[Vision2020] Scott Pruitt resigned from EPA; deputy moves up

[Ron Force]

His replacement (from the Washington Post):


Scott Pruitt’s likely successor has long lobbying history on issues before
the EPA

By Steven Mufson <https://www.washingtonpost.com/people/steven-mufson/>July
5 at 4:45 PMEmail the author
<steven.mufson at washpost.com?subject=Reader%20feedback%20for%20%27Scott%20Pruitt%E2%80%99s%20likely%20successor%20has%20long%20lobbying%20history%20on%20issues%20before%20the%20EPA%27>

Andrew Wheeler, until now the low-profile deputy administrator at the
Environmental Protection Agency, became the likely successor to the
scandal-plagued Scott Pruitt Thursday and an appealing alternative for
those hoping to continue to roll back key EPA policies.

Wheeler spent a decade lobbying for just the sort of companies the agency
regulates, and before that he worked for Sen. James M. Inhofe (D-Okla.),
who rejects climate change. Drawing on three decades in Washington, Wheeler
will likely pick up where the departing Pruitt left off — only without the
controversy that constantly plagued him.

Even if Wheeler ends up recusing himself from a range of EPA decisions, his
record as a lobbyist suggests his views might not differ much from those of
Trump. At the firm Faegre Baker Daniels Consulting, Wheeler represented
energy companies, mining companies and a mixture of others with issues
ranging from food to salvaging automobiles. Among his professional
activities, he listed his post as vice president of the Washington Coal
Club.

“I have no doubt that Andy will continue on with our great and lasting EPA
agenda,” Trump tweeted as he announced that he had accepted Pruitt’s
resignation. “We have made tremendous progress and the future of the EPA is
very bright!”

The Senate confirme
<https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/energy-environment/wp/2017/07/21/trump-to-tap-longtime-coal-lobbyist-for-epas-number-two-spot/?utm_term=.10dadcdfa9de>d
Wheeler for the deputy slot in April by a 53-to-45 vote.

“There is every reason to expect that he will pursue just as vigorously all
the regulatory policies and initiatives in progress that were initiated by
Pruitt,” said Joseph Goffman, executive director of Harvard Law School’s
environmental law program.

Environmental groups vowed to fight Wheeler as much as they have Pruitt.

“Andrew Wheeler is equally unqualified to serve as the nation’s chief
environmental steward,” Ana Unruh Cohen, managing director for government
affairs at the Natural Resources Defense Council, said in a statement.
“This veteran coal lobbyist has shown only disdain for the EPA’s vital
mission to protect Americans’ health and our environment.”

While a lobbyist, Wheeler’s best-paying client was the coal mining firm
Murray Energy, which paid the firm $300,000 or more annually from 2009
through 2017, according to records from the Center for Responsive Politics
<https://www.opensecrets.org/lobby/lobbyist.php?id=Y0000039030L&year=2017>.

Wheeler arranged and attended a March 28, 2017, meeting between Robert E.
Murray, the company’s chief executive, and Energy Secretary Rick Perry.
Murray, who had contributed heavily to the Trump campaign, laid out a
four-page plan for rolling back regulations and protecting coal plants in
danger of closing because of competition from other fuel supplies.

The Trump administration has already taken steps to address most of the
issues on Murray’s list. The president recently ordered the Energy
Department invoke Cold War era energy emergency powers to take actions that
would prevent the closure of coal and nuclear power plants for at least two
years, which is what Murray has been seeking.

In addition to his time with Inhofe, Wheeler served as staff director and
chief counsel to the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee. There
he worked to defeat climate-related legislation that came before lawmakers.

He supported efforts to exempt industrial plants from pollution controls in
the aftermath of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita and limit their liability for
harm caused by the release of toxic chemicals. He favored the elimination
of the New Source Review permitting process that is an important part of
environmental legislation.

As a lobbyist, Wheeler commented on a 2010 National Journal blog post that
the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change “has functioned more as a
political body than a scientific body” and that the group should revisit
its 2009 finding that carbon-dioxide emissions posed a threat to public
health.

He also suggested that lawmakers back a proposal by Sen. Lisa Murkowski
(R-Alaska) to overturn the endangerment finding
<https://www.nrdc.org/sites/default/files/epa-endangerment-finding-fs.pdf>.
In 2007, the Supreme Court ruled that the Clean Air Act required EPA to
come up with a plan to curb emissions of greenhouse gases. Wheeler said
overturning the court decision would “allow legislators to craft sensible
energy policy that can promote energy independence without killing our
domestic production of fossil fuels.”

“Wheeler is viewed generally as a sort of standard-issue member of the
Washington D.C. policy and lobbying ecosystem,” said Goffman, a Democrat
who worked at EPA and opposite Wheeler on the Senate energy committee.

