InsideSources

A total of 13 Senators from nine midwestern states, led by Chuck Grassley (R-Ia.) and Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.), have issued a request to Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator Scott Pruitt to cease issuing financial “hardship waivers” to oil refineries struggling with the Renewable Fuel Standards (RFS) parameters, and are seeking disclosure of outstanding waivers that the EPA has been issuing.

A heated showdown has taken shape in D.C., as members of the Big Oil and Big Corn lobbies are vying for President Donald Trump’s support for their coalitions to either cap Renewable Identification Number (RIN) prices to help oil refineries, or to expand the sale of E15 year-round while keeping RIN prices set by the market. After news broke that the EPA was set to forgive approximately 250 million RIN credits from Philadelphia Energy Solutions (PES) oil refinery last month, worth nearly $350 million, rumors began circulating that PES was not the only refinery to receive RIN forgiveness for its financial hardship. The intent of the financial hardship waivers is to aid small refinery facilities that produce less than 75,000 barrels per day.

In a report from Reuters last week, an EPA source confirmed that the EPA has issued 25 waivers to refineries in the name of “financial hardship”over the last several months, and also confirmed that oil giants Exxon Mobil and Chevron Corp. are next to seek similar waivers. If granted, these waivers would exempt the companies from an obligation to either to meet the necessary ethanol blend requirements and/or paying for RINs to make up the deficit in production.

“These waivers fall well outside the bounds of the letter or spirit of this provision in the [RFS legislation],” the senators wrote in a letter, “which sought to provide flexibility for the smallest of U.S. refiners, and only in cases of genuine hardship. Worse, EPA’s actions are already hurting biofuel producers and farmers across the United States at a time when farm income is at the lowest levels since 2006 and retaliatory trade measures from China threaten to deepen the crisis.”

The senators expressed that in Pruitt’s confirmation hearing to the EPA, he said that the agency needs to act on the RFS in a way that furthers the objectives of the legislation. They also cited remarks Pruitt made in October 2017 in which he expressed his commitment to being “consistent with the text and spirit of the RFS.”

In addition to the immediate halting of waiver granting, the Senators requested a complete list of waivers granted between 2016 and 2018, a detailed report within two weeks that explains Pruitt’s decision to grant the waivers, and a written commitment to make the waiver granting process more transparent. Several senators from the group sent a previous letter in January asking for insight on the financial impact of RIN prices on oil refiners, to which Assistant Administrator William Wehrum told them that “all obligated parties, including merchant refiners, are generally able to recover the cost of the RINs they need for compliance with the RFS obligations through the cost of the gasoline and diesel fuel they produce. The agency also reiterated that it was not persuaded by arguments that merchant refiners are put at a distinct disadvantage when compared to integrated refiners.”

Actions by the senators come on the heels of Trump vocally supporting a proposal that would allow for the sale of E15 year-round, where it is currently only sold outside of the summer months, due to regulations stating that high summer heats and high ethanol volumes contribute to the formation of smog. Renewable fuel supporters have argued that high RIN prices can naturally be reduced by expanding E15 to year-round, increasing the number of RINs in supply. Oil supporters have called for capping of RIN prices in a compromise to expanding E15. Experts argue however that such a compromise would make blending inherently less valuable because of such low prices. As it currently stands, RFS supporters argue that the EPA’s actions have already resulted in decreased ethanol production and blending, which has resulted in less corn being purchased, negatively impacting Midwestern farmers.

Update: EPA spokesman Jahan Wilcox has declined to respond to repeated requests from InsideSources to offer an explanation of why the reporter was deemed such a threat as to be escorted out by law enforcement. Additionally, The Ames Tribune, a local daily paper in attendance at the event, has noted the incident in its reporting.

A reporter with InsideSources Iowa was escorted out of an event by a Story County Sheriff’s Deputy that featured Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt as the speaker.

On Friday, December 1, at 1 p.m., Pruitt attended Couser Cattle Company, 20193 620th Avenue, Nevada, Iowa, to an invite-only crowd of attendees, with media allowed to attend.

An InsideSources reporter showed up to attend the event, stating his name and his outlet, and was allowed into the press booth with other members of the press, as was well as TV news. The reporter gave his name and outlet to the EPA’s attending press secretary.

After spending 10 minutes in the press booth with the other reporters, the reporter was approached by a Story County Sheriff’s Deputy, as well as several staff members of both the EPA and Couser Cattle Company, who did not give their names when asked, and was told that he had to leave the premises.

