WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The Senate Environment and Public Works Committee on Wednesday approved four nominees to key posts at the Environmental Protection Agency, including one appointee with ties to the chemical industry who will head the agency\u2019s office of chemical safety. <\/p>\n
Senator Tom Carper, the top Democrat on the committee, said two of the nominees were of \u201cgrave concern\u201d: Bill Wehrum, nominated for assistant administrator for the Office of Air and Radiation, and Michael Dourson to head up the Office of Chemical Safety and Pollution Prevention. <\/p>\n
Carper called Dourson \u201cone of the most troubling nominees I have ever considered during my time on this committee.\u201d <\/p>\n
Senator James Inhofe of oil-producing Oklahoma, the panel\u2019s senior Republican, praised the passage of the nominees and urged the full Senate to quickly confirm them so they can \u201cimprove public health within the scope of the EPA\u2019s authority.\u201d <\/p>\n
Republicans say the EPA under former President Barack Obama overstepped its authority to regulate. Scott Pruitt, President Donald Trump\u2019s EPA administrator, has said the agency had an \u201cactivist agenda\u201d under former President Barack Obama. <\/p>\n
Pruitt has worked to do away with regulations pushed through by the Obama administration, and has proposed scrapping the landmark Clean Power Plan that sought to curb emissions linked to climate change. Pruitt sued the agency more than a dozen times when he was Oklahoma\u2019s attorney general. <\/p>\n
Jeff Holmstead, a former head of the EPA air and radiation office under former President George W. Bush, said Wehrum is the \u201cideal person to shepherd Administrator Pruitt\u2019s reforms through the regulatory process.\u201d <\/p>\n
Environmentalists called on the full Senate to reject the nominees. \u201cAll four of these nominees, especially Wehrum and Dourson, would accelerate Scott Pruitt\u2019s mission to dismantle the EPA from the inside,\u201d said Sara Chieffo, vice president for government affairs at the League of Conservation Voters. <\/p>\n
The other nominees approved by the panel are Matthew Leopold for assistant administrator for the Office of General Counsel, and David Ross, for the Office of Water. <\/p>\n
Reporting by Valerie Volcovici and Timothy Gardner; Editing by Jeffrey Benkoe<\/p>\n
Article source: http:\/\/feeds.reuters.com\/~r\/Reuters\/PoliticsNews\/~3\/G0cLzF8knMI\/u-s-senate-panel-approves-controversial-epa-nominees-idUSKBN1CU2HS<\/a>\r\n<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The Senate Environment and Public Works Committee on Wednesday approved four nominees to key posts at the Environmental Protection Agency, including one appointee with ties to the chemical industry who will head the agency\u2019s office of chemical safety. Senator Tom Carper, the top Democrat on the committee, said two of the nominees […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[84],"class_list":["post-97975","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-political","tag-political"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/usa.timesofnews.com\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/97975","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/usa.timesofnews.com\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/usa.timesofnews.com\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usa.timesofnews.com\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usa.timesofnews.com\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=97975"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/usa.timesofnews.com\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/97975\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/usa.timesofnews.com\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=97975"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usa.timesofnews.com\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=97975"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usa.timesofnews.com\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=97975"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}