Donald Trump’s allies have fired the opening salvoes of his coming administration’s attack on the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the federal agency that enforces and regulates laws on air, soil, and water quality among other crucial environmental and health issues.
In a letter from Republican House leadership to the EPA administrator Michael Regan, Republicans trained their sights on the agency’s scientific integrity policies that are designed to insulate scientists and research from political interference.
Meanwhile, the incoming chair of the Senate environmental committee in a hearing last week promised to target portions of new PFAS regulations put in place over the last year, a top priority for Trump’s chemical and water utility industry allies.
The Republican House committee on oversight and accountability chair, James Comer, charged in his letter that scientific integrity policies would be used by EPA scientists to “hamstring the incoming Trump administration’s ability to implement their own executive agendas”.
The Republicans promptly moving to shred the integrity policies – which critics say were weak to begin with – demonstrates how party officials are “bending over backwards” to assist Trump in attacking career servants, said Jeff Ruch, a former EPA official now with the Public Employees Environmental Responsibility non-profit.
“They want to clear out all potential obstacles,” Ruch said.
The integrity policies were put in place during Barack Obama’s administration in response to George W Bush political appointees requiring EPA researchers to scrub terms like “climate change” from agency science and reports, and making other politically directed alterations.
The policies include the EPA’s and other administration agencies’ standards for objectivity and accuracy in scientific information, but Ruch said they were too vague under Obama. Among other problems, they didn’t stipulate how investigations would be carried out, or punishments for managers and political appointees who violated the rules.
The policies essentially tasked federal agencies like the EPA “with policing themselves”, Ruch said.
Trump did not attack the policies during his first administration, and his former EPA administrator Scott Pruitt, an industry ally, even used them as cover at times because they were so vague that he could claim to be following the rules, Ruch said.
The Biden administration pledged to strengthen the policies, but failed to produce many substantive changes, Ruch said. Still, Comer stated that the policies exist to stop Trump by “enabling career bureaucrats who favor one set of scientific viewpoints to undermine politically accountable agency leaders who seek to base agency actions on differing science”.
Comer ordered the EPA’s Regan to turn over reams of documents detailing the policies and their application.
Ruch said the attack points to two certainties: a stepped-up attack on agency scientists who contradict Trump in the second administration, and a crackdown on research produced by federal scientists.
“There will be blood,” Ruch added.
Meanwhile, Senator Shelley Moore Capito, the incoming chair of the Senate committee on environment and public works, took aim at strong PFAS limits during a recent hearing. Her comments show how years of industry efforts to cast doubt on science used to establish PFAS regulations are being weaponized with the GOP fully in control.
The EPA earlier this year finalized strong new drinking water limits for some PFAS compounds after the agency found virtually no level of exposure is safe to humans. It also designated two of the most common and dangerous PFAS compounds as hazardous substances under the nation’s Superfund laws, which could force industry to pay to clean up the messes.
Moore Capito repeated claims from many of those polluters, some of whom are among her largest campaign donors, alleging the rules were developed off of bad science, and are too expensive for many water utilities to implement. Documents show trade groups representing water utilities are already lobbying Moore Capito and the incoming Trump team to undo the rules.
While questioning a former EPA official who helped develop the rules, Moore Capito accused the EPA of “inconsistent inclusion and exclusion of epidemiology and animal studies, lack of predefined protocol, insufficient transparency”. She said not all scientists agreed on the low drinking water limits, including those on the EPA’s science advisory board.
However, many scientists who have been calling into question the EPA’s process and limits receive industry funding.
Linda Birnbaum, a former EPA water division manager, said there were some industry-aligned individuals on the EPA board who raised questions about the drinking water limits, but the board’s final report was strongly supportive of them.
The Biden administration has made tens of billions of dollars available for water utilities to implement the rules, and utilities continue winning funding through litigation against chemical makers. Meanwhile, the EPA has pledged not to hold small water systems, such as those run by schools, responsible for PFAS pollution.
Still, Capito Moore’s lines of attack are being used as justification to make broader changes to the rules, Birnbaum said.
“There was no major controversy around the rules,” she added. “She is spouting-industry sponsored lines.”