The reporter asked for the official reason as to why he was to leave, and was told that “since you weren’t on the list, you’re not allowed in,” according to the reporter’s recording.

When asked what the employee’s name was who was telling him to leave, the response given to him was “who are you with,” according to the reporter’s recording.

The reporter subsequently responded with his name and outlet.

The sheriff’s deputy then stepped in and said that, “they’re asking you to leave, you didn’t RSVP properly, and it’s too late to do it now, so…,” according to the reporter’s recording.

There were other members of the press corp who were not on the list, but were allowed to remain.

The reporter in fact had tried repeatedly to RSVP for several days prior to the event. He left a voicemail with EPA Region 7 (IA, KS, MO, NE) Press Contact Angela Brees and had received no response. He then contacted the EPA switchboard operator to verify the event and was told to dial the EPA’s press contact number at 202-564-4355, which leads to an answering machine, upon which he left a message.

According to several Iowa outlets’ reporting leading up the Pruitt event, the event was invite only, but media was allowed to attend.

In addition, the Des Moines Register live-streamed the event for the public to see.

Global warming is once again a hot-button issue–and that isn’t just because temperatures in Washington, D.C. have reached the 90s. President Obama made the Paris Climate Accords a central part of American environmental policy and his personal presidential legacy. Now that Donald Trump is in the Oval Office, the U.S. has not only pulled out of the agreement, information about climate change was removed from the Environmental Protection Agency website in late April. This week, the mayors of twelve cities developed their own sites to keep the information online.

“Deleting federal webpages does not reset the scientific consensus that climate change is real,” said San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee in a statement. “The American people are entitled to the publicly-funded EPA research on climate change. And while the federal government continues to undermine the progress we’ve made on climate change, cities are taking a stand. San Francisco will continue our fight against climate change by taking aggressive local actions to protect our citizens and planet.”

Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel was the first to announce the republication of the information in a web post on Sunday.

Lee and Emanuel were joined by the mayors of Atlanta, Boston, Evanston, Fayetteville, Houston, Milwaukee, New Orleans, Philadelphia, Portland, Seattle, and St. Louis. The mayors are also part of a group of 270 U.S. mayors who pledged to honor the goals of the Paris climate accords by pledging to promote electric vehicles and to cut emissions.

The city-maintained sites allow access to archived versions of the EPA pages on climate change, causes of climate change, and how human activity is causing the climate to warm. The pages had been quietly removed from the agency’s website in late April, causing uproar among environmentalists.

EPA head Scott Pruitt has expressed doubt over man-made climate change, telling an interviewer in March that, he did “not agree that it’s a primary contributor to the global warming that we see.”

However, the EPA’s public affairs department has stressed that the EPA website was being updated, not removed. J.P. Freire, the EPA’s associate administrator for public affairs, told CNN in April that the agency was working “to eliminate confusion by removing outdated language first and making room to discuss how we’re protecting the environment and human health by partnering with states and working within the law.”

The information contained on the EPA website includes basic science on climate change, ways in which the weather is impacted by greenhouse gas emissions, and federal policies undertaken to mitigate these effects. The pages do not include any research or information that can only be obtained through the EPA website.

The EPA website still contains information about how climate change affects the water sector, as well as information about greenhouse gases and global warming potentials. That isn’t enough for the mayors, however, who see American withdrawal from the Paris Agreement as the first sign of a schismatic shift in environmental policy.

The mayors’ move comes as the U.S. reiterated its commitment to leaving the Paris Climate Agreement by refusing to join breakout sessions discussing global warming policy at the recent meeting between G7 environmental ministers in Bologna, Italy. Pruitt only attended the summit’s first day on Sunday, before returning to Washington and leaving Acting Assistant Administrator Jane Nishida to represent the U.S.

While other members of the group lamented the lack of American participation, the Trump administration believes that other mechanisms exist to promote pollution reduction and energy efficiency. In a formal statement, the U.S. said that it would continue to “engage with key international partners in a manner that is consistent with our domestic priorities, preserving both a strong economy and a healthy environment” and believes that the most effective way of achieving these goals is to work outside of the Paris Agreement.

“We are resetting the dialogue to say Paris is not the only way forward to making progress,” said Pruitt on Monday. “Today’s action of reaching consensus makes clear that the Paris Agreement is not the only mechanism by which environmental stewardship can be demonstrated. It also demonstrates our commitment to honest conversations, which are the cornerstone of constructive international dialogue.”

