Under Trump, E.P.A. Has Slowed Actions Against Polluters, and Put Limits on Enforcement Officers
Source: The New York Times
By ERIC LIPTON and DANIELLE IVORYDEC. 10, 2017
EAST LIVERPOOL, Ohio — The highway billboard at the entrance to town still displays a giant campaign photograph of President Trump, who handily won the election across industrial Ohio. But a revolt is brewing here in East Liverpool over Mr. Trump’s move to slow down the federal government’s policing of air and water pollution.
The City Council moved unanimously last month to send a protest letter to the Environmental Protection Agency about a hazardous waste incinerator near downtown. Since Mr. Trump took office, the E.P.A. has not moved to punish the plant’s owner, even after extensive evidence was assembled during the Obama administration that the plant had repeatedly, and illegally, released harmful pollutants into the air.
“I don’t know where we go,” Councilman William Hogue, a retired social studies teacher, said in frustration to his fellow council members. “They haven’t resolved anything.”
Scott Pruitt, the E.P.A. administrator, has said the Trump administration’s high-profile regulatory rollback does not mean a free pass for violators of environmental laws. But as the Trump administration moves from one attention-grabbing headline to the next, it has taken a significant but less-noticed turn in the enforcement of federal pollution laws.
Read more: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/10/us/politics/pollution-epa-regulations.html
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I will be pleasantly surprised (relatively speaking) if we even *HAVE* an EPA by 2020. All I ever heard from the conservative side of the family was about the EPA's "overreach", far more than about immigrants, Muslims or taxes. For a lot of people in agriculture and the extractive industries, the only good EPA would be a closed one, and these industries are right were the Electoral College gives immense weight in outcomes 
I think the anti-EPA message flew under the radar of those in blue states since the racist-anti immigrant message rang so much louder for those of us who live where there are a lot of immigrants; we knew he'd be bad in that regard, but my undocumented friends, co-workers, and neighbors were much more foremost in my mind...
