Critics of former EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt believe they have discovered more information potentially damaging to him.
As POLITICO’s Morning Energy Report revealed, it seems some language in a Scott Pruitt memo is identical to an industry. The comments pertained to changes in air pollution rules.
Here is how POLITICO reported the incident.
The inclusion of the language isn’t illegal, but Democratic Sens. Tom Carper (Del.) and Sheldon Whitehouse (R.I.), whose offices discovered the similarities, argue it bolsters their previous request for EPA’s inspector general to review the relationship between Wehrum and his adviser David Harlow with their former firm Hunton Andrews Kurth.WATCH YOUR LANGUAGE: An EPA memo from former Administrator Scott Pruitt altering air pollution rules for expanding power plants contains some of the same language contained in public comments from the Air Permitting Forum — an industry group housed at the former law firm of EPA air chief Bill Wehrum, Pro’s Alex Guillén reports this morning.
The policy memo in question addresses how companies calculate the emissions of major upgrades at power plants or other pollution-producing facilities. Those calculations are how the agency determines whether the source must go through time-consuming and costly air permitting under EPA’s New Source Review program.
A December 2017 memo issued by Pruitt a few weeks after Wehrum was confirmed, showed a significant shift in agency policy. “Because increased emissions may be caused by multiple factors, the EPA has recognized that the source must exercise judgment to exclude increases for which the project is not the ‘predominant cause,'” Pruitt wrote in his 2017 memo, using the same language the industry group had recommended.
