EPA removes half of scientific board, seeking industry-aligned replacements
EPA removes half of scientific board, seeking industry-aligned replacements
Administrator Scott Pruitt, in choosing not to renew nine members’ terms, has ‘eviscerated’ board of scientific counselors, says chair
Demonstrators carry a giant puppet depicting Scott Pruitt during the People’s Climate March last month. Pruitt has ‘eviscerated’ the EPA’s board of scientific counselors, its chair says. Photograph: Mike Theiler/Reuters
The Environmental Protection Agency has “eviscerated” a key scientific review board by removing half its members and seeking to replace them with industry-aligned figures, according to the board’s chair. Scott Pruitt, the EPA administrator, has chosen not to renew the terms of nine of the 18-member board of scientific counselors, which advises the EPA on the quality and accuracy of the science it produces. The group, largely made up of academics, is set to be replaced by representatives from industries that the EPA regulates.
Deborah Swackhamer, chair of the board, said that with other planned departures, the panel was left with five members, including her, in the midst of an EPA hiring freeze. “The committee has been eviscerated,” she told the Guardian. “We assumed these people would be renewed and there was no reason or indication they wouldn’t be. These people aren’t Obama appointees, they are scientific appointees. To have a political decision to get rid of them was a shock.”
The nine departing members – who worked on matters including toxic water pollution, climate change and chemical safety – all completed three-year terms. The decision to not renew those terms has opened the way for the Trump administration to refashion the scientific board in line with its industry-friendly agenda that has sought to strip away various pollution rules in the name of “regulatory certainty”. A spokesman for the agency told the New York Times: “The administrator believes we should have people on this board who understand the impact of regulations on the regulated community.”
An EPA spokesman told the Guardian: “EPA received hundreds of nominations to serve on the board, and we want to ensure fair consideration of all the nominees – including those nominated who may have previously served on the panel – and carry out a competitive nomination process.” This could lead to multiple instances of conflicts of interest, Swackhamer said, despite clear EPA ethics rules designed to address this. “If you have industry hand-picked people,” she said, “the concern would be that they would have a frequent conflict because we discuss areas that touch upon big industry.
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https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/may/08/epa-board-scientific-scott-pruitt-climate-change
