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ICYMI: How Trump’s EPA Administrator Is Tackling Long-Neglected Toxic Sites

How Trump’s EPA Administrator Is Tackling Long-Neglected Toxic Sites

Tristan Justice
The Federalist
October 19, 2020

On this episode of The Federalist Radio Hour, Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Andrew Wheeler joins Staff Writer Tristan Justice to discuss the EPA’s recent successes in using its Superfund Program to clean up contaminated, hazardous sites in the U.S. to improve community health.

“We accomplished in four years what they did in eight years,” Wheeler said, referring to the Obama Biden Administration. “And it’s because we’re focusing more on the results. For four years, the program just looked at activities.”

According to Wheeler, the key to implementing these big clean-up projects comes when the EPA partners with “states, local governments, the community, and the industry who is responsible.”

“We’re reprioritizing, we’re focusing on what the real environmental impacts are to where people live to get those sites cleaned up. And we’re working with the community groups in the industry, we’re bringing them to the table. We’re working out the differences instead of letting them play it out in court for years.”

While the conversation focused mostly on the EPA’s site clean-up initiatives through the Superfund, Wheeler did not hesitate to point out some of the flaws in the Democratic Presidential Nominee Joe Biden’s proposed environmental agenda, especially concerning fracking.

“You don’t have to ban something if you regulate it to death,” Wheeler explained. “And the Obama administration was regulating [fracking] to death. So you can say I’m not going to ban it, but you can put enough policies in place where it’s not feasible to do it.”

Listen here: https://thefederalist.com/2020/10/19/how-trumps-epa-administrator-is-tackling-long-neglected-toxic-sites/