Ex-EPA workers ask Virginia senators not to confirm Wheeler

RICHMOND, Va. – More than 150 erstwhile Environmental Protection Agency employees urged the Virginia Senate connected Friday to reason the information of erstwhile EPA head Andrew Wheeler to GOP Gov.-elect Glenn Youngkin's Cabinet.

Youngkin announced past week that helium had selected Wheeler, a erstwhile ember lobbyist who led the EPA during the second years of the Trump administration, to service arsenic Virginia's caput of earthy resources, a akin state-level role. The announcement sparked an contiguous backlash from the state's conservation community, and galore Democratic authorities senators person publically announced their opposition.

Ex-EPA officials who worked nether some Republican and Democratic administrations elaborate their concerns to the Democrat-led enclosure successful the sharply worded letter, which was archetypal shared with The Associated Press.

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“As EPA Administrator, Mr. Wheeler pursued an extremist approach, methodically weakening EPA’s quality to support nationalist wellness and the environment, alternatively favoring polluters. Mr. Wheeler besides sidelined subject astatine the agency, ignored some bureau and extracurricular experts, rolled backmost rules to chopped greenhouse gases and support the climate, and took steps to hamstring EPA and dilatory efforts to acceptable the bureau backmost connected people aft helium near office," they wrote.

In a connection to the AP, a Youngkin spokeswoman reaffirmed the governor-elect's presumption that Wheeler is the close idiosyncratic for the job.

“Andrew volition bash the captious enactment of protecting the Chesapeake Bay, supporting the Virginia Coastal Restoration Authority, stopping the unnecessary dumping of earthy sewage into the James River and to the Potomac, and lasting up for our environment. Virginians privation much from their elected officials than partisan bickering," spokeswoman Macaulay Porter wrote.

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The 158 signatories connected the missive see 2 lawman EPA administrators and 2 erstwhile administrators of EPA's mid-Atlantic region, of which Virginia is simply a part. One of the erstwhile determination administrators was appointed during Republican President Ronald Reagan's administration. Three erstwhile directors of the EPA's Science Advisory Board signed on, arsenic did adjunct administrators, attorneys, scientists and different rank-and-file staff.

Wheeler worked astatine the EPA's Pollution Prevention and Toxics bureau aboriginal successful his career. He past worked from 1995 to 2009 arsenic a staffer for Republican Sen. Jim Inhofe of Oklahoma, a fervent denier of man-made clime change, and for the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, earlier becoming a lobbyist.

His lawsuit database included Murray Energy, 1 of the nation’s largest ember mining companies.

He took implicit the EPA occupation aft President Donald Trump accepted the resignation of embattled head Scott Pruitt, who had been dogged by scandals that spawned national and legislature investigations.

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The EPA nether Trump mostly moved to delegate a scope of nationalist wellness and biology enforcement to states and rotation backmost protections enactment into spot nether President Barack Obama.

While Wheeler was successful the apical job, the Trump medication ordered a sweeping about-face connected Obama-era efforts to combat clime change, moving to easiness restrictions connected coal-fired powerfulness plants. EPA besides moved to revoke California’s authorization to acceptable car mileage standards and dropped an Obama-era regulation opposed by developers and farmers that shielded galore U.S. wetlands and streams from pollution.

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“Through our deregulatory actions, the Trump medication has proven that burdensome national regulations are not indispensable to thrust biology progress,” Wheeler told lawmakers successful 2019.

The EPA nether President Joe Biden has moved to undo galore of the Trump-era rollbacks.

The erstwhile EPA employees warned that Wheeler would “significantly undermine the advancement that Virginia’s legislature has precocious made to beforehand cleanable vigor and code clime change.”

They besides noted that Christine Todd Whitman, a erstwhile EPA head and Republican politician of New Jersey penning successful a Washington Post opinion piece, warned Congress successful 2019 not to corroborate Wheeler to the EPA post.

In Virginia, Cabinet secretaries are taxable to confirmation by the authorities House, present controlled by the GOP, and Senate. The process is usually reasonably perfunctory, with the support of the governor's choices seen arsenic a courtesy absent large controversies. If Senate Democrats stay unified, their 21-19 bulk could extremity Wheeler’s nomination, adjacent without enactment from their Republican colleagues.

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Christopher Zarba, a erstwhile manager of EPA’s Science Advisory Board unit office, was among those urging senators to ballot against Wheeler. He told the AP that helium was utilized to accommodating the approaches of governmental appointees during his 38 years astatine EPA arsenic a idiosyncratic and manager, but helium said “atrocities connected science” were committed nether Pruitt and Wheeler.

"There was wide designation that the erstwhile administration, and Andrew Wheeler being portion of that, determination was wide catering to peculiar interests astatine the outgo of prime subject and nationalist health," Zarba said.

Penelope Fenner-Crisp, a erstwhile lawman manager successful the Office of Pesticide Programs and a longtime Virginia resident, was the driving unit down the letter. She said much than 150 radical signed connected wrong 2 days aft she utilized a mailing database of EPA alumni to circulate it, focusing connected radical who unrecorded successful Virginia oregon the Chesapeake Bay watershed.

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