In the News

EPN member Mustafa Santiago Ali, former EPA Environmental Justice Administrator, was interviewed on NPR Stateside about the need for marginalized communities to have a voice in environmental policy.

EPN members Robert Sussman, former EPA Deputy Administrator and Senior Policy Counsel to Administrator; Betsy Southerland, former Director, EPA Office of Science and Technology in the Office of Water; and Gary Timm, former EPA Chief of the Chemical Testing Branch of the Office of Pollution Prevention and Toxics, are quoted in this article about EPA’s finalized rule regulating renewed uses of asbestos, which expanded the number of applications subject to regulation but cut some of those applications from a related risk evaluation of existing uses, angering critics and renewing the call for a total ban on asbestos.

EPN member Betsy Southerland, former Director, EPA Office of Science and Technology in the Office of Water, wrote an op-ed about the Trump administration’s Draft Interim Recommendations to Address Groundwater Contaminated with PFOA and PFOS, chemicals that are part of a class of per- and polyfluorinated (PFAS) substances found in many consumer products. They persist for years in the environment and in the human body and have the potential to cause serious health effects.

EPN members Robert Sussman, former EPA Deputy Administrator and Senior Policy Counsel to Administrator is quoted in this article about industry lawyers who represent chemical and other industries generally backing EPA’s recently expanded significant new use rule (SNUR) governing legacy uses of asbestos.

Dr. Bernard Goldstein, EPN member and former EPA Chair of the Clean Air Scientific Advisory Committee and former EPA Assistant Administrator for Research and Development, is quoted in this article about the House Oversight and Government Reform Environment Subcommittee’s hearing on climate change and how Congress must address increased rates of asthma, the spread of disease, and an uptick in mental and behavioral health issues linked to a warming and increasingly polluted planet.

Betsy Southerland, EPN member and former EPA Director, Office of Science and Technology in the Office of Water, is quoted in this article about The White House’s decision to drop a default threshold for EPA’s groundwater cleanup guide for per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS). The decision is sparking charges that regulators may not pursue some cleanups because they will be harder to justify.

Betsy Southerland, EPN member and former EPA Director, Office of Science and Technology in the Office of Water, is quoted in this article about EPA’s draft PFAS guidance, which critics say would weaken the Pentagon’s obligation to deal with harmful chemicals that pollute groundwater near military bases.

Betsy Southerland, EPN member and former EPA Director, Office of Science and Technology in the Office of Water, is quoted in this article about EPA’s draft guidance detailing the cleanup of PFAS chemicals from groundwater, which critics feel is too lax and ambiguous.

EPN members Tom Burke, former EPA Science Advisor and Deputy Assistant Administrator for the Office of Research and Development (ORD); Rita Schoeny, former Senior Science Advisor for the Office of Water and Office of Science Policy in the Office of Research and Development; and Dr. Bernard Goldstein, former EPA Chair of the Clean Air Scientific Advisory Committee and former EPA Assistant Administrator for Research and Development, are quoted in this article about EPA’s change in approach to chemical toxicity oversight.

EPN member Stan Meiburg, former EPA Deputy Regional Administrator in Region 4 and Region 6 and Acting Deputy Administrator, is quoted in this article about the EPA museum, opened by EPA administrator Gina McCarthy at the end of the Obama administration, where currently the only sign of the Trump administration is a framed photo of Andrew Wheeler.

Betsy Southerland, EPN member and former EPA Director, Office of Science and Technology in the Office of Water, is quoted in this article about EPA’s draft PFAS guidance, which does not include a trigger for federal regulators to respond immediately to sites contaminated with dangerously high levels of the chemicals, as is typically included in such documents and was part of the draft guidance sent to the White House last summer for interagency review.

Chris Zarba, former Director, EPA Science Advisory Board, is quoted in this article about a White House memorandum that places more oversight on federal agencies’ use of information and data for decision-making, including new requirements that raise concern about the Trump Administration attempting to sideline science.

EPN members John Bachmann, former EPA Associate Director for Science/Policy and New Programs, Office of Air, and Dan Costa, former National Program Director, EPA’s Air, Climate, and Energy Research Program, are quoted in this article about a study that shows children born today will have to sacrifice far more than those in earlier generations to address global warming. The article also ran in Salon.

Betsy Southerland, former EPA Director, Office of Science and Technology in the Office of Water, is quoted in this article about EPA’s draft guidance for groundwater cleanup contaminated with PFAS chemicals, which omitted an emergency trigger, potentially limiting the agency’s power to intervene in the Pentagon’s efforts to clean up the ubiquitous class of chemicals.

EPN members John Bachmann, former EPA Associate Director for Science/Policy and New Programs, Office of Air, and Chris Zarba, former Director, EPA Science Advisory Board, are quoted in this article about EPA Administrator Wheeler’s request for science advisers to consult on a narrow piece of the EPA’s proposal to restrict what science it can use—a step critics say effectively undercuts a broader review by the experts.

EPN member Vijay Limaye, former EPA Physical Scientist in Regions 5 and 9, wrote a New York Times Letter to the Editor supporting Dr. Balmes’ op-ed from April 15, “Don’t Let a Killer Pollutant Loose,” about recent troubling efforts to undermine established evidence showing the grave dangers of air pollution.

EPN member Dan Costa, former EPA National Program Director, Air, Climate, and Energy Research Program, was interviewed about Louisville’s top toxic air polluters.

This article cites EPN and quotes from comments EPN submitted on the Trump Administration’s proposal to scrap the cost-benefit finding underpinning the Mercury and Air Toxics Standards (MATS) rule.

EPN member Gary Timm, former EPA Chief of the Chemical Testing Branch, Office of Pollution Prevention and Toxics, is quoted in this article about EPA’s Significant New Use Rule for asbestos, which will close loopholes in a decades-old partial ban. The article also ran in WRAL.com, ClickOrlando.com, News Channel 3 WREG, KPAX.com, and similar articles ran in Asbestos.com, Tech Times, FOX 43 and EcoWatch.

EPN member Gary Timm, former EPA Chief of the Chemical Testing Branch, Office of Pollution Prevention and Toxics, is quoted in this article about EPA’s new regulation on asbestos, which health advocates still feel falls short of the protections needed. This article also ran in The Bulletin.

EPN member Penny Fenner-Crisp, former EPA Senior Science Advisor to the Director, Office of Pesticide Programs, is quoted in this article about the comment period on Pigment Violet 29 being reopened due to EPA recently releasing previously restricted information about its potential health effects.

EPN member Dave Evans, former EPA Director, Wetlands Division, wrote this op-ed about his personal connection to wetlands and streams and the Trump Administration’s proposal to dramatically reduce the scope of the Clean Water Act’s (CWA) protection of these bodies of water by redefining what constitutes “waters of the U.S.”

EPN member and advisor, Wayne Nastri, former EPA Regional Administrator in Region 9, is quoted in this article about hotter summer weather and the threat of climate change hampering efforts to slash health-damaging ozone in Coachella Valley. Wayne was also quoted in articles on the same or similar subject in My News LA, Desert Sun and Highland News.

Bob Sussman, EPN member and former EPA Deputy Administrator and Senior Policy Counsel to Administrator, is quoted in the this article about two lawsuits that accuse the U.S. Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) of abdicating its duty to estimate greenhouse gas emissions from natural gas pipelines.