“The United States will continue to show leadership by offering action-oriented solutions to the world’s environmental challenges. We have indicated a willingness to engage on an international stage that stands to greatly benefit from American ingenuity, innovation, and advanced technologies. We have already demonstrated significant progress towards mitigating environmental problems and we will continue to develop these for the benefit of all nations,” he continued.

Pruitt points out that, without the Paris Agreement, the United States has already cut its emissions to 1994-levels.

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In his first 100 days in office, President Trump took significant steps to make federal environmental policy more friendly to industry, investment, and economic growth. However, opening new federal lands to oil and gas exploration and repealing the Clean Power Plan both were enacted as executive orders. Trump has yet to work with Congress as part of a broader energy plan. Now, more than three months after Inauguration Day, the Congressional calendar is open and ready to consider a cohesive energy plan. The trouble is, no one yet knows what that would look like.

Congressional staffers, speaking at an industry event on Tuesday, said that although Congress had needed time to adjust to the new administration, it was now ready to get to work.

“We have officially emerged from the lull,” said Colin Hayes, majority staff director for the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, who explained that the committee was ready to approve a slate of 38 nominees for positions at the Department of the Interior and the Department of Energy, as well as FERC commissioners, at a hearing on Wednesday. He explained that, since more nominations have been made, hearings can be performed in batches, making them easier to schedule and expediting the overall process.

The appointments are an overdue first step towards moving forward on a cohesive energy plan. During the Obama administration, energy and environmental policy were often determined by administrative rulemaking or in the courts, rather than by Congress. As a result, the country still lacks a cohesive energy plan. Instead, industry is left with uncertainty, as policies like the Paris Agreement may be reversed in a later administration.

According to Rick Kessler, minority staff director for the House Energy and Environment Subcommittees, backing out of the Paris Agreement may meet with some disapproval from industry figures. While opponents of the deal criticize it for delaying implementation of emissions restrictions in China and India until 2030, Kessler argues that the deal succeeded because it brought these countries to the table for the first time.

(ExxonMobil, Chevron, Royal Dutch Shell, and BP also have released statements supporting the deal as a step towards creating a global emissions reduction framework. The companies also have a financial incentive to support the deal, which favors natural gas over coal.)

What would replace the Paris Agreement is an altogether different question. Figures in both industry and government acknowledge that current policy lacks a coherent overall framework, since much of it relies on executive agency enforcement measures interpreting statutes, like the Clean Water Act, which are decades-old. In absence of a legislative policy, approaches to greenhouse gas emissions and renewable energy, among other issues, can vary dramatically from administration to administration.

“I hope Congress will take a more active role evaluating its spectrum of legal authority and what can be done [on these topics], said Tom Hassenboehler, majority staff director for the House Energy and Environment Subcommittees, who noted that the problem with relying on policies dating back decades, was that they were “too susceptible to serious shifts.”

A stronger Congressional role in environmental regulation would dovetail well with EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt’s guiding doctrine of “EPA originalism.” Pruitt emphasizes that under his watch, the agency will return to a clear rulemaking process, a respect for the rule of law, and a stronger role for the states.

“Rule of law matters because at the end of the day it creates certainty,” said Pruitt on Wednesday, explaining that layering industry, state, and federal policies created a “jurisdictional nightmare” that hampered economic development.

In particular, he has spoken about doing away with the “consent-decree” method of enforcement, under which the EPA’s rulemaking power grew dramatically under the Obama administration.

In part, this approach reflects the EPA’s creation in response to chemical contamination crises like Love Canal in the 1970s. Then, the EPA was seen as an emergency response mechanism needed to stop contamination that was an imminent threat to public health.

Today, America’s soil, air, and water are far cleaner than they were in the 1970s, which speaks to the effectiveness of the EPA. At the same time, many of the contaminated sites it was created to fix remain. To Pruitt, the fact that lead and uranium contamination sites have remained on the list for nearly 30 years is unacceptable.

As administrator, Pruitt has made the 1,400 sites on the Superfund list a priority for the agency. He has even gone so far as to request to personally review the plans for any cleanup with a projected cost of $50 million or more. Even so, Superfund provides another example where new legislation could be a marked improvement.

Superfund has its limits. In particular, it lacks a provision for joint and several liability, complicating cleanup for sites which have been owned by multiple different companies over a period of decades. Furthermore, without a means of pre-enforcement review, a company cannot challenge the EPA’s cleanup solution prior to being sued.

Moving beyond the first 100 days, Pruitt has made it clear that Congress needs to step up to provide a cohesive energy plan and to better define the agency’s priorities. While the need is present, what that cohesive energy plan will look like remains to be discussed and debated in the coming weeks.

