WASHINGTON
D.C.--
Today,
Andrew Wheeler, nominee for Deputy Administrator at the
Environmental Protection Agency, and Kathleen Hartnett-White, nominee
for Director of the White House Council on Environmental Quality,
testified in front of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee.
During
the hearing, Wheeler and Hartnett-White repeatedly dodged answers to
questions and denied the impacts of human activities on climate change
and of pollution on human health.
Andrew
Wheeler is a big time lobbyist who has represented Big Coal for almost a decade,
including
in
numerous
lawsuits
challenging
the
EPA. Since 2009,
Wheeler
has
been
defending
a
company
that: violated labor
laws and worker safety standards at its mines; sued the
government to block life-saving clean air protections; has tried to
mine for coal in our parks; has
consistently called very real, very dangerous threats to our health,
such as acid rain and climate change, hoaxes; and has labeled
life-saving proposals to toughen emission standards as criminal fraud.
“Wheeler
is a friend to polluters, not to American families that rely on clean
air and clean water,” said Matthew Gravatt, Sierra Club’s
Associate Legislative Director. “He’s spent
his
career
challenging
the
vital
lifesaving
environmental
protections that
keep
our
air
and water clean so that we can keep our families safe.
Wheeler was not only a key D.C. advocate for the coal industry, but
also a former aide for outspoken climate-denying senator James Inhofe.
On top of all this, he continued his baseless claims today about his
so-called support for science and scientists. He is a dangerous pick
and unfit for the job.”
The
role of Director of the White House Council on Environmental Quality,
which Hartnett-White has been nominated for, is to advise the President
on how to best protect the health of our environment and our families.
While Hartnett-White served as the Chairman and Commissioner of the
Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ) and member of the
Texas Water Development Board from 1999 to 2001, she made decisions
favorable to polluters, not Texans. Hartnett-White oversaw the TCEQ
practice of intentionally under-reporting levels of radiation in water
and allowed at least 35 violations to go unreported, stated we don’t
need limits on carbon emissions and called carbon dioxide the “gas of
life”, praised vehicle tailpipe pollution, criticized the Clean Air
Act, and voted to allow construction of a new coal plant despite
pollution concerns.
“With
Trump and Pruitt’s numerous attacks on our environmental safeguards,
it’s clear Trump needs an advisor who won’t bend to the will of big
polluters,” said
Gravatt. “However, it would be a gross
inaccuracy to say Kathleen Hartnett-White cares about the quality of
our environment. Hartnett-White, who has gone so far as to call CO2 the
‘gas of life’ and oversaw the intentional under-reporting of radiation
levels in water, has shown a callous disregard for the health of our
families throughout her career, will advise the President on how to
dismantle key environmental safeguards and put our families at risk.”
“There’s
absolutely no doubt about it: both Wheeler and Hartnett-White are
extremely dangerous picks for public health and American families,” concluded Gravatt. “The
Senate
must
reject
these
nominations.”
Sierra
Club
Contact:
Emily
Pomilio
Mark Kresowik
Sierra Club Slams Pruitt’s EPA for Denying Pollution Protections
for the Northeast, Mid-Atlantic Region
Baltimore,
MD--The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)
denied a
request by eight Northeast and Mid-Atlantic states today to
require a handful of states to the west and south of them to
participate in additional safeguards reducing smog pollution in the
region. In a 2013 petition filing, Connecticut, Delaware, Maryland,
Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New York, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island and
Vermont, stated that pollution from neighboring states such as Kentucky
and Virginia have consistently carried over into their regions, keeping
them from being able to meet federal clean air safeguards and polluting
their communities.
The EPA denied the request in part by claiming there are better tools
under the Clean Air Act for downwind states to address interstate
pollution - tools which Pruitt’s EPA has failed to use despite multiple
state requests.
In response Mark Kresowik, Eastern Region Deputy Director for the
Sierra Club’s Beyond Coal Campaign issued the following statement:
“Once again, Scott Pruitt refuses to do his job and protect the health
of communities to instead benefit his polluting cronies--but this time
he’s harming the health of an entire region. This decision is
particularly egregious because Pruitt is failing to act using the tools
he claims to prefer for addressing cross-state pollution. Pruitt’s EPA
has missed mandatory deadlines to respond to multiple “Good Neighbor”
petitions from Connecticut, Delaware and Maryland to reduce pollution
from coal plants in other states. For example, Brunner Island, one of
the largest coal-fired plants in the region still fails to operate with
the most effective modern pollution controls that could limit pollution
contributing to asthma-causing smog.”
Sierra
Club
Tuesday, October 3, 2017
Contact:
Trey
Pollard
Sierra Club: Scott Pruitt’s Schedule Shows He is Not Fit to Serve
at EPA
WASHINGTON, D.C.
-- Scott Pruitt’s
schedule is packed with meetings with the fossil fuel industry and
chemical companies, according to hundreds of pages of his schedule
uncovered by open records requests filed by the nonprofit group American
Oversight. According to reporting by the New York Times,
the
revelations
“for
the
first
time,
create
a
direct
link
between Mr.
