Your Daily Docket – Friday, April 28, 2017

EPA Regulatory Reform Sample Comment Scripts for the Savvy Citizen.

ACTION ALERT: EPA REGULATORY REFORM – PUBLIC COMMENTS ENDS 5/15/17. Comment Early and Often!

The American People Did Not Vote for This – Sample Script for Friday, April 28, 2017:

(Please do not cut and paste!  Edit the script to make it your own and add personal commentary.  These scripts are designed to inform and are for inspiration and ideas!)

Click here to submit your comments:  Proposed Rule (Evaluation of Existing Regulations) and Comment Submission Link  

The American People Did Not Vote for This

I am angered that this new administration is actively dismantling the health and safety rules and regulations overseen by the EPA by cutting the budget so deep their work cannot be done and by asking the EPA to solicit industrial polluters (“stakeholders”) for their wish lists as to which rule and regulation they want weakened or eliminated. The American people did not vote for this.

Pruitt’s memorandum to the EPA, issued on March 24, directs the Agency to provide recommendations for specific rules that should be considered for repeal, replacement or modification based on recommendations by their “stakeholders”.  By May 15, the EPA offices of Air and Radiation; Land and Emergency Management; Chemical Safety and Pollution Prevention; Water, Environmental Information; Congressional and Intergovernmental Relations; and the Office of Small and Disadvantaged Business Utilization are supposed to provide a list of “burdensome” regulations as informed by the very entities that would stand to profit from the rule changes. Science, public health or safety will not be informing their recommendations. The EPA apparently now must adhere to the dictates and demands of the particular industry they have formerly been in charge of regulating.

Since it’s inception under the Nixon Administration the EPA has made tremendous gains in ensuring the public has safe air to breath and water to drink.  All of this is at risk now, due to short sighted thinking, profit-driven motives, and erroneous claims that protecting the environment does not provide a positive cost benefit.

The American people did not vote to have their air, water, oceans, rivers, National parks, Public Lands and their very own back yards endangered. From a Gallup Poll, March 14, 2017: “Record percentages of Americans are concerned about global warming, believe it is occurring, consider it a serious threat and say it is caused by human activity. All of these perceptions are up significantly from 2015.” Summarizing results from a Feb. 8, 2017 poll, Quinnipiac’s Tim Malloy states, “A litany of calls to ‘hold your horses, Mr. President.’ Americans want President Donald Trump to keep the regulatory reins on business, and voters call for a full stop to laying new pipelines full of oil.” (Quinnipiac, 2017) A Glover Park/Morning Consult December 16 survey of 2000 Trump voters found that “61% of Trump voters support requiring US companies to reduce carbon emissions, vs. 28% opposed”, and “84% of Trump voters want the same or more federal regulations on drinking water and 78% want the same or more federal regulations on air pollution”. (Morning Consult, 2016)

The American public is the largest stakeholder of the EPA.  And the only mechanism for the public to weigh in on the proposed budgets cuts and deregulation – essentially an abandonment of the core mission of the EPA – is this docket open only for a few short weeks. We already know that the President has the ear of large business. We saw the CEO of Dow Chemical, Andrew Liveris, literally standing at the President’s side while he signed the Order to allow farmers to continue using his company’s toxic pesticide chlorpyrifos. Trump even gave Liveris the pen he used to sign the Order. Where are the thousands sickened by contamination of chlorpyrifos or the scientists who already proved this chemical unsafe?  Not anywhere near Pruitt or Trump.

 

1. https://poll.qu.edu/national/release-detail?ReleaseID=2428
2. http://www.gallup.com/poll/206030/global-warming-concern-three-decade-high.aspx?g_source=Politics&g_medium=newsfeed&g_campaign=tiles
3. https://www.nrdc.org/sites/default/files/media-uploads/trumpvotersurvey-toplinepublicrelease-161220035628_0.pdf
4. https://www.nrdc.org/experts/david-doniger/trumps-climate-destruction-plan-deal-he-cant-close  Trump’s Climate Destruction Plan: A Deal He Can’t Close
5. https://www.schatz.senate.gov/press-releases/schatz-senators-demand-answers-from-pruitt-on-new-epa-orders-that-ignore-input-from-scientists-american-people-on-epa-protections

What is “Your Daily Docket”?

 – 3 weeks of daily scripts until the Public Comment period closes May 15, 2017 –

Your Daily Docket provides 3 weeks of daily scripts for public comments for the Proposed Rule, Evaluation of Existing Regulations, aka (in Trump/Pruitt’s minds) “how best to gut the EPA”.  Trump/Pruitt are likely expecting industry to flood the public comments docket with their wish lists, and call it a day on May 15 when the comment period closes. However, a quick look at the comments submitted so far have been more to the tune of, “I like to breathe. When I can’t breathe I get scared. I also like to drink water.”  https://www.regulations.gov/docket?D=EPA-HQ-OA-2017-0190

We want to encourage you and your neighbors to enter comments on the open docket early and often until the public comment period closes on May 15.

Your Daily Docket provides daily scripts for ideas and inspiration for your own comments. Take the daily comments and make them your own. We aim to make each Your Daily Docket speak to a particular issue.

Let’s use our collective voice for ourselves, our planet and future generations!

Featured image information: AN ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY INSPECTOR CHECKS BARRELS OF PESTICIDES AT THE PORT OF NEWARK, NEW JERSEY. SAMPLES ARE ANALYZED BY AN EPA LABORATORY. New Jersey. March, 1974. Environmental Protection Agency. Still Picture Records Section, Special Media Archives Services Division (NWCS-S). Public Domain.