Since 2010, the Environmental Protection Agency has been embroiled in an enforcement battle with a Michigan-based company accused of modifying the state’s largest coal-fired power plant without getting federal permits for a projected rise in pollution. On Dec. 7, as the Supreme Court was considering whether to hear the case, EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt issued a memo that single-handedly reversed the agency’s position. No longer would the EPA be “second-guessing” DTE Energy’s emission projections. Rather, it would accept the firm’s “intent” to manage its pollution without requiring an enforceable agreement — part of President Trump’s broader push to reduce the “burden” on companies, he wrote. The little-noticed episode offers a glimpse into how Pruitt has spent his first year running the EPA. In legal maneuvers and executive actions, in public speeches and closed-door meetings with industry groups, he has moved to shrink the agency’s reach, alter its focus and pause or reverse numerous environmental rules. The effect has been to steer the EPA in the direction sought by those being regulated. Along the way, Pruitt has begun to dismantle former president Barack Obama’s environmental legacy, halting the agency’s efforts to combat climate change and shift the nation away from its reliance on fossil fuels. Such aggressiveness on issues from coal waste to vehicle emissions has made Pruitt one of President Trump’s most high-profile and consequential Cabinet members. It also has made him one of the most controversial. Critics describe his short tenure as an assault on the agency’s mission, its science and its employees. “We’ve spent 40 years putting together an apparatus to protect public health and the environment from a lot of different pollutants,” said William Ruckleshaus, the EPA’s first administrator, who led the agency under both Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan. “He’s pulling that whole apparatus down.” Yet, allies praise Pruitt for returning more power to individual states while scaling back what they see as the previous administration’s regulatory excesses...more
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