Category: U.S. EPA

EPA staffers, Trump official clashed over new chemical rules

Read the full story in Politico.

The Trump administration released the nation’s most important chemical-safety rules in decades Thursday — but only after making a series of business-friendly changes overseen by a former industry advocate who holds a top post at the EPA.

Career agency employees had raised objections to the changes steered by EPA Deputy Assistant Administrator Nancy Beck, who until April was the senior director of regulatory science policy at the American Chemistry Council, the chemical industry’s leading lobbying group. Those include limits on how broadly the agency would review thousands of potentially hazardous substances, EPA staffers wrote in an internal memo reviewed by POLITICO.

Watchdog faults EPA’s chemical safety tools

Read the full story in The Hill.

The Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) internal watchdog wants it to better manage the ways it uses technology to help test the safety of chemicals.

The EPA’s inspector general said two offices in the agency — the research and development office and the chemical safety office — have successfully collaborated to build and use tools for risk analysis, finding safety data and other functions in the chemical testing process.

But the chemical safety office lacks a strong process for ensuring that the cooperation goes smoothly and can last and could benefit from better “management controls,” the inspector general wrote in a Friday report.

EPA just gave notice to dozens of scientific advisory board members that their time is up

Read the full story in the Washington Post.

The Environmental Protection Agency has given notice to dozens of scientists that they will not be renewed in their roles in advising the agency, continuing a scientific shake-up that has already triggered resignations and charges from some researchers that the administration is politicizing the agency.

EPA plans to buy out more than 1,200 employees this summer

Read the full story in the Washington Post.

The Environmental Protection Agency plans on shedding more than 1,200 employees by early September through buyouts and early retirements, as part of a broader push by the Trump administration to shrink a government entity the president once promised to eliminate “in almost every form.”

Scott Pruitt vows to speed the nation’s Superfund cleanups. Communities wonder how.

Read the full story in the Washington Post.

In Bridgeton and elsewhere, others are asking similar questions with various degrees of hope and hesi­ta­tion. In his previous role as Oklahoma’s attorney general, Pruitt had long-standing ties to oil and gas companies and a litigious history fighting the EPA. And although he has called the federal Superfund program “vital” and a “cornerstone” of the EPA’s mission, the Trump administration has proposed slashing its funding by 30 percent.

This EPA research program just got a rave scientific review. Trump wants to eliminate it.

Read the full story from the Washington Post.

As Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt defended massive proposed budget cuts to a House subcommittee Thursday, experts from the nation’s top science organization voiced their support for one of the programs slated for elimination.

A report released Thursday by the National Academy of Sciences — and prepared at the request of the EPA — argues that the agency’s Science to Achieve Results, or STAR, program, which provides millions of dollars in funding for scientific research each year, has contributed to important benefits for the environment and the public health. And it recommends that the agency continue to use it.

Congress to Pruitt: We’re Not Cutting EPA Budget to Trump’s Levels

Read the full story at Inside Climate.

Members of the congressional committee responsible for the Environmental Protection Agency’s budget—Republican and Democrat alike—made clear Thursday they have no intention of approving the White House’s proposal to slash the agency’s spending.