'War on the EPA': How Fossil Fuel Industry Executed 'Hostile Takeover' of Key Agency

As Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) administrator Scott Pruitt formally announced this week that he plans to pull the plug on the Clean Power Plan, Frontline released a documentary titled War on the EPA, which details the Trump administration’s concerted effort to cater to the fossil fuel industry’s demands and roll back environmental regulations.

Among those interviewed for the film are Elizabeth “Betsy” Southerland, a 30-year EPA veteran who publicly resigned this summer and, so far, is the highest-ranking former staffer to speak out against the agency’s operations under Pruitt, who was appointed by President Donald Trump and has been a key player in the administration’s war on science.

“The atmosphere of EPA is really tense,” Southerland said in the film. “What everyone is trying desperately to do is to hope against hope that their facts will change Scott Pruitt’s mind—that they’ll be special and they’ll be able to convince the administrator not to go with whatever the industry people have asked him to do, and to give some deference to the science and engineering behind previous regulations.”

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Mere weeks after Southerland resigned from the agency, Pruitt announced the EPA had finalized plans to postpone a regulation she had worked on, which sought to prevent coal plants from dumping toxic chemicals in waterways. Pruitt’s plans were immediately denounced by experts and conservationists, with the Center for Biological Diversity calling it “mind-bogglingly dangerous.”

Rolling back that rule was just one of many moves by the Trump administration to implement an agenda that serves the coal, oil, and natural gas companies. Trump first visited EPA headquarters in late March, to sign an executive order directing the agency to rewrite the Clean Power Plan. During his speech at the agency, the president declared: “My administration is putting an end to the war on coal.”