White House EPA intervention revealed

The White House directly intervened in two key decisions by the Environmental Protection Agency, preventing proposed steps to reduce atmospheric pollution, it was revealed this week. It prevented the Agency from allowing individual states to impose strict carbon emissions restrictions on car manufacturers, and also directly rewrote a proposed adjustment to ozone pollution standards, illegally considering economic reasons.

EPA director Stephen Johnson had been sympathetic to a proposed waiver, which would have allowed 12 states to impose stricter stricter emissions regulations on cars than those mandated by the Federal Government.

Following communications with the White House, his views changed, according to Jason Burnett, a former senior official at the EPA.

“Relatively early in the process I had the ìmpression that he was quite interested in and was serìously explorìng the objection granting the waìver,” said Burnett, discussing Johnson’s stance on the waiver during a testimony at a House of Representatives Oversight Committee hearing.

Burnett was prevented by his lawyers from disclosing which individuals at the White House contributed to Johnson’s decision.

Lobbyists for stronger car emissions standards had already decided that the EPA’s decision was a politically-driven one.

“The sad fact is that the agency respnsible for protecting air quality and preventing global warming pollution is preventing them from doing it,” said Keith Hay, energy advocate at Environment Colorado. Along with the other 11 states, Colorado is now suing the EPA for failing to grant the waiver.

“Their position has been that global warming doesn’t actually exist,” said Hay of Government policy on carbon emissions. “It’s hard to legislate against something that you don’t believe in. That puts the states behind the 8-ball.”

Oversight Committee also revealed that that Office of Management and Budget (OMB) rewrote a proposed adjustment to the EPA’s two ozone pollution standards. The primary standard measures the effect on people, while the second calculates the effect on the environment. The Administrator had proposed basing the secondary standard on a longer-term seasonal measurement, rather than on the same short-term basis as the primary one. OMB executives overruled the decision, arguing that it did not consider “economic values”.

Such considerations are illegal, according to the House Committee’s analysis.

EPA scientists had concurred with Johnson’s argument that a seasonal measurement was the only approach adequate for environmental protection.

“I hear final decision came down last night seeing the wisdom of OMB on this point, so secondary will be equal to primary,” one bitter EPA staffer responded in March, when the White House gave the EPA hours to rewrite the rule before a presidential announcement. “To hell with the trees.”