Pruitt’s meetings and actions that the industry wants him to take.”
Among the lowlights of Pruitt’s schedule:
- A
trip
to
the
Ritz-Carlton
Golf Resort in Naples, FL for a speech to the
National Mining Association
- A
trip
to
the
Phoenician
Golf
Resort in Scottsdale, AZ for a speech to
the National Association of Manufacturers
- Numerous
meetings
with
auto
manufacturers
seeking
to gut vehicle emissions and
fuel economy standards.
- Meetings
with
a
pesticides trade group the day after Pruitt overruled scientists
calling for a ban on chlorpyrifos, a chemical known to cause
disabilities in children.
The
New
York
Times asserts that “Industry executives and conservative
activists often scored meetings to press Mr. Pruitt to kill or modify
Obama-era climate change regulations, particularly the so-called Clean
Power Plan” while “William K. Reilly, the E.P.A. administrator under
the first President George Bush, described the level of meetings
between Mr. Pruitt and industry executives as unusual….He said Mr.
Pruitt’s history of suing the E.P.A. should have prompted him to meet
regularly with public health advocates and environmentalists.”
In
response,
Sierra
Club
Executive
Director
Michael
Brune
released
the
following
statement:
"There
is
a reason Scott Pruitt tried so hard to keep his schedule secret: it
is an indictment of his total failure to do the job he was sworn to do.
When he is not taking expensive private flights on the taxpayers’ dime,
Pruitt’s time in office has been spent almost exclusively meeting with
wealthy executives from the country’s most toxic industries and then
doing their bidding by gutting clean air and water safeguards. Even to
this Administration, Pruitt is a dangerous embarrassment, and he should
be removed from office before he endangers any more lives with his
transparently pro-polluter agenda."
Sierra Club
Tuesday, October 3, 2017
Contact: Lauren Lantry
Sierra Club: Senate Should Reject Trump’s Toxic EPA Nominees
Nominees’ polluter ties will add to the toxic sludge of deci
WASHINGTON,
D.C. -- Tomorrow, the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works
will hold a full committee hearing on Michael Dourson, Matthew Leopold,
David Ross, and William Wehrum, Trump’s nominees to be Assistant
Administrators of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), as well as
Jeffery Baran, Trump’s nominee to be a member of the Nuclear Regulatory
Commission.
Wehrum,
who is nominated to head the EPA’s Office of Air and Radiation, the
office in charge of enforcing the Clean Air Act was nominated for this
position once before, in 2006, and rejected by
the Senate. Wehrum, ironically has said that the Clean Air Act
shouldn't apply to the carbon pollution that contributes to climate
change.
Dourson,
who is nominated to head the EPA Office of Chemical Safety and
Pollution, the division that oversees the chemical industry, has spent
much of his professional career writing studies that undermine existing
science and concerns about toxic chemicals, and call for weaker
regulations on chemicals like pesticides. Dourson was paid by Dow
Agrosciences to downplay safety concerns about a toxic pesticide that
is dangerous to kids. The EPA recently reversed
restrictions on the use of this pesticide, called chlorpyrifos,
shortly after meeting with officials from Dow.
In response, Sierra Club Legislative
Director Melinda Pierce released the following statement:
"With
this latest slate of nominations, Donald Trump and Scott Pruitt may as
well change the Environmental Protection Agency’s name to the Corporate
Polluter Protection Agency. While the EPA is already led by a climate
denier who formerly sued the agency 14 times to fight public health
protections, Trump and Pruitt’s latest nominees’ polluter ties will
surely add to the toxic sludge of decisions the EPA is currently
pumping out. We urge the Senate to protect our public health and
environment by rejecting Wehrum, Dourson and all of Trump’s toxic
nominees.”
____________
ed. note: Dourson withdrew in mid-Dec. 2017
>
Sierra
Club
Friday, September 8, 2017
Contact: Rudhdi Karnik
Sierra Club: Formerly-rejected Wehrum for EPA should be easy and
obvious for Senate to throw out again
WASHINGTON
D.C.--
Late yesterday, President Trump announced his nomination of Bill
Wehrum, a lobbyist and former George W. Bush-era EPA official, to lead
the EPA's air and radiation office. Wehrum was nominated for this
position once before, in 2006, and
rejected by
the Senate.
In response, Sierra Club’s Global Climate Policy Director John Coequyt
released the following statement:
"Donald Trump is putting yet another corporate polluting lobbyist into
a position of power at EPA, which is already led by a climate denier
who formerly sued EPA 14 times himself to fight public health
protections. Bill Wehrum has been nominated to lead the air office at
EPA but ironically has said that the Clean Air Act shouldn't apply to
the carbon pollution that contributes to climate change and superstorms
like Hurricane Harvey.
Wehrum was
rejected by the Senate once before for this position and like
many of Trump's nominees has an astounding number of conflicts of
interest given that he has regularly represented industry in their
efforts to undermine clean air standards. Pollution-free clean air
should be the standard for Americans everywhere but given Wehrum's
track record, it's unlikely that he's going to put people before
polluters. Hopefully this is an easy nomination for the Senate to
rightfully reject again"