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Since President Donald Trump released his proposed budget last month, environmentalist groups have been agog over funding for the Environmental Protection Agency. Trump’s proposed budget cut the EPA’s funding by 31 percent, a rate harsher than it imposed on any other department. According to recently-leaked EPA documents, the agency is considering steep cuts to its workforce in order to meet these numbers. The EPA plan includes reducing its workforce by 25 percent and eliminating 56 programs. However, one sector of its payroll in increasing: Scott Pruitt has requested an EPA security increase.

Pruitt has requested an additional 10 agents be added to his security staff to provide a round-the-clock security detail. During prior administrations, the EPA head’s security detail fluctuated in size, generally including between six and eight agents. The request necessitates increasing the agency’s existing Protection Services Detail even as the remainder of the EPA faces significant staffing cuts.

Environmentalist groups ridiculed the request, pointing out that the EPA security increase could hamper the EPA’s ability to investigate environmental crimes.

The EPA security increase may be warranted, since Pruitt’s brief tenure at the agency has already been marked by resistance within the department and protests from without. Members of the Trump transition team have defended the request, pointing to the resistance Pruitt and others have faced.

“I think it’s prudent given the continuing activities by the left to foment hatred, and the reported hostility within the agency from some unprofessional activists,” said Myron Ebell, who headed the Trump transition team for the EPA.

Pruitt’s confirmation hearings were also the site of protests. In January, a protester connected to the construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline was arrested outside the Senate chamber where the confirmation hearing was being held.

“I think there’s more controversy with this appointment than I’ve ever seen in any of the past appointments for EPA administrator, so that could translate to more of a need,” said Burnside.

Pruitt faced protests from within the agency as early as February, when roughly 300 people, a third of them EPA employees, protested outside the Chicago regional office. The employees told reporters that were worried about Pruitt’s history of opposing the EPA’s environmental protections.

The protest was organized in part by the employees’ union. This resistance from within the department is nearly unheard of in government.

“It is rare,” James A. Thurber, the director of the Center for Congressional and Presidential Studies at American University told the New York Times. “I can’t think of any other time when people in the bureaucracy have done this.”

Nor are the protests limited to groups within the agency. Several environmentalist groups are also organizing for a major march in Washington on April 29. They hope to draw attention to the ways in which Trump administration policies hurt efforts to slow global warming.

Pruitt was not the only cabinet secretary to request a security increase. Education Secretary Betsy DeVos has been protected by the U.S. Marshals Service since protesters prevented her from entering a D.C. school for a tour in mid-February. Previously, the Secretary of Education had been protected by six agents from within the department, but, as in Pruitt’s case, this was not seen as sufficient for the Trump cabinet-member.

It should be noted that the $5.7 billion EPA budget is still just a proposal at this stage. Before taking effect, it will need to pass Congress, which will likely add significant changes of its own.

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The final day of the Environmental Council of States conference culminated in a keynote address by Environmental Protection Agency head Scott Pruitt. It was a time for Pruitt to reassure the states about EPA’s goals under the new president and to hear concerns from council members. Although panel discussions earlier in the week had addressed infrastructure spending and details of American water systems, Pruitt’s talk emphasized themes more often discussed in constitutional law classes: the rule of law, cooperative federalism, and the rulemaking process.

“For the last several years that confidence in the rule of law has been put in doubt,” said Pruitt, who described how EPA regulations under the Clean Air Act grew ten-fold under President Obama. As federal regulations expanded so dramatically, they increasingly cut into the role played by the states. 

As the number of regulations soared, it became increasingly difficult for businesses and individuals to know which rules they were being governed by and how to ensure they were in compliance with the laws. Pruitt called this “regulatory uncertainty” an impediment to economic growth and development.

“Rule of law does matter because it provides clarity to those you are regulating,” Pruitt said. To fix this problem, he spoke of changing the EPA’s internal processes to include comments from states and industry, instead of using the courts and agency directives to pass rules. In short, the days of the pen and the phone are gone.

“We are working at re-establishing a commitment to the rule making process and not allowing degrees to dictate the rule making process,” Pruitt continued.

In practice, this approach will draw on the states to play a much larger role in determining how the EPA should allocate its resources. Here Pruitt’s speech echoed comments made by ECOS panelists yesterday, who discussed ways for the EPA and states to work together to ensure that personnel were not wasted in needless duplication. Pruitt called the approach “cooperative federalism,” and spoke of allowing states and industry partners to help the EPA determine policies and approaches that worked, rather than forcing a top-down, one-size-fits-all policy.

