There's widespread evidence that the Trump admin has been rolling back federal regulations. How about enforcement targeting companies that pollute the nation's air and water? The NYT takes a deep look. with @danielle_ivory nytimes.com/2017/12/10/us/…
First place we looked: show me that data on actions taken against polluters. We found the EPA has ordered $1.2 billion of fixes to polluting facilities -- about 48 percent of what was sought in first nine months under President Bush and about 12 percent under President Obama
So why the decline? One hint. This letter from the oil and gas industry to Scott Pruitt in March. It asks Pruitt to impose new restrictions on his own enforcement officers trying to stop leaks of hazardous stuff like benzine. 
The Obama EPA had targeted some big oil and gas players, after finding that massive amounts of harmful vapors were leaking from storage tanks in spots across the US. Here EPA asks Continental for information on leaks, using powers under Section 114A of Clean Air Act
Pruitt responded to the oil and gas industry request here. In short, he agreed. The EPA needed to curb the ability of its enforcement officers to ask for information on suspected polluters. More "judicial" use of this vital CAA 114a. This letter has huge policy implications
The result: an order to EPA staff to revise rules putting new curbs on the ability of EPA enforcement teams to use Clean Air Act to demand polluters do emissions tests. Here is the (PREVIOUSLY) confidential memo. (NYT at your service) documentcloud.org/documents/4324…
So what happens next? A sudden, massive decline in the use of vital 114a "Requests for Information" under the Clean Air Act since May 2017, according to data the NYT collected from EPA's Chicago office, the biggest air pollution enforcement unit.
Guess who else wanted the EPA to back off of using its powers under Section 114a of the Clean Air Act. Republicans in Congress, who specifically cited complaints from oil and gas industry. They went after Obama EPA here. But could not get EPA to bend, at least then
Who else was part of the lobbying push against this vital EPA enforcement power. You guessed it. Scott Pruitt's friends from the Republican Attorneys General Association, which takes hundreds of thousands $$$ in oil and gas donations.
Even while the EPA HQ has been moving to curb investigatory powers of its enforcement teams, it has been doing staff buyouts, to reduce the staff. Here is list of employees from Chicago Region 5 that have left since Jan. 20. Just one office.
So what does this all mean? Is this just esoteric, inside the Beltway stuff. The NYT hit the road to find out. We traveled to East Liverpool, Ohio, where there are two outstanding Notices of Violation against polluters. This is what I saw as I first drove into town
But what I found as we spent some time there was real anger at the EPA. A local hazardous waste incinerator had blown nearly 1000 pounds of ash across the city, during an accident. The EPA has still not taken formal action. Why? City officials can't understand.
Here is the response the City Council in East Liverpool got. "Continue to write letters to whomever." Fed government at work.
So why does this matter to a place like East Liverpool. Well, this is not just a matter of bad smells in the air. Their children are threatened, research suggests. The air is so polluted an "imminent and substantial endangerment to public health in East Liverpool"
A brief pause to say, this is all time consuming, expensive work. Weeks of labor, and travel. Supported by all of you subscribers out there. Thank you.
So we went to Chicago, the HQ of the EPA's most important air pollution enforcement squad to find out what is up.
We met with George Czerniak, who for decades was top air pollution enforcement person in Chicago. You've never heard of him. But I learned George is 1 of most important players in modern US history for cleaning the air in the Midwest. And he is worried.
Lawyers/enforcement officers from EPA Chicago said they feel paralyzed by lack of clear leadership, and held back by the new rules that effectively limit their ability to use CAA 114a to go after polluters. This sign was in the office. Not sure everyone who works there agrees.
Moment that will stick with me the most from this: Talking the mom in East Liverpool, in her front yard, nearly in tears, devastated that she could not do more to protect her children, as she could not afford to move. Why has the EPA not acted, she asked?
This is all part of NYT effort to keep track of regulatory rollbacks in Trump era. Please read this story that @danielle_ivory and I did. Here again is the link nytimes.com/2017/12/10/us/…
And here are the rest of the stories in The NYT series, which we call Trump Rules, work by @SteveEder @benprotess @danielle_ivory and others. nytimes.com/series/trump-r…
The documents associated with our story on EPA enforcement are collected and posted on the web, in two big chunks. Here is the first chunk. nytimes.com/interactive/20…
Part two of the documents The NYT assembled on changes in enforcement policies at the EPA. This focuses on the accident at the hazardous waste incinerator in East Liverpool, Ohio, and questions from residents re why EPA has not closed the case. documentcloud.org/documents/4324…
We sent the EPA a list of more than 20 written questions, after agency denied r request pending for 1 month to speak with anyone on the record. We also shared data we pulled & an explanation of our methodology. Here's the back & forth. documentcloud.org/documents/4325…
Thank you to the EPA public affairs for engaging with us on this. The agency did not answer each of our questions. But it did provide a series of statements that addressed many of them.
Koch Industries plays a small-ish role in this whole story. EPA's power to use so-called 114a requests to demand information from suspected polluters used in Chicago to target petcoke storage owned by Koch Carbon. Yet again its George Czerniak a EPA hero you've never heard of
Koch Industries was not happy. Here is the rely from its lawyer. It challenged the authority of the EPA to use these kinds of Request for Information, even though EPA was worried Koch operation was hurting health of Chicago residents.
Trump gets elected. Pruitt gets confirmed. Then what happens? The power of EPA enforcement officers in field to use this exact tool to find polluters is suddenly curbed. Now they need HQ approval to use it. Wonder what happened in the background, don' t you.
But EPA's crew from Region 5 prevailed on this one. Koch Industries shutdown its petcoke storage facilities in Chicago, after EPA and the City of Chicago intervened. That happened before end of Obama tenure. chicagotribune.com/news/ct-petcok…
