The recent headlines about Scott Pruitt are shifting the focus away from the vast harm he is doing by dismantling this agency to daily recitations of his own personal mendacity. Yeah, he gets a cheap price on a condo from someone who he is allied with politically, and the media focuses on the daily odds on the inside game of whether or not he will be fired from his post. Almost unsaid is what he is doing to The Environmental Protection Agency that is charged with protecting millions of people from bodily harm and death.
Unlike many condemnations of Trump and his policies, the most powerful voice here comes from a woman who gave up her position as the Republican Governor of New Jersey, to take on the same responsibilities of running this agency in 2001. At the time I was surprised that Christine Todd Whitman a moderate Republican, who was in a position to be a future candidate for the Presidency would trade this for a cabinet position. The only explanation is that she understood the importance of this agency, and wanted to use her talents to ensure it achieved it’s goals.
Here’s her comment about Pruitt’s tenure:
“People will get sick and die,” Christine Todd Whitman, who served as EPA administrator under President George W. Bush, told Vox. “It’s that simple.” Some 230,000 Americans already die each year due to hazardous chemical exposures. “You stop enforcing those regulations and that number will go way up,” she said.
This was in this article from Vox Media, that summarizes Pruitt’s slowly strangling the EPA .
It summarizes his method as follows:
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- The EPA announced it was seeking a two-year delay in implementing the 2015 Clean Water Rule, which defines the waterways that are regulated by the agency under the Clean Water Act.
- In May, the EPA dialed backtracking the health impacts of more than a dozen hazardous chemicals at the behest of a Trump appointee at the agency, Nancy Beck.
- The agency has said nothing about counties that failed to meet new ozone standards by an October 2017 deadline and now face fines.
- Environmental law enforcement has declined. By September, the Trump administration launched 30 percent fewer cases and collected about 60 percent fewer fines than in the same period under President Obama.
- The EPA punted on regulations on dangerous solvents like methylene chloride, a paint stripper, that were already on track to be banned, instead moving the process to “long term action.”
- The EPA asked for a six-year schedule to review 17-year-old regulations on lead paint.
- The implementation date of new safety procedures at chemical plants to prevent explosions and spills was pushed back to 2019.
- Pruitt issued a directive to end “Sue & Settle,” a legal strategy that fast-tracks settlements for litigation filed against the EPA to force the agency to do its job. The agency will spend more time in courts fighting cases that it’s likely to lose.
- The agency’s enforcement division now has to get approval from headquarters before investigating potential violations of environmental regulations, slowing down efforts to catch violators of laws like the Clean Water Act.
Whitman was more moderate than even Bush 43, so she is worlds away from the person presently leading the Republican party. Her condemnation of Pruitt can’t be dismissed as a partisan attack from Democrats or Fake news, as she has expressed her views repeatedly. This NPR interview with Whitman provided detailed rejections assuming that existing regulations are unneeded.
If Pruitt is dismissed for his personal ethical lapses another who shares his mentality could be nominated, and probably confirmed by this Senate. For this reason he should be retained, kept in this position. This will keep the public’s eye on his, and his leader’s, quest for taking America back to the time when industry used our atmosphere and waterways for their toxic waste that destroyed uncountable lives .
(That ratio of one security person for 50 deaths, is probably a gross underestimate if the Trumpian quest for dismantling this agency is achieved)