Scott Pruitt is slowly strangling the EPA
tulc(KAG by making people sick as much as possible?)But some of the biggest, and most overlooked, changes Pruitt has made at the EPA have come by not doing anything at all. He’s steering the EPA’s work at an agonizingly slow pace,delaying and slowing the implementation of laws and running interference for many of the sectors EPA is supposed to regulate. His EPA has also collected far fewer fines from polluters than any of the last three administrations during the same time.
With more staff and funding cuts looming, even fewer toxic chemicals and other environmental hazards will be measured, and the statutes that protect against them won’t be enforced.
“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.
Chaos at the White House and on Capitol Hill has provided Pruitt cover to quietly position himself, his critics argue, as the greatest threat to the EPA in its entire existence. But some lawmakers and the courts are starting to catch onto him. Since the EPA’s inception, it’s been the judiciary that’s again and again beaten back attempts to undermine the agency from the inside. This year is again shaping up to be momentous.
States are now suing to block Pruitt’s regulatory changes, and federal judges are starting to force him to speed up. Pruitt will have to choose between knock-down, drag-out legal fights to deliver for his allies in industry or fold and grudgingly enforce environmental rules. Whatever he decides, Congress, courts, industry, and activists will be watching.