{"id":60364,"date":"2017-11-11T23:04:00","date_gmt":"2017-11-11T23:04:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/organicconsumers.org\/?p=60364"},"modified":"2017-11-11T23:04:00","modified_gmt":"2017-11-11T23:04:00","slug":"do-opposite-thing-you-did-18-months-ago-epa-staffers-agency-trump-era","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/organicconsumers.org\/do-opposite-thing-you-did-18-months-ago-epa-staffers-agency-trump-era\/","title":{"rendered":"&#8216;Do the Opposite Thing You Did 18 Months Ago&#8217;: EPA Staffers on the Agency in the Trump Era"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em><strong>Two dozen former and current employees at the Environmental Protection Agency describe dysfunction under Scott Pruitt.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n<div>\n<p id=\"r5Er3I\"><em>This story was produced by the&nbsp;<\/em><a href=\"http:\/\/www.publicintegrity.org\/\"><em>Center for Public Integrity<\/em><\/a><em>, a nonprofit investigative news organization in Washington, DC.<\/em><\/p>\n<p id=\"uKlli6\">Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt doesn\u2019t hide his contempt for how the agency has been run, but he does profess to care about one of its key programs: Superfund, which oversees the cleanup of the nation\u2019s worst toxic waste sites. In April, he toured a site in East Chicago, Indiana, contaminated with lead and arsenic, and told residents, \u201cWe are going to get this right.\u201d<\/p>\n<p id=\"3Tcvsp\">The following month, Pruitt \u2014 Oklahoma\u2019s attorney general before he joined the EPA \u2014 tapped one of his former donors, banker Albert \u201cKell\u201d Kelly, to find ways to accelerate and improve Superfund cleanups. Kelly started by consulting career staff members \u2014 often knowledgeable officials who work at the agency regardless of who holds the White House. But then Kelly closed off the process, conferring with Pruitt to produce a final plan that altered or excluded many of the staffers\u2019 suggestions. Gone, for example, was the idea that EPA officials be identified early on to lead discussions with communities on how contaminated land should be used after cleanup.<\/p>\n<p id=\"x0l9BM\">\u201cWe\u2019re missing a huge opportunity to do something new and different with Superfund,\u201d said one of two EPA employees who described the process to the Center for Public Integrity on the condition of anonymity.<\/p>\n<p id=\"xfr3xz\">What happened with Superfund is hardly an anomaly. Today\u2019s EPA is wracked with internal conflict and industry influence and is struggling to fulfill its mission, according to more than two dozen current and former agency employees.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt doesn\u2019t hide his contempt for how the agency has been run, but he does profess to care about one of its key programs: Superfund, which oversees the cleanup of the nation\u2019s worst toxic waste sites.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":59661,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[3,8,9],"organicbytes":[],"countries":[],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v22.6 - 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