Can anyone really claim to be surprised that an Environmental Protection Agency run by a man who got a sweet under-market apartment rental from a lobbyist’s family is being run for the benefit of lobbyists and big business? EPA emails obtained by Democratic senators show the extent to which Scott Pruitt is using the agency more as a request-fulfillment service for industry than as a tool to … protect the environment, or anything radical like that.
In March 2017, for example, a lobbyist for Waste Management, one of the nation’s largest trash companies, wrote to two top EPA appointees seeking reconsideration of “two climate-related rules” affecting business. (Another lobbyist “sings your praises,” she told the pair.) The EPA subsequently delayed a rule targeting methane emissions from landfills until at least 2020. [...]
And in June 2017, Michael Formica, a lawyer for the National Pork Producers Council, sent a note “from my SwinePhone” thanking Gunasekara and other senior Pruitt aides “for your efforts to help address the recent air emission reporting issues facing livestock agriculture.” The EPA later revamped its guidelines so that pork, poultry and dairy operations do not have to report on potentially hazardous air pollutants arising from animal waste.
According to an EPA spokesperson, it’s just that they’re trying to correct for how the Obama administration overstepped in favor of clean air and water (to paraphrase a bit). So the next time someone in your town is killed by the carbon monoxide emissions from a portable generator, remember that Scott Pruitt’s EPA got in the way of regulations forcing manufacturers to reduce those deadly emissions—and be properly grateful.