Byย Walter Rosenbaum, University ofย Florida
For people concerned with environmental protection, including many EPA employees, there is broad agreement: The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is in deep trouble.
The Trump administration has begun the third, most formidable White House-led attempt in EPAโs brief history to diminish the agencyโs regulatoryย capacity.
Scott Pruitt, Trumpโs newly appointed EPA administrator, is a harsh critic and self-described โleading advocate against EPAโs activist agenda.โ Pruittโs intention to reduce EPAโs budget, workforce and authority is powerfully fortified by President Donald Trumpโs own determination to repeal major EPA regulations like the Obamaโs Clean Power Plan and Climate Actionย Plan.
Previous presidents have tried to scale back the work of the EPA, but as a former EPA staff member and researcher in environmental policy and politics, I believe the current administration is likely to seriously degrade EPAโs authority and enforcementย capacity.
The Vanishedย Majorities
This latest assault on EPA is more menacing than previous ones in part because of todayโs Republican-led Congress. The Democratic congressional majorities forestalled most past White House efforts to impair the agencyโs rulemaking and protected EPA from prolonged damage to its enforcementย capability.
Presidents Ronald Reagan (1981-1988) and George H. W. Bush (1989-1993) both sought to cut back EPAโs regulatory activism. Reagan was fixated on governmental deregulation and EPA was a favorite target. His powerful assault on EPAโs authority began with the appointment of Anne Gorsuch, an outspoken EPA critic, as EPA administrator. Gorsuch populated the agencyโs leadership positions with like-minded reformers and supervised progressive reductions in EPAโs budget, especially for EPAโs critically important enforcement division, and hobbled the agencyโs rule-making โ a key step in the regulatory process โ while reducing scientific supportย services.
Bushโs forays against EPA authority were milder, consisting primarily of progressive budget cuts, impaired rule-making and disengagement from international environmentalย activism.
During the Reagan years, Democratic majorities in the House (1981-1991) and Senate (1987-89) launched continuing committee investigations that revealed the agency leadershipโs pervasive obstruction of regulatory rule-making and forestalled massive damage to EPAย programs.
Gorsuch was forced from office together with many upper and middle politically appointed managers; the budget stabilized, and new administrators William Ruckelshaus (who returned after serving as the first EPA administrator) and Lee Thomas revived staff morale, rule-making and scientific research. In the end, Reagan impeded and delayed regulation but ultimately failed to impair permanently major air, water and toxic wasteย programs.
I worked for one of EPAโs assistant administrators during the first Bush administration, when EPAโs leadership and staff were acutely aware of White House aversion to much of EPAโs regulations. But it was nothing like the state-of-siege mindset so pervasive at EPA during the Reagan years and already returning to EPA now, as witnessed by protests by former and current EPA employees to Pruittโsย nomination.
The agencyโs budget, rule-making and regulatory impact were sometimes impaired during the Bush years, but then EPA administrator William Reilly was committed to EPAโs mission, and congressional Democrats prevented severe reductions in the agencyโs budget, workforce and regulatoryย authority.
An Unfortunate Time toย Regulate
Paradoxically, EPAโs accomplishments may also leave it vulnerable to its opponents. Forty years of regulation have diminished such publicly convincing evidence of severe pollution that led to EPA regulation in the first place, including rivers polluted by raw sewage, hidden toxic waste dumps like New Yorkโs Love Canal, smokestacks emitting dense clouds of pollutants and uncontained mine wastes contaminating Appalachianย mountainsides.
Todayโs most significant environmental hazards, such as climate warming or plasticizers in rubber products, are less visible, their adverse consequences requiring years or decades, to become apparent. โTo a certain extent,โ EPAโs first administrator, William Ruckelshaus, has observed, โwe are victims of our own success. Right now, EPA is under sharp criticism partly because it is not so obvious to people that pollution problems exist and that we need to deal withย them.โ
Additionally, a public rally to EPAโs defense seems improbable. Most Americans customarily express to pollsters considerable concern for environmental protection when asked, but it is a passive attitude. Neither EPA nor the environment are important issues when most Americans vote โ and thatโs what most concerns Congress and the Whiteย House.
For instance, in the 2016 presidential elections, the Pew Research Center poll revealed โthe environmentโ was only twelfth in importance among registered voters, well behind the leading concerns about the economy, terrorism and foreign policy. Exit polls in the 2016 presidential elections indicate that environmental issues are irrelevant to votersโ candidate preferences. Moreover, the currently pervasive public distrust and anger directed toward the federal government may further inhibit public engagement in EPAโsย defense.
Pruitt and his administrative team can also inflict immense damage upon regulatory capacity in ways that are not very evident to the public. Almost half of the EPA budget supports such crucial pollution abatement activities as regulation enforcement, scientific research and international collaboration. Moreover, public doubts about the credibility of climate warming science and environmental risk analysis can be deliberately amplified through public discourse during efforts to rescind existing regulations and to abort newย ones.
Defenseย Strategies
Environmentalists, deeply apprehensive and infuriated by this new EPA onslaught, have a multitude of opposition options. Lawsuits โ a traditionally effective strategy โ can be initiated in federal courts to suspend or reverse unacceptable EPA regulatory decisions. But a new wave of litigation will impose considerable delay in important rule-making, and a court-imposed impasse can discourage compliance by regulated interests, such asย polluters.
Environmental organizations can attempt to mobilize public support and pressure Congress to counteract Pruitt-led revisions of EPAโs organization and rule-making. In particular, increased activism at the state level can be a countervailing force to federal environmental retrenchment. Since major federal environmental legislation has often been crisis-driven, a new environmental disaster may be the perverse catalyst to renewed regulatory vigor at EPA.
None of these alternatives, however, will likely avert an early, comprehensive onset of Pruittโs regulatory regression at EPA. In short, EPAโs time of trouble will be dangerous andย tenacious.
Walter Rosenbaumย is Professor Emeritus of Political Science atย University of Florida.
This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.
Main image: Smoke from heavy industry cloaks the roads of Cleveland, Ohio, in 1973. Credit: U.S. Nationalย Archives
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