Politico

White House, EPA headed off chemical pollution study

The intervention by Scott Pruitt’s aides came after one White House official warned the findings would cause a ‘public relations nightmare.’

By Annie Snider       May 14, 2018 

Discussions about how to address the HHS study involved EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt’s chief of staff and other top aides, including a chemical industry official who now oversees EPA’s chemical safety office. | AP Photo

Scott Pruitt’s EPA and the White House sought to block publication of a federal health study on a nationwide water-contamination crisis, after one Trump administration aide warned it would cause a “public relations nightmare,” newly disclosed emails reveal.

The intervention early this year — not previously disclosed — came as HHS’ Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry was preparing to publish its assessment of a class of toxic chemicals that has contaminated water supplies near military bases, chemical plants and other sites from New York to Michigan to West Virginia.

The study would show that the chemicals endanger human health at a far lower level than EPA has previously called safe, according to the emails.

“The public, media, and Congressional reaction to these numbers is going to be huge,” one unidentified White House aide said in an email forwarded on Jan. 30 by James Herz, a political appointee who oversees environmental issues at the OMB. The email added: “The impact to EPA and [the Defense Department] is going to be extremely painful. We (DoD and EPA) cannot seem to get ATSDR to realize the potential public relations nightmare this is going to be.”

More than three months later, the draft study remains unpublished, and the HHS unit says it has no scheduled date to release it for public comment. Critics say the delay shows the Trump administration is placing politics ahead of an urgent public health concern — something they had feared would happen after agency leaders like Pruitt started placing industry advocates in charge of issues like chemical safety.

Sen. Maggie Hassan (D-N.H.) called the delay “deeply troubling” on Monday, urging Pruitt and President Donald Trump “to immediately release this important study.”

“Families who have been exposed to emerging contaminants in their drinking water have a right to know about any health impacts, and keeping such information from the public threatens the safety, health, and vitality of communities across our country,” Hassan said, citing POLITICO’s reporting of the issue.Details of the internal discussions emerged from EPA emails released to the Union of Concerned Scientists under the Freedom of Information Act.

Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, a fellow New Hampshire Democrat, called the delay “an egregious example of politics interfering with the public’s right to know. … [I]t’s unconscionable that even the existence of this study has been withheld until now.”

The emails portray a “brazenly political” response to the contamination crisis, said Judith Enck, a former EPA official who dealt with the same pollutants during the Obama administration — saying it goes far beyond a normal debate among scientists.

“Scientists always debate each other, but under the law, ATSDR is the agency that’s supposed to make health recommendations,” she said.

The White House referred questions about the issue to HHS, which confirmed that the study has no scheduled release date.

Pruitt‘s chief of staff, Ryan Jackson, defended EPA’s actions, telling POLITICO the agency was helping “ensure that the federal government is responding in a uniform way to our local, state, and Congressional constituents and partners.”

Still, Pruitt has faced steady criticism for his handling of science at the agency, even before the recent spate of ethics investigations into his upscale travels and dealings with lobbyists. In his year leading EPA, he has overhauled several scientific advisory panels to include more industry representatives and recently ordered limits on the kinds of scientific studies the agency will consider on the health effects of pollution.

On the other hand, Pruitt has also called water pollution one of his signature priorities.

The chemicals at issue in the HHS study have long been used in products like Teflon and firefighting foam, and are contaminating water systems around the country. Known as PFOA and PFOS, they have been linked with thyroid defects, problems in pregnancy and certain cancers, even at low levels of exposure.

The problem has already proven to be enormously costly for chemicals manufacturers. The 3M Co., which used them to make Scotchguard, paid more than $1.5 billion to settle lawsuits related to water contamination and personal injury claims.

But some of the biggest liabilities reside with the Defense Department, which used foam containing the chemicals in exercises at bases across the country. In a March report to Congress, the Defense Department listed 126 facilities where tests of nearby water supplies showed the substances exceeded the current safety guidelines.

A government study concluding that the chemicals are more dangerous than previously thought could dramatically increase the cost of cleanups at sites like military bases and chemical manufacturing plants, and force neighboring communities to pour money into treating their drinking water supplies.

The discussions about how to address the HHS study involved Pruitt’s chief of staff and other top aides, including a chemical industry official who now oversees EPA’s chemical safety office.

Herz, the OMB staffer, forwarded the email warning about the study’s “extremely painful” consequences to EPA’s top financial officer on Jan. 30. Later that day, Nancy Beck, deputy assistant administrator for EPA’s Office of Chemical Safety and Pollution Prevention, suggested elevating the study to OMB’s Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs to coordinate an interagency review. Beck, who worked as a toxicologist in that office for 10 years, suggested it would be a “good neutral arbiter” of the dispute.

