Swamp creature

Irvin

Scott Pruitt is taking credit for environmental work completed in previous administrations.

In his opening remarks to the House Energy and Commerce Committee’s subcommittee on environment, Pruitt touted his agency’s efforts to clean up Superfund sites, the most contaminated industrial sites in the country. “We have removed over three times the number of polluted sites of contaminated communities across the country as compared to the previous administration for 2017,” he said.
An Associated Press fact-check found that statement to be accurate, but misleading. “The EPA declared seven cleanups complete from its Superfund priority list last year, compared with two sites delisted the year before,” the report read. “But records show that construction work at all seven sites cited by Pruitt’s EPA, such as removing soil or drilling wells to suck out contaminated groundwater, was completed years before Pruitt was confirmed as the agency’s chief in February. Removing sites from the list is a procedural step that occurs after monitoring data show that remaining levels of harmful contaminates meet cleanup targets, which were often set by the EPA decades ago.”
In other words, Pruitt’s EPA didn’t have to do any actual decontamination work to “remove” these contaminated sites. Obama’s EPA had already done that work.

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In other Pruitt news NPR has an interesting story, In Oklahoma, Critics Say Pruitt Stalled Pollution Case After Taking Industry Funds.

Chicken manure runoff is harming the waterways of Oklahoma, including the once clear Illinois River. Scott Pruitt's predecessor, Attorney General Drew Edmondson, fought hard to put the major poultry producers on notice. But Scott Pruitt became the new Attorney General and he got a lot of money from the chicken industry, from companies like Tyson Foods and Cargill. By the way, Tyson is the largest meat processor in the world. So Pruitt slow walked the proposed agreement and refused to take any further action on the matter. Didn't like litigation much unless he was suing the federal government. Never met an industrial polluter he didn't love.

From Vox: Scott Pruitt cited the Bible to defend his oil-friendly policies

In an interview with the Christian Broadcasting Network, a media outlet that also seems to double as a propaganda arm of the Trump administration, Environmental Protection Agency chief Scott Pruitt said his Christian convictions led him to conclude that America should use gas and coal freely because natural resources exist purely for man’s benefit.

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"There aren't sufficient scientific facts to establish the theory of evolution."
Scott Pruitt 2005

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Perhaps the worst Pruitt move would be his latest attempt to ban non public peer reviewed scientific studies. If you wanted to engineer a complete giveaway and acquiescence to industry studies, this is how it would look. Scott Pruitt’s Attack on Science Would Paralyze the E.P.A. This is like inviting Marlboro in to run the National Institute of Health.

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No Scott. Burning forests is not carbon neutral.

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Lot of bad characters in Trumpland, this guy may be the worst. How many investigations on him are now under way, twelve, thirteen? Seems like a new scandal every day. Oh wait there were two today. Or was it three? And he seemed like such a nice, god fearing man...