Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt faces members of a Senate committee this morning for what could be a contentious two-day confirmation hearing. The showdown will serve as a public referendum on his qualifications, views on climate change, and legal stance on whether the federal or state government should police the environment. On one side will be skeptical Democrats, poring over the 14 lawsuits he has filed to block EPA rules on mercury, ozone, carbon dioxide, waterways, and the Clean Power Plan regulating utilities. Friendlier questions will come from panel Republicans like West Virginia’s Shelly Moore Capito, who said Pruitt's plans to stop environmental overreach are a “breath of fresh air.”
While the hearing inside the Dirksen Senate Office Building will probably veer into the oft-arcane world of environmental rule-making, the final vote and Pruitt’s agenda at EPA will have immediate consequences for many American communities---and North Carolina is a good example of what could go wrong in a Pruitt-led EPA. From sea level rise along the Outer Banks to polluted stormwater drainage from suburbs and farms into local ponds and streams, the state faces a host of environmental conflicts that rely on EPA rules to solve. Many worry that Pruitt's EPA will be a toothless one.
The EPA's enforcement is especially important because North Carolina state lawmakers have put the brakes on their own environmental officials. They told state regulators to ignore sea level rise in planning for future development, dragged their feet in cleaning up coal ash dumps operated by electric utilities, and, according to a 2016 investigation by the Center for Public Integrity, cut both staffing and enforcement of air pollution violations in North Carolina. “The national EPA plays an important role in enforcing the basic and straightforward requirements,” says Frank Holleman, senior attorney at the Southern Environmental Law Center. “If the EPA takes a hands-off approach on this kind of law enforcement, the public, families, and drinking water supplies in North Carolina are going to be at great risk.”
To get a sense of the risks, look to North Carolina's coal ash waste pits. These big lagoons were built by utilities to store the toxic leftovers of coal-fired power plants. But mixed with water, the ash has leaked arsenic, mercury, thallium, selenium, and other contaminants into rivers and groundwater supplies. Despite efforts by local groups and others—Holleman’s team has sued to force cleanups—North Carolina's state legislature continues to delay the process.
Those tactics mirror what has happened in Oklahoma under Pruitt, who delayed cleanup of chicken waste floating into the state from nearby Arkansas. Environmental advocates point to that decision as an example of his coziness with industries that contributed to his campaign. In North Carolina, Holleman says, the EPA and Department of Justice did their part to push for a cleanup when state officials dragged their feet. But a Pruitt-led EPA would almost certainly not step in. “If the EPA backs up on some of those environmental programs," says Robin Smith, a former deputy administrator of North Carolina’s Department of Environment and Natural Resources, "that takes the legs out of the state’s program to make progress."
One of North Carolina’s scenic jewels---the Outer Banks and its valuable coastline---have been in the eye of the political storm over climate change policy. In 2012, Robert Young, a coastal geologist at Western Carolina University, wrote a report for the state’s Coastal Resources Commission that the sea level would rise 39 inches in some spots by the end of the century. Rather than take action or look for solutions, the state Republican-controlled state legislature banned coastal planners from using the report to make decisions about where to allow building projects, despite similar conclusions by the US Geological Survey.
“For some reason in North Carolina, there was an effort for a lot of groups to attack the science and the scientists rather than coming to work and putting their big-boy pants on and do something about it,” says Young. “They spent a huge amount of energy trying to say the scientists were dishonest or there was a problem in the research.” Along the North Carolina coast, the legislature continues to allow more houses, businesses, and sewer lines in vulnerable coastal zones that will be washed away.
Now, Young and others see echoes of the fight over sea level rise in Pruitt’s climate agenda. In an op-ed column published last year in The National Review, Pruitt wrote that “global warming has inspired one of the major policy debates of our time. That debate is far from settled. Scientists continue to disagree about the degree and extent of global warming and its connection to the actions of mankind.”
Despite the fact that nearly every climate scientist disagrees with that statement, a Pruitt-led EPA would scale back all future development plans based on climate science. Instead, Pruitt will get the EPA back to what it should be doing, according to Marlo Lewis, a senior fellow at the conservative think tank Competitive Enterprise Institute: enforcing existing congressional mandates rather than worrying about what he believes are the uncertain future consequences of climate change.
Other observers hope that Pruitt may not get too far in his climate science and rule-making makeover---partly because he’s leading a big agency with a certain amount of bureaucratic inertia. “You have a deep civil service with deep beliefs, and agencies follow the law,” says Andrew Rosenberg, a former fisheries enforcement official at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration who now leads the climate program at the Union of Concerned Scientists. “Once you get in place, you have to be responsive to the mandate of that agency,” he says.
If Pruitt is confirmed, Rosenberg says his group, like many others, will be keeping a close eye. They won’t hesitate to use the courts, just as Pruitt has, to protect the air, water and land—and climate—for future Americans.
