In the News

EPN is quoted in this article on the detrimental effects the proposed Science Transparency rule would have on the EPA’s ability to use the most current science available when making regulatory decisions.

Stan Meiburg, EPN Board member and Advisor, former EPA Deputy Regional Administrator in Regions 4 (Atlanta) and 6 (Dallas), and former EPA Acting Deputy Administrator, spoke to WYPR public radio on the question of Wheeler’s limited recusal from his past lobbying interests.

The exciting appointment of Michelle Roos as EPN’s first full-time executive director was covered in this widely read online publication. Congratulations, Michelle!

EPN Executive Director Michelle Roos and her co-author focus on how their polluted childhood hometown of Pittsburgh was transformed into a clean and thriving city thanks to environmental and public health protections once ensured by EPA.

Chris Zarba, EPN member who retired in February as head of EPA’s Science Advisory Board is interviewed about the damage to EPA programs and policies on Scott Pruitt’s watch. He is joined by Mustafa Ali, former director of EPA’s environmental Justice Program, who describes the rollback of protections for vulnerable communities imposed by the Pruitt administration.

EPN Advisory Council Co-Chair and former EPA Deputy Administrator Bob Perciasepe and Stan Meiburg, EPN Board member and Advisor, former EPA Deputy Regional Administrator in Regions 4 (Atlanta) and 6 (Dallas), and former EPA Acting Deputy Administrator, are interviewed on the changes likely to come under Andrew Wheeler’s leadership of EPA.

Margo Oge, former Director of the EPA Office of Transportation and Air Quality and EPN member, describes the dangerous and potentially lasting impacts of the administration’s proposed “censored science” rule.

EPN member George Czerniak is quoted in this article on a Trump appointee at the EPA reviewing which pollution violations are referred to the Justice Department. A move some former officials see as providing the opportunity to stifle enforcement of anti-pollution laws.

David Coursen, EPN member and former Attorney-Advisor for the EPA’s Office of General Counsel, wrote this op-ed in The Hill. In it he addresses the prevailing view of the Trump administration that regulations have been inflated and are costly, despite his own Office of Management and Budget’s findings that environmental regulations save lives and money.

EPN member Robert Sussman, a former chemical industry lawyer and EPA official who now works for the advocacy group Safer Chemical, Healthy Families, is quoted in this article on how the Trump Administration has succumbed to heavy lobbying by the chemical industry and is  moving to scale back how it determines the health risks of dangerous chemicals on the market.

EPN members Janet McCabe and John Bachmann are quoted about Scott Pruitt’s “censored science” proposal in this article in Popular Science. The proposal would restrict the use of studies that EPA can consider in creating regulations to protect land, air and water.

Much of EPN member John Kennedy’s three decades at the EPA’s San Francisco office was spent protecting clean air. Along with his passions for community and volunteer work, Kennedy is now spending a politically engaged retirement speaking out against the Trump/Pruitt administration.

Robert Kavlock is the former Acting Assistant Administrator for the EPA Office of Research and Development and a retired EPA Science Advisor. He is currently an EPN member and has written this piece on the Trump/Pruitt attack on science.

EPN member John Kennedy – who worked 30+ years at EPA – speaks about what led him to the agency, his retirement and ongoing volunteer and community work and the importance of protecting clean air in the face of his own lung disease and Administrator Scott Pruitt’s efforts to undermine essential regulations.

EPN member John Kennedy worked 30+ years at the EPA and has been diagnosed with an advanced lung condition. He joins Andrea Mitchell to discuss the importance of clean air–especially as Administrator Scott Pruitt undermines essential regulation.

Ruth Greenspan Bell, who served as Assistant General Counsel in two different departments at the EPA from 1979 through 1996 and is a founding member of EPN, is quoted in this article on the current EPA’s reluctance to talk about its past successes due to low morale at the agency and a fear of retribution for speaking out against the Trump/Pruitt mission of deregulation.

Ruth Greenspan Bell, a former EPA attorney who serves as president of EPN’s Board of Directors, shared her views on Trump’s attack on science in an opinion column published in numerous newspapers.

In this incredibly comprehensive piece on Pruitt and his politics from Margaret Talbot, she spoke with EPN members Elizabeth Southerland, who worked on the Effluent Limitations Guidelines and served in the EPA’s Office of Water; Steve Silverman, a former EPA Attorney who worked on the glider rule; Michael Cox, a former EPA climate-change advisor; Gay MacGregor, a former Ann Arbor emissions lab senior policy advisor; and Margo Oge, who headed the EPA Office of Transportation and Air Quality from 1994-2012.

EPN member Margo Oge was the director of the Environmental Protection Agency’s Office of Transportation and Air Quality from 1994 to 2012. In her op-ed for The New York Times, she explains how looser emission standards now will spell trouble for the auto industry in the future.

EPN member Janet McCabe was Acting Assistant Administrator of the EPA’s Office of Air and Radiation from 2013 to 2017. She coauthored this op-ed on Pruitt’s latest attack on science and effort to cripple the EPA.

John Kennedy is an EPN member and EPA retiree. He spent more than 30 years at the EPA developing systems to protect clean air and mitigate toxic contamination–systems he now relies heavily upon due to his advanced lung disease. This is his op-ed in USA Today.

EPN member and budget analyst David Coursen, who worked in the EPA Office of General Council for 20 years, is quoted on the administration’s attempt to downsize the agency in this article reporting on EPN’s analysis of the proposed EPA budget for FY2019.

This report talks about EPN’s analysis of the fiscal 2019 budget, which would leave the EPA with a greatly diminished workforce, cut 48% of science funding, and leave essential programs for clear air, water, and land at risk.

EPN member Chet France, quoted in this article on super-polluting glider trucks, is former director of assessment and standards at the EPA Office of Transportation and Air Quality.