The EPA

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Officials at the White House and Environment Protection Agency (EPA) fretted about a public relations "nightmare" from an agency’s expected move to change suggested standards for fluorinated chemicals in drinking water, according to internal emails. The Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry (ATSDR), which is part of the Centers for Disease Control, is currently readjusting its standards for acceptable levels of the chemical in drinking water and is expected to propose that safe levels be almost six times stricter than EPA's current recommendation.

Trump officials feared PR 'nightmare' from drinking water standards | TheHill

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Who needs clean water anyway?

Chairman Ken Calvert (R-Calif.) said the reductions to EPA largely focused on cuts to “search and regulatory programs.” The bill cuts many of the agency’s regulatory programs by $228 million below the current enacted level. Environmental and wildlife conservationists opposed the bill due to a number of riders that would strip protections for species and the environment, including one that would take away federal protections on wolves in Michigan, Minnesota and Wisconsin, and strip Endangered Species Act protections for wolves in Wyoming. Another aims to repeal EPA’s Clean Water Rule. “When at first you don’t succeed at endangering America’s air, water, land and wildlife, try, try again by hiding anti-environmental riders deep in a must-pass federal appropriations bill,” Martin Hayden, vice president of Policy and Legislation for Earthjustice said in a statement Tuesday. “These giveaways for wealthy corporate polluters couldn’t pass as standalone bills which is why House leaders bury them in spending bills, hoping Americans aren’t paying attention while Congress gives away the store.”

House lawmakers vote to give modest budget cuts to EPA, Interior | TheHill

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Yet more repeals of essential environmental protections..

Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt made his staff run personal errands like fetching Greek yogurt and protein bars. He had his full-time security detail hunt for a Ritz-Carlton lotion. He had an aide ask for a used Trump hotel mattress. He tried to score a Chik-fil-A franchise for his wife. These stories have been dominating news coverage of the EPA boss this week (except on Fox News). They prompted smirks and snark, but they’re hardly the most important developments at the agency. In the last week, even as Democrats asked the Justice Department to investigate Pruitt and federal inquiries and audits of his ethical conduct in office keep piling up, Pruitt managed to deliver two wins for industries that don’t like EPA regulations: continuing to roll back rules on toxic chemicals and change how the EPA weighs costs and benefits of regulations. These are regulations that affect the health of millions of Americans and perhaps the future of how the EPA protects the environment. Let’s walk through them..

Scott Pruitt was undoing key environmental policies this week amid scandal - Vox

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The EPA is for protecting the environment and, as a result, people's health, right? Hahaha..

The Trump administration feared it would be a “public relations nightmare”: a major federal study that concluded contaminated groundwater across the country, especially near military bases, was more toxic than the government realized. Political aides to President Donald Trump and Environmental Protection Agency head Scott Pruitt pressured the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry against releasing the results. “The public, media, and Congressional reaction to these numbers is going to be huge,” an unidentified White House aide wrote, according to Politico. “The impact to EPA and [the Defense Department] is going to be extremely painful. We cannot seem to get ATSDR to realize the potential public relations nightmare this is going to be.” The study was not released.

That is, until Wednesday. Amid a media firestorm about the administration’s immigration policy, the ATSDR—a division of the Department of Health and Human Services—quietly published its 852-page review of perfluoroalkyls, or PFAS, which are “used in everything from carpets and frying pan coatings to military firefighting foams,” according to ProPublica. “All told, the report offers the most comprehensive gathering of information on the effects of these chemicals today, and suggests they’re far more dangerous than previously thought.”

These chemical compounds pose health risks to millions of Americans. They’re in roughly 1 percent of the nation’s public water supply, according to the EPA; in roughly 1,500 drinking water systems across the country, according to the Environmental Working Group. People who drink from these systems, even if their exposure to PFAS is low, now have a potentially increased risk of cancer; of disruptions in hormones and the immune system; and of complications with fetal development during pregnancy.

The White House Tried to Suppress a Bombshell Study Because They Were Afraid of the PR – Mother Jones

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The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) on Friday said that it doesn’t need to write a new regulation to comply with a legal requirement to address air pollution that blows across state lines. The Clean Air Act’s “good neighbor” provision mandates that the EPA work to ensure that pollution from certain states doesn’t make air quality worse in downwind states. In Friday’s released finding, the EPA said that as it relates to the 2008 regulation limiting smog-forming ozone pollution, the agency has already taken the actions necessary to comply with the “good neighbor” standard. Specifically, a 2016 update to the Cross State Air Pollution Rule went far enough to regulate states’ ozone pollution and will meet the legal standard once it is implemented, the EPA said. In a statement accompanying the proposal, the EPA criticized the 2016 rule, saying it was a top-down approach that unfairly imposed federal mandates on states.

EPA says it doesn’t need new ‘good neighbor’ air pollution rule | TheHill

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As head of the Environmental Protection Agency, Scott Pruitt has wriggled from one colorful scandal to the next, using agency staff to help his wife land a Chick-fil-A franchise and enlisting members of his security detail to pick up his dry cleaning and search for his favorite moisturizer.