Although many in the audience were no doubt encouraged by Pruitt’s willingness to allow the states greater latitude to develop their own policies, not everyone was pleased. Hecklers tried to disrupt the speech at one point by attempting to shout questions to Pruitt about clean drinking water in cities while he was talking. Unfazed, he continued to speak, but several lines of his speech were difficult to hear. Security quickly escorted the women out of the room.

Afterward, Pruitt made light of the situation, saying that, “This is something, like in a baseball game, that sometimes happens.”

In fact, many of the issues Pruitt addressed were concerns that ECOS members had discussed, including the need to renovate America’s aging water and sewer infrastructure, and ways to expedite the permitting process to allow new construction projects to begin. Pruitt agreed with the representatives and discussed how the Trump administration was moving to set up task forces to focus on improving the permitting process for state, local, and tribal-level water projects.

“The infrastructure discussion is not just about roads and bridges,” agreed Pruitt. “It is about water issues.”

Speeding up the process would create tangible benefits for states and local communities. Throughout his speech, Pruitt focused on changes like these, where progress could be seen in the numbers. One specific area was Superfund sites. There are currently more than 1,300 Superfund sites around the country, including some that have been included on the list for 30 to 40 years.

Already, his office has meetings with twenty state governors to discuss ways of cleaning these sites.

“We need to set clear benchmark objectives that we want to achieve in each of these areas,” said Pruitt.

It’s a phrase that he could have applied to many of his suggestions. However, with clear benchmarks and a commitment to the rule of law, the EPA is trying to achieve its goals of cleaner air and water, while also encouraging growth and development.

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While Puerto Rico Gov. Ricardo Rosselló is in Washington D.C. this week, a landfill watchdog group is pushing for him to ask the Environmental Protection Agency for more funds to close several of the island’s overfilled landfills.

Puerto Rico Limpio, a landfill citizen’s action group in the territory, sent a letter, obtained by InsideSources, to the governor asking him to take action in stopping the illegal dumping and expansion of the Toa Baja landfill.

“The situation at the Toa Baja municipal landfill underlines the urgency of this matter,” wrote Hiram Torres Montalvo, cofounder of Puerto Rico Limpio, in the letter. “Widespread dumping and the illegal expansion of the landfill continues, exposing residents to toxic fumes, contaminated waters, and illicit gas that poses an imminent danger of explosion and fire.  This has made the neighborhood of Candelaria unsafe, and uninhabitable for its residents.”

In 2008, the EPA determined that the Toa Baja landfill placed “an imminent and substantial endangerment to health and the environment” and ordered the landfill to stop accepting waste at the main part by June 2010, with plans to close it completely to follow that order. InsideSources went to Puerto Rico in October to report on the crisis firsthand and saw how the Toa Baja landfill was impacting the neighborhood next to it. However, the landfill was still open and trucks were driving in to dump more waste at the site.

A view of the Toa Baja landfill from the Candelaria neighborhood, just outside of San Juan, P.R. (Photo Credit: Kyle Plantz)

Puerto Rico’s landfill crisis has been unchecked for the past 20 years. The EPA granted local authority of the 29 active landfills on the island to the Environmental Quality Board.

However, Puerto Rico Limpio published a bombshell report in August that said 19 out of the 29 active landfills in Puerto Rico are non-compliant with federal rules and the EPA has been ignoring these problems, despite several internal reports suggesting EPA inspectors knew about it.

To this day, many of the landfills are over capacity and are not following EPA regulations, such as placing a plastic lining between the garbage and the soil, covering the waste each night, and properly maintaining and removing dirty water lakes from trash runoff, which could end up in nearby neighborhood wells for drinking water.

The EPA announced last year that they would close the Cayey and Arroyo landfills in Puerto Rico within two to three years, but activists said the EPA is just making false promises again since several other landfills were supposed to close, but are still operating today, like the Toa Baja landfill.

Torres Montalvo is hopeful that the EPA, under new direction from administrator Scott Pruitt, will make the landfill crisis a priority and is calling on Rosselló to make it happen.

“Governor, you have the opportunity to change this. You ran for and have governed to date on ensuring Puerto Ricans are not treated as second-class citizens.  You have the power to close the landfill.  You have the authority to ask the EPA for immediate financial and technical assistance,” the letter states.

Rosselló and Federal Oversight Board Chairman Jose Carrion III are in the nation’s capital to testify before Congress on the progress the Commonwealth has made since former President Barack Obama signed The Puerto Rico Oversight, Management, and Economic Stability Act (PROMESA) into law last year.

