The mission of the Environmental Protection Agency since its creation in 1970 has been to protect the water we drink and the air we breathe, supervise the clean-up of hazardous waste and Superfund sites. It may be true that the EPA has, on occasion, been guilty of micro-managing, but it is equally true that the agency has at times failed to act decisively when faced with challenges to the health of our environment. You can argue its missteps from both sides of the political spectrum, but can you argue the need for its existence?
I think not, but with the selection of Scott Pruitt to head the EPA, Americans face a future without government oversight, a return to a deregulated Wild West. We can ill afford that and we can’t afford to have Scott Pruitt as EPA director.
The Republicans, in their haste to push through President Trump’s Cabinet choices, have short-circuited the vetting process and now we have a man leading a department he has vowed to eliminate. A man who, with the release of thousands emails between him and the oil interests, when he was Oklahoma Attorney General, will most likely reveal collusion between the government and oil companies. He even let an oil company write his complaint to the EPA in 2014.
We cannot have a climate-change denier, a mouthpiece for the oil companies, making policy for the air we and our children breathe and the water we drink.
Malcolm Bates
Snohomish
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