TRUMP ADMINISTRATION TELLS EPA TO FREEZE ALL GRANTS, CONTRACTS
The headquarters of the Environmental Protection Agency in Washington. (Matt McClain/ The Washington Post)
The Trump administration has instructed officials at the Environmental Protection Agency to freeze its grants and contracts, a move that could affect everything from state-led climate research to localized efforts to improve air and water quality to environmental justice projects aimed at helping poor communities.
An email went out to employees in the agency’s Office of Acquisition Management within hours of President Trump’s swearing-in on Friday.
“New EPA administration has asked that all contract and grant awards be temporarily suspended, effective immediately,” read the email, which was shared with The Washington Post. “Until we receive further clarification, which we hope to have soon, please construe this to include task orders and work assignments.”
According to its website, each year the EPA awards more than $4 billion in funding for grants and other assistance agreements. For now, it appears, that funding is on hold, casting a cloud of uncertainty over one of the agency’s core functions, as well as over the scientists, state and local officials, universities and Native American tribes that often benefit from the grants.
“EPA staff have been reviewing grants and contracts information with the incoming transition team,” an agency spokesperson said in an email Tuesday. “Pursuant to that review, the agency is continuing to award the environmental program grants and state revolving loan fund grants to the states and tribes; and we are working to quickly address issues related to other categories of grants.” The agency said the goal is to complete the grants and contracts review by the close of business Friday.
It is unclear whether the move by the incoming administration was related to President Trump’s order Monday that federal agencies halt hiring in all areas on the executive branch except for the military, national security and public safety, which also curbed contracting as a way of compensating for the freeze. “Contracting outside the Government to circumvent the intent of this memorandum shall not be permitted,” the memorandum states.
[Trump’s regulatory freeze halts four Obama rules aimed at promoting greater energy efficiency]
Administration officials inserted the language in an apparent attempt to curb the growth in federal contracts that arose during previous freezes imposed under Presidents Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan. But the total halt in contracts and grants for a single agency appeared to go beyond that specific provision, which applied solely to contracting activities in response to the halt in hiring.
Myron Ebell, who oversaw the EPA transition for the new administration, told ProPublica on Monday that the freezing of grants and contracts was not unprecedented.
“They’re trying to freeze things to make sure nothing happens they don’t want to have happen, so any regulations going forward, contracts, grants, hires, they want to make sure to look at them first,” said Ebell, director of the Center for Energy and Environment at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, an industry-backed group that has long sought to slash the authority of the EPA.
“This may be a little wider than some previous administrations, but it’s very similar to what others have done,” he told the publication.
But not in recent history has such a blanket freeze taken place, and one employee told ProPublica he did not recall anything like it in nearly a decade with the agency.
The move is likely to increase anxieties inside an already tense agency. Ebell and other transition officials have made little secret about their goal of greatly reducing the EPA’s footprint and regulatory reach. Trump has repeatedly criticized the EPA for what he calls a string of onerous, expensive regulations that are hampering businesses. And his nominee to run the agency, Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt, has repeatedly sued the EPA over the years, challenging its legal authority to regulate everything from mercury pollution to various wetlands and waterways to carbon emissions from power plants.
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And only the loonie liberal information was released or given consideration. The scientific facts that support the idea that there is little or no evidence to support man-made climate changed was discarded by the Oblamer administration. What a waste of money!
call, write, email all members of the house and congress and let them know that if they support Trump or do nothing about his EPA gag order that you will not bring your tourism $ to their state.
Science is fraudulent
Intelligence is a crutch for the weak
Difficult things are corrupt things
We better get used to this because it’s how we roll now.
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One thing I hope Trump does is cancel the superfund clean up sites…after all, I don’t live in one of those areas, why should *I* pay to clean those up? And if a business has an accident, I say let either the business clean it up, or the community clean it up should said business declare bankruptcy. After all, its each man for himself these days…right?
Right.
Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to change my car’s oil over a storm drain and some wetlands to drain.st 100 years.
FACT: Carbon dioxide levels have indeed changed for various reasons, human and otherwise, just as they have throughout geologic time. Since the beginning of the industrial revolution, the CO2 content of the atmosphere has increased by about 120 part per million (ppm), most of which is likely due to human-caused CO2 emissions. The RATE of growth during this century has been about 0.55%/year. However, there is no proof that CO2 is the main driver of global warming. As measured in ice cores dated over many thousands of years, CO2 levels move up and down AFTER the temperature has done so, and thus are the RESULT OF, NOT THE CAUSE of warming. Geological field work in recent sediments confirms this causal relationship. There is solid evidence that, as temperatures move up and down naturally and cyclically through solar radiation, orbital and galactic influences, the warming surface layers of the earth’s oceans expel more CO2 as a result.