From Nixon to Trump: EPA Chief Touts Environmental Gains, Hits ‘Single Issue Advocacy’
Under President Donald Trump’s leadership, the government has reduced air pollution by 7%, declared Superfund sites safe again at a record pace, and directed tens of billions of dollars to ensuring clean water, EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler said Thursday in a speech marking the agency’s 50th anniversary.
Wheeler, speaking at the Richard Nixon Presidential Library and Museum in Yorba Linda, California, drew a sharp contrast between the Trump administration’s environmental achievements and the “poor choices” made by some policymakers at the state level.
“Here in California, where the modern environmental movement began–and from where President Nixon brought it to the rest of the country–it’s important to acknowledge the role states have in being laboratories for democracy, and in this case, laboratories for environmental policy,” Wheeler said.
“But for environmental policy to work nationally, the federal government and states must work together as partners, not as adversaries,” the Environmental Protection Agency administrator added.
Wheeler was particularly critical of New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, a Democrat, and other East Coast governors for impeding construction of natural gas pipelines.
New England states now must import natural gas from Russia, Wheeler said, because Cuomo has stood in the way of pipelines that could have transported gas …read more