One of the lesser scandals of Trump’s EPA has been the glider truck issue. To quickly recap, glider trucks are big rigs with rebuilt engines inside new bodies. Because they’re not technically “new” trucks, gliders are exempt from pollution regulations, despite being hundreds of times dirtier than new engines. The Obama EPA tried to close this loophole so that companies couldn’t use glider trucks to evade pollution controls.
But then, in November of 2017, then-EPA chief Scott Pruitt cited a study from Tennessee Tech that claimed that gliders perform just as well as new trucks. Pruitt used this study to justify proposing to repeal the rule that would limit the number of gliders a company could sell, and not enforcing it until it’s repealed. Unfortunately for Pruitt, that study was funded by glider manufacturer Fitzgerald. Tennessee Tech faculty later disavowed and expressed concerns about the lack of qualified experts involved in the research.
Well, the school just completed an internal investigation and found that the conclusions drawn from the research “were not accurate,” according to a letter sent to the EPA, Fitzgerald and Congresswoman Diane Black (R-TN).
The claim that glider engines are just as clean, if not cleaner, than new ones has been determined by the university to be “inaccurate in two respects.” First, the test didn’t actually try and compare the gliders with EPA emission standards, and second, the data it did collect doesn’t show the rebuilt engines to perform as well as new, certified ones. But the university did note that the data and methodology the study used were sound, and “appropriate for the project” based on its actual design- to establish a pollution baseline for new and rebuilt engines.
You can guess which part Fitzgerald’s lobbyist focused on in a quote to The Hill, saying that “The letter vindicates the study.” And in what must be a coincidence and not a sign that he is also paid to lobby on Fitzgerald’s behalf, pollution advocate Steve Milloy claimed on his blog that the glider study’s conclusion that “emissions from gliders and new trucks are about the same” was “vindicated” by the letter. The letter, you remember, that says explicitly the claim that new and rebuilt engines “performed equally well” is “inaccurate in two respects” and that “the data does not support” such a conclusion.
Fortunately, the courts stepped in over the summer and told the EPA it has to enforce the rule while it’s making a new one. And Wheeler doesn’t seem to be a huge fan anyway, as a repeal/replacement for the rule was one of the projects that got back-burnered.
Wheeler also, according to a “scoop” from the Koch’s Michael Bastasch at the Koch’s Daily Caller “Foundation,” told EPA staff on Wednesday that he wasn’t going to give glider companies a compliance extension. Bastasch, unsurprisingly, framed the news that the EPA wasn’t going to continue letting dirty trucks pollute as a bad thing because the company laid off workers last summer.
Echoing the paranoid confusion that conflates loyalty to country with loyalty to a fossil-fuel loving president, both Bastasch and Milloy fault “career bureaucrats” (Bastasch) or “the resistance/Deep State-EPA cabal” (Milloy) for standing in the way of Trump’s desire to allow more dirty trucks on the road.
And to be fair, they do sort of have a point. Career government staff aren’t loyal to each new president, and they’re not necessarily supposed to be. They’re loyal to the Constitution, to the country, and to actual scientific evidence, which is required by the the Administrative Procedure Act.
It just so happens that these days, a loyalty to the facts often means conflict with the Trump administration.
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