Ethics and Integrity at US EPA – and Administrator Scott Pruitt’s Violations of Norms

By  Kerrigan Clough, former Senior Ethics Officer, & Deputy Regional Administrator, EPA Region 8  & Joni Teter, former Deputy Ethics Officer & Senior Enforcement Attorney, EPA Region 8 William D. Ruckelshaus, EPA’s first and fourth Administrator set the standard for EPA employees’ ethical behavior.  Shortly after taking office on December 4, 1970, two days after … Read more

Can EPA Maintain Its Mission?

Above: Los Angeles in the 1970s and now. What does it take to get from dirty to clean? Learn here. From our partners at the Harvard Law School Environmental and Energy Law Program Since Donald Trump became President and Scott Pruitt his EPA Administrator, the EPA has worked assiduously to remove, weaken, or delay a … Read more

NEPA: Ensuring Transparency and Accountability in Government

Highway bridge elevated above the Colorado River to avoid stream channelization

It has become patently obvious that President Trump does not regard environmental protection as a high priority in his Administration.  One of his stated goals is to cut the so-called regulatory red tape that slows down his agenda for Making America Great Again!  One of the targets of his red-tape cutting is the National Environmental … Read more

Inside Trump’s war on regulations

“The push to block, rewrite and delay scores of Obama-era rules may be the administration’s biggest untold success.” Ironically, this is a statement many environmental professionals would agree with: “I think it’s something that’s just been lost on people in terms of the regulatory sediment that has built up — decade after decade after decade … Read more

Right to know: Program cuts and vanishing information

Woman with duct tape over mouth signed EPA

The Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requires that all federal agencies make information available to the public on request, unless the information falls within a set of narrowly drawn exemptions.1 Processing FOIA requests is time-consuming and costly in terms of staff time. EPA decided years ago that it was more cost-effective to make data and … Read more

Save EPA has been an all-volunteer group of former EPA officials who became alarmed about the Trump agenda for EPA and joined together to fight it.

With newly-elected President-Elect Biden and VP-Elect Harris coming in January, the need to "save EPA" is much less urgent. This is not to imply all clear skies ahead - there is much re-building to do, there will be negative pressures on the new administration, and we will likely have policy differences in the future. However, we are hopeful that these differences will be discussed rationally, using science as a basis for moving forward, and keeping EPA's mission of protecting human health and the environment in the forefront.

And so, we are going back to retirement!  We're keeping our website up at http://saveepaalums.info/ , as a resource for those who want to follow and influence the restoration work. Our report on the Trump record at EPA describes the actions that need to be reversed [saveepaalums.info/Trump+era+report], and our guide to participating in the rulemaking process [http://saveepaalums.info/Resistance+Guide] can help you be part of the solution.

Thank you for your support and commitment during the past 3.5 years.  While the Trump assaults were unending, they were also frequently unsuccessful, and that was due in large part to public outrage.  Keep it up!  Although EPA will be in much better hands with a Biden administration, there is always a need for an informed and engaged public.

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