But these ethical breaches pale in comparison to the real scandal: Pruitt’s sustained effort to help polluting industries by hocking America’s natural environment and public health for a song. His latest ploy is a proposal to change how the EPA calculates the costs and benefits of environmental regulations, a process that those industries have consistently criticized. In a notice inviting the public to comment on whether and how to change the cost-benefit analysis, released on June 7, Pruitt appears to be laying the groundwork for reforms that would allow the EPA to hide the real-world value of protections by downplaying or leaving out many of the benefits they provide.

Like Pruitt’s war on science, which culminated in a plan to ignore an entire category of scientific studies when measuring environmental risks, his war on economics could erode regulatory protections. If it moves forward, the scheme is likely to make it much easier to block new standards and endanger many of the ones we already have. The stakes could not be higher. We’re talking about air that’s clean enough to breathe and water that’s safe to drink..

Environmental Economics: "Scott Pruitt is now waging a war on economics"

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Here a timeline of all Pruitt's scandels, although the real one is that he has delivered the EPA to corporate interests, mostly fossil fuel companies which have rapidly diminished environmental regulations and liberated themselves to be able to pollute again..

Pruitt was not the first Trump administration official to step down in the face of scandals and controversies. But the fact that he remained in his post for months in spite of the controversies spoke to his close relationship with the president, who praised his "outstanding" work at the EPA in announcing his resignation. Here's a timeline of some of the major controversies that Pruitt faced during his tenure at the EPA:

Timeline: The controversies of Scott Pruitt | TheHill

Check link for the details.

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The Pruitt scandals are the detraction, the real scandal is the wholesale sellout of the EPA to industry:

Trump administration officials at the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) are reportedly suppressing a highly anticipated report that would warn Americans about the cancer risks that come with one of the most common chemicals in our environment. The draft risk assessment, from the EPA’s Integrated Risk Information System, is expected to show that ingesting formaldehyde — breathing it in through car and furniture emissions, or slathering it on our skin via cosmetics — can cause leukemia and nose and throat cancers. The report was completed last fall, and slated to move on to the National Academies of Science for external peer review.

But more than five months after Scott Pruitt, the former EPA chief who resignedThursday, told a Senate panel that he believed the report was ready, it still hasn’t seen the light of day. Politico broke the story today that helps explain why: Top advisers to Pruitt have been dragging their feet in order to protect the chemical industry from damning revelations that would prompt stricter regulations and possibly class-action lawsuits by cancer patients..

Trump’s EPA is suppressing a report about formaldehyde and cancer - Vox

And how about this for a parting shot:

Former Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt managed to fire a Parthian shot on his final day in office when he cemented a massive loophole for some of the dirtiest, most polluting trucks on the road, allowing manufacturers to build even more them. It was Pruitt’s final knock to clean air after President Trump asked him resign Thursday as months of mounting scandals came to a head. “Pruitt didn’t want to leave his post and was described as being devastated that he had to resign ... ,” according to Jennifer Dlouhy and Jennifer Jacobs at Bloomberg. Andrew Wheeler, a former lobbyist for industries including coal, will take over EPA as acting director on Monday.

Scott Pruitt gave dirty glider trucks a gift on his last day at the EPA - Vox

What's wrong with that guy?! He leaves a trail of scandals, but more importantly a trail of enabling polluters. Amazing stuff.

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Yet even on his way out the door, Pruitt managed to give a parting gift to one of the industries the EPA is supposed to regulate: manufacturers of “super polluting” trucks, who wanted to keep open a loophole the Obama administration tried to eliminate. Michael Grunwald at Politico made the case earlier this year that Pruitt’s effectiveness at the EPA is overstated. Much of his work in undoing EPA regulations has been theatrical announcements with flimsy technical pretexts that will wither under legal challenges.

But while making (or unmaking) environmental rules is a process that takes years, the industries that chafe most at EPA regulations — automakers, big farmers, coal barons, and chemical manufacturers among them — found plenty of opportunities to celebrate during Pruitt’s time in office. And these gains for industry come at the expense of the health of all of us, particularly the poor and minorities. “A central feature of [Trump’s] agenda is environmental damage: making the air dirtier and exposing people to more toxic chemicals,” wrote researchers Francesca Dominici and David Cutler in the Journal of the American Medical Association Forum. “The beneficiaries, in contrast, will be a relatively few well-connected companies.”

Scott Pruitt gave these 5 polluting industries relief during his time at the EPA - Vox

Good oversight article of how the EPA, which is supposed to protect the environment and public health, did the opposite under Pruitt and sold itself out to polluting industry.

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House Republicans on Wednesday voted to weaken a much-praised 1976 law that helped revive the commercial fishing industry in the United States and bring its fisheries back from the brink of collapse. The bill, introduced by Rep. Don Young (R-Alaska), would remove annual catch limits on numerous fish species and roll back requirements for recovering overfished stocks. Many scientists, fishers and ocean advocacy groups say that will likely result in overfishing. The legislation passed the House in a 222-193 vote, mostly along party lines. The measure must still be approved by the Senate, although it’s unclear if or when that chamber will take up the bill.

House Republicans Just Voted to Gut Protections for America’s Fish – Mother Jones