“OMB/OIRA played this role quite a bit under the Bush Administration, but under Obama they just let each agency do their own thing…,” Beck wrote in one email that was released to UCS.

Beck, who started at OMB in 2002, worked on a similar issue involving perchlorate, an ingredient in rocket fuel — linked with thyroid problems and other ailments — that has leached from defense facilities and manufacturing sites into the drinking water of at least 20 million Americans. Beck stayed on at OMB into the Obama administration, leaving the office in January 2012 and going to work for the American Chemistry Council, where she was senior director for regulatory science policy until joining EPA last year.

Yogin Kothari, a lobbyist with the Union of Concerned Scientists, called Beck’s January email “extremely troubling because it appears as though the White House is trying to interfere in a science-based risk assessment.”

Environmentalists say such interference was routine during the Bush administration.

“It’s why the Obama administration issued a call for scientific integrity policies across the federal government,” Kothari said in an email to POLITICO. “Dr. Beck should know firsthand that the Bush administration sidelined science at every turn, given that she spent time at OMB during that time.”

Soon after the Trump White House raised concerns about the impending study, EPA chief of staff Ryan Jackson reached out to his HHS counterpart, as well as senior officials in charge of the agency overseeing the assessment to discuss coordinating work among HHS, EPA and the Pentagon. Jackson confirmed the outreach last week, saying it is important for the government to speak with a single voice on such a serious issue.

“EPA is eager to participate in and, contribute to a coordinated approach so each federal stakeholder is fully informed on what the other stakeholders’ concerns, roles, and expertise can contribute and to ensure that the federal government is responding in a uniform way to our local, state, and Congressional constituents and partners,” Jackson told POLITICO via email.

Pruitt has made addressing per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS, a priority for EPA. The unpublished HHS study focused on two specific chemicals from this class, PFOA and PFOS.

States have been pleading with EPA for help, and experts say that contamination is so widespread, the chemicals are found in nearly every water supply that gets tested.

In December, the Trump administration’s nominee to head the agency’s chemical safety office, industry consultant Michael Dourson, withdrew his nomination after North Carolina’s Republican senators said they would not support him, in large part because of their state’s struggles with PFAS contamination. Dourson’s previous research on the subject has been criticized as too favorable to the chemical industry.

Shortly after Dourson’s nomination was dropped, Pruitt announced a “leadership summit” with states to discuss the issue scheduled for next week.

In 2016, the agency published a voluntary health advisory for PFOA and PFOS, warning that exposure to the chemicals at levels above 70 parts per trillion, total, could be dangerous. One part per trillion is roughly the equivalent of a single grain of sand in an Olympic-sized swimming pool.

The updated HHS assessment was poised to find that exposure to the chemicals at less than one-sixth of that level could be dangerous for sensitive populations like infants and breastfeeding mothers, according to the emails.

Dave Andrews, a senior scientist with the Environmental Working Group, said those conclusions line up with recent studies on the health effects of PFAS.

“They are looking at very subtle effects like increased risk of obesity for children exposed in womb, lowered immune response, and childhood vaccines becoming not as effective,” Andrews said.

The HHS document at issue is called a toxicological profile, which describes the dangers of a chemical based on a review of previous scientific studies. It would carry no regulatory weight itself, but could factor into cleanup requirements at Superfund sites.

EPA scientists, including career staffers, were already talking with the HHS researchers about the differences in their two approaches to evaluating the chemicals when officials at the White House raised alarm in late January, the emails show. Those differences, according to the correspondence, stemmed from the agencies’ use of different scientific studies as a basis, and from taking different approaches to accounting for the harm that the chemicals can do to the immune system — an area of research that has burgeoned in the two years since EPA issued its health advisory.

Enck, the former EPA official, said she sees one troubling gap in the emails: They make “no mention of the people who are exposed to PFOA or PFOS, there’s no health concern expressed here.”

Politico

EPA watchdog knocked Pruitt aides for slowing probe

By Alex Guillen        May 14, 2018

The incident highlights early tension between EPA’s political appointees and the internal watchdog, which is now conducting multiple reviews of Administrator Scott Pruitt’s actions. | Al Drago-Pool/Getty Images

EPA’s internal watchdog complained last year that Scott Pruitt’s top aides were delaying handing over documents to auditors probing the administrator’s travel practices, according to newly released emails.

That standoff between the EPA inspector general’s office and Pruitt’s team was resolved a month after the IG’s staff flagged the issue and warned that the reticence to release the documents came close to impeding their probe, the emails show. But the incident highlights early tension between EPA’s political appointees and the internal watchdog, which is now conducting multiple reviews of Pruitt’s actions.