A report from the Congressional Task Force on Economic Growth in Puerto Rico released in December found that most of Puerto Rico’s landfills are in violation of EPA’s regulations governing solid waste management.

Yet, in a November letter to Puerto Rico Limpio, former EPA Region 2 Administrator Judith Enck painted a rosier picture of the federal agency’s handling of the landfill crisis. She pointed to progress being made with 10 landfills operating with fully-lined disposal cells and even 15 sites implementing a mosquito control plan. The landfills became a breeding ground for mosquitoes during the height of the Zika virus emergency on the island.

“The EPA continues to investigate the landfills on the island, and where necessary, will take legal action,” Enck wrote in the letter. “Thus, the agency has acted and will continue to act to protect public health and the environment from adverse impacts from the municipal solid waste landfills in Puerto Rico.”

It remains unclear exactly how, or even if, Pruitt plans to do anything about the Puerto Rico landfill crisis. The former Oklahoma attorney general has been blasted by the media for being a climate change denier and ally of the oil, gas, and coal industries. He has also called for an “aggressive” regulatory rollback within the agency, and it’s not immediately known how that would impact Puerto Rico.

The only question Pruitt received about Puerto Rico’s non-compliant landfills during his confirmation hearing came from U.S. Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y.

“If confirmed, I expect to make cleanup of contaminated land one of my priorities,” he responded. “I also believe in the importance of hearing the views of all stakeholders and would welcome the opportunity to discuss this further.”

Torres Montalvo applauded his remarks and said they “are a promising departure from the Obama EPA that turned a blind-eye to the illegal landfills operating in Puerto Rico.”

It’s unlikely Rosselló will head back to the island territory with any promises of more funding for the landfill crisis. President Donald Trump’s budget blueprint calls for a 31 percent spending reduction for the EPA, slashing its budget by $2.6 billion.

Also, the Commonwealth is currently working on a plan to pay back it’s more than $70 billion debt. Puerto Rico’s financial oversight board approved last week the governor’s plan, which calls for austerity measures and significant cuts in public spending.

Torres Montalvo said in the letter to Rosselló that he should pay close attention to the ongoing landfill crisis.

“The people of Candelaria, like in many affected communities, are begging us for help every day,” he wrote. “As citizens of the United States, no Puerto Rican should be subjected to and forced to live in these conditions, especially when the law expressly forbids it. It is time to uphold the rule of law, and close these illegal landfills.”

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Gov. Chris Sununu pushed for right-to-work and for a repeal of a required permit to carry a concealed weapon, but he’s also advocating for an issue that’s not often discussed — improving New Hampshire’s water infrastructure.

It’s something Sununu hopes to accomplish during his two-year term, and he’s starting by focusing on safe drinking water and regulations on stormwater runoff. Yet, it’s a difficult issue to navigate. In order to tackle water infrastructure, he needs to balance U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) regulations, concerns from environmental advocacy groups, and the cost on municipalities and taxpayers.

For Sununu, a key part of water infrastructure is safe drinking water. Senate President Chuck Morse, R-Salem, introduced Wednesday an amendment that would allow for a loan from the Drinking and Groundwater Trust Fund to assist in connecting homes with contaminated water in Amherst to the public water supply.

“Clean drinking water is a top priority for all Granite Staters, and today I’ve submitted a proposal to help leverage MtBE settlement funds to ensure homes contaminated with drinking water are connected to local, clean water supply,” he said in a statement. “This legislation I’ve proposed today would make use of the trust fund resources by sending $5 million to DES [Department of Environmental Services]. These funds would be loaned to Textiles Coated International, Inc. in order to provide homes and businesses affected by PFOA [perfluorooctanoic acid] in Amherst, New Hampshire the ability to connect to the public water supply.”

The drinking water and groundwater trust fund, which has more than $250 million in it, was created last year after the state’s successful court case against Exxon-Mobil over groundwater contamination caused by the gasoline additive MtBE.

Morse’s amendment is likely to be attached to Senate Bill 57, which would make appropriations to the DES for the purposes of funding eligible drinking water and wastewater projects under the state aid grant program. The bill has been “laid on the table” in the Senate Finance Committee and is expected to be picked up again.

Sununu immediately applauded the initiative saying the Drinking Water and Groundwater Trust Fund should be used as an asset to ensure public health safety and provide funds for water infrastructure projects.