“If the concern, though, is policy and public health protection and the way
EPA functions, then I think Andy Wheeler can be counted on, unfortunately,
to carry out exactly the same policies and reflect exactly the same
ideology as Pruitt,” Goffman continued. “He is a member of the very same
coalition Pruitt has been representing.”

Wheeler also represented Energy Fuels Resources, a uranium mining firm that
could benefit from Trump’s December announcement to halve the size of the
Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument. Wheeler was lobbying the
administration about the issue nearly nine months before the announcement.

In May 2017, Energy Fuels wrote a letter asking the administration to
change the monument’s boundaries because of “many other known uranium and
vanadium deposits” that “could provide valuable energy and mineral
resources in the future.”

Another former Wheeler client, the Minneapolis-based utility Xcel, has
fought an EPA regulation that would require coal plants built between 1962
and 1977 to upgrade their facilities with scrubbers to meet sulfur dioxide
emissions standards. Installing scrubbers could be costly for Xcel
<http://www.amarillo.com/business/2017-01-20/new-epa-proposal-could-cost-xcel-hundreds-millions-dollars>.
One of its coal units in Amarillo, Tex., dates back to 1976.

The Bear Head LNG
<http://www.lnglimited.com.au/irm/content/bear-head-lng.aspx>Corp. also
paid Wheeler’s firm at least $10,000 last year. The company, a subsidiary
of LNGL, wants to export liquefied natural gas from Nova Scotia, and it
needed Energy Department approval to export natural gas produced in the
United States.

In 2010, a group called the Parent South Coast Air Quality Management
District paid Wheeler’s firm $250,000 to help in its battle against an EPA
regulation that would limit ozone emissions. Since ozone is a pollutant
that affects people in immediate areas, the regulation would force
companies within a certain zone to cut emissions.

Although the group hadn’t engaged Wheeler in recent years, it has continued
fighting the EPA in court. The group lost in a Feb. 16 decision written by
Judge David B. Sentelle
<https://law.justia.com/cases/federal/appellate-courts/cadc/15-1115/15-1115-2018-02-16.html>of
the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia.

Another client, Darling Ingredients, paid Wheeler’s firm $420,000 over the
past three years. The company has a stake in reforms of the complicated
Renewable Fuel Standard
<https://finance.yahoo.com/news/darling-ingredients-dar-q1-2018-142455715.html>and
the tax credit for companies that blend ethanol with gasoline.

The Irving, Tex.-based company also agreed in 2016 to settle
<https://www.epa.gov/ia/darling-ingredients-inc-dba-dar-pro-sioux-city-iowa-clean-water-act-public-notice>allegations
of Clean Water Act violations at four facilities used to store petroleum
fuels, vegetable oils and animal fats for just $99,000. In 2014, the
company paid a $1.1 million penalty
<https://violationtracker.goodjobsfirst.org/parent/darling-ingredients>to
EPA.

Wheeler also represented Whirlpool, Sargento Foods, Underwriters
Laboratories, the Nuclear Energy Institute, the Coalition for Domestic
Medical Isotope Supply and Insurance Auto Auctions, which deals in large
numbers of salvaged cars.

But Murray Energy was his steadiest client. In 2014, Murray joined the
fight against the Obama administration’s landmark rule limiting mercury and
other toxic emissions from coal- and oil-fired power plants.

In an amicus brief in support of states and industry groups, the firm told
the Supreme Court that the rule undermined state and local efforts to
provide affordable and reliable electricity. Two years later, it sued to
block EPA from regulating mercury from power plants under the Clean Air Act.

Murray, who said he has not had any contact with Wheeler since he became
deputy administrator, said in an email that “Scott Pruitt was an
exceptional Administrator of the U.S. EPA in overturning the illegal
actions of the Obama Administration. It is a tragedy for America to lose
such a qualified Administrator.”

Many Republicans will find that track record makes Wheeler the sort of EPA
leader they want.

“Andrew Wheeler is the perfect choice to serve as Acting Administrator,”
Inhofe said in a statement Thursday. “Andrew worked for me for 14 years,
has an impeccable reputation and has the experience to be a strong leader
at the EPA. I have no doubt and complete confidence he will continue the
important deregulatory work that Scott Pruitt started while being a good
steward of the environment.”


On Thu, Jul 5, 2018 at 2:29 PM Kenneth Marcy <kmmos1 at frontier.com> wrote:

> President Trump has tweeted that he accepted Scott Pruitt's resignation as
> Cabinet Secretary of the EPA.
>
> Twitter, CNN, and other media will have details.
>
>
> Ken
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