And it shows that concerns about the lack of transparency atop the agency since Pruitt joined have rankled people inside the agency as well as outside. POLITICO reported last week that Pruitt’s political appointees were screening documents produced for public records requests related to the embattled administrator, slowing the release of information.

The new emails, released under a Freedom of Information Act request from California’s Justice Department, show the IG’s office was seeking information for its probe of Pruitt’s frequent travel to Oklahoma on EPA business, enabling him to spend numerous weekends at his home in Tulsa.

That probe was later expanded to look at Pruitt’s other travel practices, including his first-class flights that cost more than $100,000, and it is expected to be completed by this summer. The watchdog has since opened additional probes into Pruitt’s security spending, condo rental, soundproof phone booth, large raises for aides and allegations of retaliation against staff who questioned him.

Kevin Christensen, EPA’s assistant inspector general for audits, wrote in September to a top career official in EPA’s finance office to warn of a “potential situation” with the travel audit just two weeks after it began, the emails show. He flagged messages showing Pruitt’s chief of staff Ryan Jackson was “screening” documents before releasing them to the Office of Inspector General.

“This does not fit the definition of unfettered access or comply with the Administrator memo on access and providing information to the OIG,” Christensen wrote to Jeanne Conklin, EPA’s controller who oversees financial management and reporting. “When we are denied access to information until approved for release, it raises the question as to what is being withheld and approved for release.”

The auditors were able to obtain the documents on Pruitt’s flights from the EPA’s finance office in Cincinnati, even as Pruitt’s staff continued to withhold them, Conklin wrote to Kevin Minoli, a career official who at that time served as EPA’s acting general counsel.

“Do they not understand in the [Office of the Administrator],” Conklin asked Minoli. “Perhaps someone can speak to them and make them understand that the OIG has the documents already and they appear close to impeding the audit.”

Both Minoli and Conklin stated in their email exchange that neither of them advised Pruitt’s staff that they had the power to delay or withhold handing over documents to the OIG.

Minoli said in an email a week later that Jackson had delayed providing the records over concerns the audit might make public some previously redacted information, such as Pruitt’s calendar and flight records. Minoli said he discussed the matter with the deputy inspector general, Chuck Sheehan, and noted the IG’s office “has a long-standing practice of not using privileged information in their published work unless absolutely necessary.”

An EPA spokesman on Wednesday declined to comment on the incident.

Other emails released to California’s Department of Justice under the FOIA request also show career ethics officials warning Pruitt’s aides about accepting industry awards and attending political events.

In March 2017, the Oklahoma-based National Stripper Well Association told Pruitt it would award him its “Industry Leader Award” at an annual gala, which was sponsored by Koch Industries. The group represents the owners of the hundreds of thousands of small wells that produce less than 15 barrels of oil or 90,000 cubic feet of natural gas per day.

But EPA ethics official Justina Fugh noted in an email to Pruitt’s schedulers, Sydney Hupp and Millan Hupp, that NSWA was registered to lobby the federal government and Pruitt would violate his ethics agreement if he accepted the honor.

The group had praised Pruitt’s decision that month to halt the Obama EPA’s request for oil and gas companies to provide the agency with information about methane emissions, a possible first step toward regulating pollution in those existing wells. “NSWA Got a Win at EPA Already!” touted an early March blog post by the group. It is unclear whether Pruitt’s award was directly connected to that decision.

Fugh warned the Hupps that Pruitt would have to walk a fine line in accepting anything from a lobbying entity. Items with “no other intrinsic value” like a plaque may be OK, she said, but “an ashtray or coffee table book” would not be.

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Pruitt ultimately appears to have accepted a plaque from the NSWA, according to a photo posted on the group’s site and his own internal calendars. Another photo posted on the NSWA’s Facebook page shows Pruitt posing with Koch executives.

Pruitt’s Outlook calendar, released in response to public records requests, lists the topic of the speaking engagement as “acceptance of award, thank you.”

EPA did not say whether Pruitt officially accepted the award from the group along with the plaque, despite Fugh’s advice.

“We gave the plaque to [the Office of the Executive Secretariat] who confirmed that we could keep it,” EPA spokesman Jahan Wilcox said. NSWA did not say Wednesday why it honored Pruitt.

Pruitt aides hinted to ethics officials last fall that he expected to be invited to increasing numbers of political events, which ethics officials warned raises a host of Hatch Act concerns about mixing political activities with his official duties.

Earlier in his tenure, Pruitt had decided not to attend an Oklahoma GOP fundraiser after reports revealed the event would feature a speech on EPA issues.

Last fall, Ronna McDaniel, the head of the Republican National Committee, invited Pruitt to attend an Oct. 25 fundraiser in Dallas for Trump Victory, a joint fundraising committee that funnels money to the RNC and Trump’s reelection campaign.

