has been a way that Pruitt has avoided releasing any information about what’s happening behind his extremely well protected doors. Rather than responded to FOIA request for information about his actions, he has claimed all the researchers are busy attempting to handle old requests. Pruitt has also simply refused a record number of requests, leading the EPA already being in court 55 times since he took control.
The two things that Scott Pruitt is least interested in at the EPA: Protecting the environment, protecting the people who have to live in it. The things he does care about—flying first class, promoting fossil fuels and making sure his friends in the chemical and oil industry never face any consequences for their actions.