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Scott Pruitt’s Scandals Left the Headlines So He Continues to Destroy Our World
Scott Pruitt is in charge of the Environmental Protection Agency yet he would love nothing more than to erase it from existence. After weeks of headline coverage of Pruitt's unethical, fraudulent, and often illegal behavior, he was somehow not forced out by the White House or Congressional pressure so continues on destroying the EPA from the inside. Just yesterday, June 6, 2018, several of his colleagues quit, with exact reasoning unknown at this point. Meanwhile, Pruitt continues to live out his wildest fantasy exhibiting corruption at a level not previously imaginable.
Here's one example:
Nearly a quarter of the nation's coal-fired power plants in 2017 lacked pollution controls limiting emissions of lung-damaging sulfur dioxide even though some of their counterparts have been using the controls for almost 40 years. It leaves communities.... exposed to stubbornly high levels of the pollutant even as emissions nationwide have plummeted. Last year, 145 coal plants without control technology collectively put out nearly 580,000 tons of sulfur dioxide – known as SO2 – according to EPA data that has gone largely unnoticed amid the Pruitt scandals.
Pruitt is moving swiftly to grant one of industry’s major policy wishes: He’s making it easier for plant operators to sidestep equipment upgrades in the future.
These corporate coal plants are using a 1977 loophole to avoid doing upgrades and instead killing people who live near them.
Environmental advocates say the 1977 loophole – which allowed facilities built before 1978 to run without new controls until they retired or did construction that triggered New Source Review – has been misused, letting dirtier plants operate longer at the expense of public health.
Forget for a moment that in a rational world not owned by corporate interests, pollution controls should be mandatory immediately. This New Source Review is triggered if the plant is being renovated which allows the EPA to require pollution controls be added.
Pruitt is making it easier for coal plants and other industrial facilities to avoid New Source Review altogether. Since he became EPA administrator, he has issued several “guidance documents” addressing the topic. One, in December 2017, instructs state and federal regulators not to second-guess companies’ pollution estimates, which determine whether they must apply for permits. Another, in March of this year, offers a new interpretation of a formula that could result in lower pollution estimates – and fewer permits.
By helping his friends and donors at coal companies to avoid New Source Review, he's directing them to not implement pollution controls available for 40 years and helping them continue to contaminate our world and thousands living near them.
Pruitt signaled last month that the EPA plans to start a rulemaking that would revamp parts of New Source Review. In an October 2017 document the agency regurgitated industry arguments for such an overhaul – namely, that the program is burdensome.....
In Pruitt's mind, nothing, even the future our the one planet we have, should stand in the way of corporations doing whatever they want to maximize profits.
Richard Revesz, dean emeritus at New York University’s School of Law, said Pruitt has given industry an extraordinary gift. The 1977 loophole was meant to give businesses time to add expensive pollution controls or shut down, not to exempt them indefinitely. The Government Accountability Office said the same thing in a 2012 report. Congress “never intended for these [coal] plants to operate forever. This was supposed to be a temporary transition ending at the end of their useful life,”