“We will get more and more of these” invites as “political season” approaches, Jackson wrote to an ethics official.

Hatch Act restrictions would allow Pruitt to attend, but he would be barred from mentioning his EPA affiliation or asking for donations, Fugh replied. EPA could not cover his travel costs, although the agency could pay for his security detail’s travel, Fugh added. Event organizers could not specifically invite guests with issues before the agency and would need to rescind invitations to anyone with business before EPA.

Pruitt ultimately appears to have skipped that fundraiser.

Politico

Senator to Pruitt: EPA meddling in health study ‘unconscionable’

By Annie Snider, Alex Guillen and Anthony Adragna    May 16, 2018

Sen. Pat Leahy said efforts by the White House and political officials at EPA to block the chemicals assessment “unconscionable,” and he pointed to a community in his state that is grappling with contamination of that chemical. | Win McNamee/Getty Images

Senate Democrats tore into Scott Pruitt on Wednesday, blasting the Environmental Protection Agency’s meddling in a report on toxic chemicals as “unconscionable” and calling the EPA administrator’s multiple ethics controversies an embarrassment to the agency.

“You’re trailing a string of ethical lapses and controversies, they’re an embarrassment to the agency, an embarrassment to Republicans and Democrats alike,” Sen. Pat Leahy (D-Vt.) told Pruitt at a Senate hearing. “Forget about your own ego and your first class travel and your special phone booths and all these things that just make you a laughingstock and your agency a laughingstock.”

Pruitt has faced a wave of scandals over the past few months, with scrutiny focused on his first-class flights, extensive security detail, privacy phone booth, and below-market condo rental from an energy lobbyist. With news this week that EPA’s Inspector General would look into Pruitt’s use of multiple email accounts, he is now facing more than a dozen probes and investigations from Congress, the White House and his agency’s internal watchdog.

And earlier this week, POLITICO reported that EPA helped to bury a federal study that would have increased warnings about toxic chemicals found in hundreds of water supplies across the country. That report showed Pruitt’s senior aides intervened in the release of the Health and Human Services Department assessment into PFOA and PFOS after the White House warned of a “public relations nightmare.”

Leahy said efforts by the White House and political officials at EPA to block the chemicals assessment “unconscionable,” and he pointed to a community in his state that is grappling with contamination of that chemical.

“It’s incomprehensible to the people in Bennington and in Vermont why an agency that works for them — their tax dollars are paying for it — whose charge it is to protect their health, turns their back on them and tries to hide health dangers,” Leahy said in his opening statement.

Sen. Tom Udall (D-N.M.) pressed Pruitt on his requests that his security detail use his vehicle’s lights and sirens to beat Washington traffic and get to a restaurant.

“I don’t recall that happening,” Pruitt answered. But Udall shot back by referencing an email from Pruitt’s former security chief, Pasquale “Nino” Perrotta, that said “Administrator Pruitt encourages the use” of those lights and sirens. Udall’s office has not released that email. POLITICO has reported that Perrotta goaded and encouraged such behavior on security matters.

Even the Sen. Lisa Murkowski, chairwoman of the Appropriations panel hosting Pruitt, said she saw “legitimate questions that need to be answered” about the ethics scandals plaguing Administrator Scott Pruitt.

“Unfortunately, I am concerned that many of the important policy efforts that you are engaged in are being overshadowed because of a series of issues related to you and your management of the agency,” Murkowski said at the opening the budget hearing.

Much like appearance last month in front of two House panels, Pruitt shifted the blame for many of the recent scandals, blaming “processes” at the agency not being followed for some of his ongoing spending and ethical issues, and he told Senate Appropriators he had taken steps to avoid similar issues going forward.

“There have been decisions over the last 16 or so months, that as I look back, I would not make those same decisions again,” Pruitt said.

But he stopped short of apologizing, and blamed critics of his deregulation agenda for the negative publicity.

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“I want to rectify those going forward,” Pruitt continued. “I also want to highlight for you that some of the criticism is unfounded and I think exaggerated. And I think it feeds this division that we’ve seen around very important issues affecting the environment.”

Pruitt highlighted the decision to install a $43,000 phone booth in his office as one he’d taken steps to avoid going forward, pointing to a memo that gave three top staffers authority today to approve spending above $5,000 on his behalf.

Udall, who called on Pruitt to resign because of the recent controversies, said Pruitt was unfit to lead the agency because he didn’t believe in its mission to protect human health and the environment.

“It needs to be said that your tenure at the EPA is a betrayal of the American people,” he said, criticizing not just the ethics scandals, but also his regulatory rollbacks.

“This isn’t cooperative federalism, it’s flat-out abandonment,” he said.