“There is no more important display of public trust than each time we, as citizens, turn on our faucets — a trust that our government has done its job in ensuring clean water for us and our children,” he said in a statement. “This is an excellent example of a prudent use of the Trust Fund, as the legislative and executive branches are working together to employ existing expertise and responsible corporate citizenship to solve a real problem.”

The Granite State has had a serious problem with high PFOA levels, especially in southern parts of the state. A recent Department of Health and Human Services report on 322 people who participated in their perfluorochemicals (PFC) blood testing program found PFOA levels that are twice as high as the national average. PFCs have been used in industrial applications and consumer products for several decades, including food wrapping, carpeting, metal plating, and firefighting foams, according to the EPA website

“At high concentrations, certain PFCs have been linked to adverse health effects in laboratory animals that may reflect associations between exposure to these chemicals and some health problems such as low birth weight, delayed puberty onset, elevated cholesterol levels and reduced immunologic responses to vaccination,” states the EPA site.

Sununu is very adamant about ensuring there is safe drinking water across the state, mentioning its importance in his budget speech. He also reiterated this in an interview with New Hampshire Public Radio after his remarks.

“We’ve seen what happened recently in Detroit; we’ve seen what’s happened in other parts of the country,” he said. “We can’t let that happen here. I’ve asked Senator Morse to lead the efforts and not just put $1 million or $2 million out but really unleash the power of the $300 million fund and start addressing this issue not tomorrow, not with more studies and blue ribbon commissions, but start unleashing this money today to look at how we address our public-water system, address the contaminated wells that we have, and really put significant dollars out there so that a slight problem of today doesn’t become a crisis of tomorrow.”

Although not directly related, Sununu has also been a strong advocate for rolling back unnecessary regulations, including environmental ones, that could have an impact on stormwater runoff for cities and towns — it’s all part his plan of working on New Hampshire’s water infrastructure.

Tom Irwin, vice president and director of Conservation Law Foundation New Hampshire, said stormwater runoff could impact drinking water, but “it’s very site specific.”

“There are communities that get their drinking water from the Merrimack River,” he told NH Journal. “There is no question that stormwater pollution flows into that river. What impact that has on the public water supply system is an important question, but also a very site specific question.”

Still, some residents are concerned about Sununu cutting back regulations and the impact that could have on drinking water and stormwater runoff. In the same NHPR interview, he responded to one of the listener’s concerns about rolling back regulations. He said his goal with that is to not have too many regulations hurting businesses in the state.

“When we talk about the regulatory burdens, we’re talking about the burdens that businesses face and issues like that — not so much with the drinking-water issues that we have,” he said. “So we have to take very careful precautions when we talk about breaking down regulations – that’s more in the business sector. We’re going to be very vigilant about making sure that we’re protecting drinking water. We’re going to unleash some funds and get people the services they need.”

Sununu is so serious about cutting regulations that he sent a letter Friday to EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt on the “overly burdensome” municipal storm water discharge permit that could be costly for municipalities.

The EPA’s regulations — known as the Municipal Separate Storm Sewer System, or MS4, permit — fall under the authority of the federal Clean Water Act. New Hampshire is one of only four states, including Massachusetts, in which the EPA, rather than a state environmental agency, is responsible for setting and enforcing Clean Water Act stormwater rules.

The MS4 permit was updated on January 18, two days before President Donald Trump took office and Sununu said they were “more stringent and wide ranging” than the previous one.

“We rarely trust in our government as much as when we turn on the water tap expecting clean water,” Sununu wrote in the letter. “That being said additional mandates within the new MS4 will prove themselves overly burdensome and enormously expensive for many New Hampshire communities. Even if these federal mandates disappeared tomorrow, New Hampshire would not cease to keep our waters clean.”

The Trump administration, including Pruitt, has repeatedly said it wants to roll back regulations at the EPA. Pruitt has not indicated if he plans to roll back the MS4 permit regulation.

Municipalities like Dover, Portsmouth, and Rochester have said the cost of implementing the new regulations would be significant, over $1 million, and could fall on taxpayers to help pay for all of it. Rochester indicated it could spend up to $25 million on updating its city water infrastructure to comply with the regulations.

Irwin said some of these cost estimates were “unbelievable.”

“Some of the numbers we have seen are somewhat unbelievable,” he said. “I don’t know exactly how they [Rochester] got to a $25 million figure. There seems to be a case of exaggeration taking place. It’s hard to fathom how they got to some of those numbers.”

Irwin said the new regulations are an improvement on the previous one, but they are still enough to tackle all the problems with stormwater runoff pollution. He said his organization filed a petition in the First Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals because they believe the regulations need to go further.

