Tag: Trump EPA

Embattled EPA Workers Say They Need ‘Bill Of Rights’ Under Trump Administration

These federal employees feel stretched thin by attrition and worn down by regulatory rollbacks.

Workers at the Environmental Protection Agency say staffing and morale levels have fallen so low that they’re calling for a new “bill of rights” to protect the EPA’s scientific integrity.

Backed by a handful of Democratic lawmakers, the employees are demanding that agency leadership not interfere politically in their enforcement duties or their environmental research. They’re also asking for a beefed-up budget, an end to government shutdowns and a new union contract bargained by both sides.

Bethany Dreyfus, a lawyer working on Superfund enforcement for the EPA in San Francisco, said the agency’s offices have been stretched thin by employee attrition and worn down by what she sees as the White House’s hostility to the agency’s core work. While the proposed bill of rights is essentially a symbolic gesture, she said she hopes it reminds leadership of the EPA’s stated mission, which is to protect human health and the environment. Continue reading.

Trump Rule Would Exclude Climate Change in Infrastructure Planning

New York Times logoWASHINGTON — Federal agencies would no longer have to take climate change into account when they assess the environmental impacts of highways, pipelines and other major infrastructure projects, according to a Trump administration plan that would weaken the nation’s benchmark environmental law.

The proposed changes to the 50-year-old National Environmental Policy Act could sharply reduce obstacles to the Keystone XL oil pipeline and other fossil fuel projects that have been stymied when courts ruled that the Trump administration did not properly consider climate change when analyzing the environmental effects of the projects.

According to one government official who has seen the proposed regulation but was not authorized to speak about it publicly, the administration will also narrow the range of projects that require environmental review. That could make it likely that more projects will sail through the approval process without having to disclose plans to do things like discharge waste, cut trees or increase air pollution. Continue reading

California and nearly two dozen other states sue Trump administration for the right to set fuel-efficiency standards

Washington Post logoLawsuit marks the latest in an escalating fight over one of the nation’s biggest sources of greenhouse gas emissions.

California and 22 other states sued the Environmental Protection Agency on Friday, asking a federal court to block the Trump administration from stripping the nation’s most populous state of its long-standing authority to set its own fuel-efficiency standards on cars and trucks.

“We’ve said it before, and we will say it again: California will not back down when it comes to protecting our people and our environment from preventable pollution,” the state’s attorney general, Xavier Becerra, said in a statement announcing the action. “No matter how many times the Trump administration attempts to sabotage our environmental progress, we will fight for clean air.”

The lawsuit, filed in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, marks the latest round in an escalating fight between the White House and California officials over how quickly the nation’s auto fleet must increase its fuel-efficiency. Already, the feud has led to several legal skirmishes, a divided automotive industry and uncertainty in the nation’s car market.

View the complete November 15 article by Brady Dennis and Juliet Eilperin on The Washington Post website here.

E.P.A. to Limit Science Used to Write Public Health Rules

New York Times logoWASHINGTON — The Trump administration is preparing to significantly limit the scientific and medical research that the government can use to determine public health regulations, overriding protests from scientists and physicians who say the new rule would undermine the scientific underpinnings of government policymaking.

A new draft of the Environmental Protection Agency proposal, titled Strengthening Transparency in Regulatory Science, would require that scientists disclose all of their raw data, including confidential medical records, before the agency could consider an academic study’s conclusions. E.P.A. officials called the plan a step toward transparency and said the disclosure of raw data would allow conclusions to be verified independently.

“We are committed to the highest quality science,” Andrew Wheeler, the E.P.A. administrator, told a congressional committee in September. “Good science is science that can be replicated and independently validated, science that can hold up to scrutiny. That is why we’re moving forward to ensure that the science supporting agency decisions is transparent and available for evaluation by the public and stakeholders.”

View the complete November 11 article by Lisa Friedman on The New York Times website here.

Pollution, anxiety, and death: How Trump is poisoning the country and literally making us sick

AlterNet logoIf you’ve ever said “Donald Trump makes me sick,” it was probably a metaphorical statement. Or was it?

The scrapping of life-saving regulations, the lies and incessant digital braying on Twitter and children confined to detention camps in the name of America. In your name.

What’s it all doing to our minds, bodies and the earth even rich people have to live on?

