EPA chief reaches out

New EPA chief reaches out to those Pruitt had spurned

'Seems like he gets it better than Pruitt. Fingers crossed,' said one staffer of acting Administrator Andrew Wheeler.

By ALEX GUILLÉN and EMILY HOLDEN

EPA’s new chief sought Wednesday to turn the page on Scott Pruitt.

In a speech at agency headquarters, acting Administrator Andrew Wheeler pledged to safeguard the environment, saying it was his privilege "to work alongside you to protect human health." He reassured employees shellshocked by Pruitt’s 17 months of secrecy and scandal that he shared their concerns. And he welcomed reporters into the EPA’s fortress-like building, even setting out extra chairs for them.

The former industry lobbyist’s 15-minute address still made it clear he intended to hold the course that his predecessor had set — rolling back EPA’s Obama-era regulations and helping speed the development of energy sources like coal, gas and oil. But the contrast with the Pruitt era still had people expressing relief.

“Seems like he gets it better than Pruitt. Fingers crossed,” said one staffer, who added that Wheeler's plan to stick to regulatory rollbacks was “predictable.”

Wheeler avoided directly criticizing Pruitt’s management of the agency, which has shed nearly a thousand workers and seen morale dive. Instead, he sought to connect to the staff by discussing on his own stint as a career EPA employee in the early 90s, assuring them he understands the stress they face amid changing leadership, and he pledged to be open to career experts’ feedback.

“America is blessed with abundant natural resources, resources we use to fuel and feed the world,” he said. “We will continue to protect and steward these resources for the benefit of ourselves and our prosperity."

And he recited many of the same phrases popular with Pruitt and other conservatives about changes they wanted to make at the agency.

"We’re also restoring the rule of law, reigning in federal regulatory overreach and refocusing EPA on its core responsibilities,” Wheeler said. “As a result, the economy is booming and economic optimism is surging."

Wheeler said he intended to emphasize many of the same environmental priorities as Pruitt, including clean-ups of toxic Superfund sites, improving water infrastructure and initiating chemical safety reviews.

"We will continue to press forward on all of these fronts," he said.

Wheeler said he would focus on a three-pronged agenda, much of which mirrored Pruitt's priorities: Making states more responsible for environmental regulation and enforcement; taking action more quickly on permitting decisions and enforcement; and increasing risk communication.

And he said the agency's permitting and enforcement were not designed to help corporations, and he would move give them more clarity on issues like approving permits, which companies have complained could take years to obtain.

"I am not suggesting that we approve all permits within a set amount of time. I am suggesting that we make a decision, yes or no, up or down, within a set amount of time," he said.

Wheeler said his recent years in private practice had given him insight into how companies work, including how EPA's long process around enforcement actions weighed on companies, since those ongoing actions have to be disclosed by publicly traded companies. Having those enforcement actions appear again and again in corporate reports "hurts competitiveness," he said.

Wheeler also sought to blunt any concerns about his past lobbying for — among other companies — coal producer Murray Energy, which the press has cited “in a derogatory manner,” Wheeler said.

“I’m not at all ashamed of the work I did for the coal company,” he said, adding that most of his work for Murray was related to miner health care and pension bills in Congress.

Although lobbying disclosures are supposed to provide as much detail about specific bills being lobbied on as possible, the quarterly disclosures from Faegre Baker Daniels, Wheeler’s prior firm, say only that he worked on “general energy and environmental issues.”

None of the disclosures show Wheeler lobbied EPA for Murray. It is known that he helped the company present its policy priorities to Energy Secretary Rick Perry last year, when he attended a meeting between Perry and CEO Bob Murray. Wheeler has acknowledged he joined the meeting, but said he had little involvement in writing the plan, much of which involved rolling back EPA regulations.

Wheeler’s assurances did little to comfort Denise Morrison, the acting head of AFGE Council 238, a union that represents about 9,000 EPA workers nationwide.

Wheeler will be more “disciplined” that Pruitt, but his speech on Wednesday “is simply a superficial attempt to plug the leaks and quell the dissent,” she said in a statement.

“A successful coal lobbyist doesn’t change his stripes. He will continue to champion deregulation and permit big polluters to evade compliance altogether,” Morrison added.

One career staffer who watched the video stream of Wheeler’s speech said there was a notable difference in his “tone and pitch,” compared to Pruitt, and that her coworkers were split over what to think of their new boss.

“We’ll just have to wait and see,” she said. “Because speeches change.”