“We certainly hope that the new administrator [Pruitt] does not interfere with the new permit that was issued,” he said. “It’s very concerning with a new administrator that there’s a new feeling for environmental protections to be weakened.”

Sununu asked Pruitt to visit to see how these regulations would impact New Hampshire communities.

“I know that by listening to those on the front lines, we can illustrate our desire to balance sensible regulations with local freedoms and responsibilities,” he wrote.

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Since Inauguration Day, President Donald Trump’s administration has been systematically removing pertinent information and delaying agency work in an effort to eradicate contradictory views from their current ideology. From climate change research to delays in civil rights cases, the new administration has hurriedly put their stamp across the U.S. government.

Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)

Soon after Trump was inaugurated, the administration ordered EPA officials to begin removing climate change data from its website. According to a Reuters report, “The employees were notified by EPA officials on [Jan. 24] that the administration had instructed EPA’s communications team to remove the website’s climate change page, which contains links to scientific global warming research, as well as detailed data on emissions.”

This is not surprising. President Trump has made his opinions known about his climate change beliefs. In a tweet from Nov. 6, 2012, Trump said, “The concept of global warming was created by and for the Chinese in order to make U.S. manufacturing non-competitive.” This has been demoralizing for the agency, and for those who have spent considerable resources in studying climate change, who educates the American public on the dangers of a warming planet. It is also not a surprise that Trump nominated Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt as the agency’s administrator.

Pruitt has been at war with the EPA. He has led 14 lawsuits against the agency he is nominated to lead while calling himself, “the leading advocate against EPA’s activist agenda.” Among the lawsuits, Pruitt has challenged mercury pollution regulations, ozone pollution limits, fighting the Cross-State Air Pollution Rule, the Clean Water Rule, and to block the Clean Power Plan.

This duo will do as much as they can to limit knowledge of climate change and to pursue an aggressive energy agenda that is certain to cause long-term negative effects on our environment and health. Luckily, there are scientists who want to fight this administration by preserving this information.

On Trump’s inauguration day, a group of about 60 individuals worked together at the University of Pennsylvania to download and preserve this data. The Wired article describes hackers, scientists, archivists, and librarians working diligently to save this data in anticipation that the Trump administration would remove it from EPA and NOAA websites.

Department of Agriculture (USDA)

In another troubling sign of the absence of transparency from the Trump administration, National Geographic reported that thousands of documents on animal welfare violations across the country have been removed from the USDA website. The documents included inspection records and annual reports for commercial animal facilities, including zoos, labs, factory farms, and breeders.

Think about that for a moment: Under the direction of this administration, citizens will not have direct access to information about animal rights abuses. This information led to Mother Jones’s highly publicized report, “The Cruelest Show on Earth,” detailing Ringling Bros. deplorable treatment of elephants. And to make this information prohibitive for future use, animal welfare groups and journalists would need to file a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request with the USDA. The burdensome process of a FOIA request can take months to fulfill, which means by the time law enforcement action is taken, many more animals could be dead. Why the administration would want to do this is anyone’s guess, but is more likely attributed to Trump’s penchant to side with businesses and not any regulatory measure that is deemed a nuisance for them.

The removal of USDA information poses significant risks for the welfare of animals around the country. The Humane Society of the United States filed a lawsuit against the USDA stating that the scrubbing of the website violated a 2009 agreement between the two parties.

Department of Justice (DOJ)

Since President Trump was sworn-in, the DOJ has stopped doing their job on many important cases undertaken during the Obama administration. According to the New York Times, hours after Trump’s inauguration, the DOJ filed requests to delay hearings challenging a voter ID law in Texas and an overhaul of the Baltimore Police Department.

The Baltimore case is particularly important after the revelations of the methodical abuse within the department leading to the death of Freddy Gray. After the Obama-era Justice Department released a critical 164-page report detailing excessive and continuous civil rights abuses towards the city’s African-American population, the need to delay the case seems especially confounding. The report concluded in one of the most stunning rebukes of a city police department:

“For the foregoing reasons, the Department of Justice concludes that there is reasonable cause to believe that BPD engages in a pattern or practice of conduct that violates the Constitution or federal law.”

This list is simply a sample of how the Trump administration has been operating during its first 100 days. The lack of transparency, enforcement, and removal of agency information will prove damaging to our country. The media and other interested non-profit organizations have to stay engaged to keep this administration honest. It will not be easy, but as long as we have an active citizenry, we can keep information from disappearing and demand that our civil rights are not infringed upon.

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