View the complete October 12 article by Liz Langley on the AlterNet website here.

The Trump administration weakened Endangered Species Act rules — 17 state attorneys general have sued over it

Washington Post logoThe intent of the lawsuit is to protect the act that plants and animals depend on, said California Attorney General Xavier Becerra.

Attorneys general in 17 states on Wednesday made good on a promise to sue the Trump administration over rule changes that substantially weakened how Endangered Species Act protections are considered and enforced.

The attorneys general vowed to challenge the administration in mid-August when the Interior and Commerce departments announced new rules that would allow officials to decrease the amount of habitat threatened and endangered animals require to survive and remove tools used by scientists to predict future harm to species as a result of climate change.

The administration would also be allowed to reveal, for the first time in the 45 years since the act was signed into law by the Nixon administration, the financial burden of protecting wildlife.

Revealing the price tag and loss of potential development opportunities on protected land could open future threatened and endangered designations to challenges they have not face before now. Before the change, the act called for endangered plants and animals to be protected regardless of the cost.

View the complete September 25 article by Darryl Fears on The Washington Post website here.

 

Trump officials threaten to withhold highway funds from California for its ‘chronic air quality problems’

Washington Post logoMove could put billions of federal transportation dollars in jeopardy.

Trump administration officials threatened this week to withhold federal highway funds from California, arguing that it had failed to show what steps it is taking to improve its air quality. The move by the Environmental Protection Agency escalates the fierce battle between President Trump and the left-leaning state, and could put billions in federal funds in jeopardy.

In a predated letter sent late Monday to the California Air Resources Board, EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler suggested that the state “has failed to carry out its most basic tasks under the Clean Air Act,” and needs to either update its plans to tackle air pollution or risk losing federal highway funds.

At stake, the EPA said, are billions of dollars in federal highway funding every year. Federal officials have the right to halt that money if they determine a state is not taking sufficient steps to show how it aims to cut air pollution such as soot or smog-forming ozone.

View the complete September 24 article by Juliet Eilperin and Dino Grandoni on The Washington Post website here.

California, 23 other states sue Trump over vehicle emissions rule

The Hill logoA coalition of state attorneys general is suing the Trump administration after it moved earlier in the week to revoke California’s authority to set its own vehicle emissions standards, first granted under former President Obama.

The lawsuit, filed by California’s Attorney General Xavier Becerra (D) along with the leaders of 23 other states; Washington, D.C.; Los Angeles and New York City, argues that the Trump administration unlawfully removed the state’s waiver granted under the Clean Air Act.

The suit also alleges that the decision to remove California’s waiver to set its own standards, which are currently adopted by 12 other states, exceeds the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration’s (NHTSA) authority. NHTSA, under the Department of Transportation (DOT), and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) jointly drafted the new emissions rule.

View the complete September 20 article by Miranda Green and John Bowden on The Hill website here.

House approves two bills to block Trump drilling

The Hill logoThe House on Wednesday approved two bills that offer sweeping protections to the nation’s coastlines, permanently blocking offshore drilling on the Atlantic and Pacific coasts and part of the Gulf of Mexico.

Another vote on legislation to block drilling in the Atlantic is set for Thursday as House Democrats seek to advance their environmental agenda.

“We’re striking back this week against the Trump administration and their agenda to drill everywhere, every time, with no exception,” House Natural Resources Committee Chairman Raúl Grijalva (D-Ariz.) said ahead of Wednesday’s votes.

View the complete September 11 article by Rebecca Beitsch on The Hill website here.

Trump’s EPA Keeps Trashing The Planet

In the face of any serious and growing problem, three options are available: You can do more to solve it. You could do the same things you’ve been doing. Or you could do things to make it worse.

When it comes to combating climate change, the Trump administration cannot be accused of foot-dragging. The problem is that it is marching briskly in the worst possible direction.

Methane is rocket fuel for global warming. It amounts to only 10 percent of U.S. greenhouse gas emissions, but in its first 20 years in the atmosphere, it traps 80 times more heat than carbon dioxide. There’s an upside: Cutting methane emissions yields quicker benefits in slowing climate change. But Donald Trump cares nothing for that project.

View the complete September 1 article by Steve Chapman on the National Memo website here.