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The Republican-Run EPA's Retreat on Environmental Protections is Harming Communities Across the Country
The New York Times published a shocking, incredibly thorough piece on December 26, 2018. Kudos to the authors for the painstaking efforts to report on this direct harm being inflicting on so many communities, our children, our future. The link to the full article is included at the end and Smart Dissent highly recommends it as essential reading. Here's a brief summary:
In just two years, Trump has unleashed a regulatory rollback, lobbied for and cheered on by industry, with little parallel in the past half-century.... approach on the environment has been to neutralize the most rigorous Obama-era restrictions, nearly 80 of which have been blocked, delayed or targeted for repeal
The trade-offs, while often out of public view, are real — frighteningly so, for some people — imperiling progress in cleaning up the air we breathe and the water we drink, and in some cases upending the very relationship with the environment around us. Beyond the glare of Washington, Trump’s retreat on the environment is unfolding in consequential ways for the health and safety of Americans.
And let's be clear about this: whenever it says Trump did this, it means Republicans did this. Every Republican in Congress who enables him, Senators who confirm corporately owned shills to lead OUR ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY, Republicans who voted for Trump and these fools.
Trump is already on track to leave an indelible mark on the American landscape.... While Washington has been consumed by scandals surrounding... both the administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency and the Interior secretary.... Trump’s vision is taking root....
While the Obama administration sought to tackle pollution problems.... Trump’s regulatory ambitions extend beyond Republican distaste for.... his Democratic predecessor. Trump shifts.... sharply in the direction of industry interests, further unraveling what had been, before the Obama administration, a loose bipartisan consensus....
The below are examples that are each covered in grave detail within the story:
In California, where over a third of the nation’s vegetables and two-thirds of its fruits and nuts are grown, farm workers are being sickened by apesticide that the Obama administration tried to ban.
In the heart of West Virginia’s coal country, the state’s largest inland waterway is still being contaminated with hundreds of pounds of selenium, a pollutant that can wipe out aquatic life, as well as smaller amounts of arsenic and mercury.
A coal-burning power plant in the suburban sprawl of Houston... is getting a free pass to continue spewing harmful levels of sulfur dioxide into the air.
Far to the north, on the Fort Berthold Indian Reservation in North Dakota, booming energy production has brought greater prosperity, but pollutants from the burning and venting of methane are threatening health problems.
In the words of Walter DeVille, who lives on the Fort Berthold Indian Reservation in North Dakota, “This is our reality now.”