Trump administration backs off plan to scrub climate pages from EPA website

Source: Washington Post

Trump administration backs off plan to scrub climate pages from EPA website

By Brady Dennis and Juliet Eilperin January 25 at 4:01 PM

The Trump administration on Wednesday backed away from plans to take down some climate-change information from the Environmental Protection Agency’s website, which employees said had been planned for this week.

Doug Ericksen, spokesman for the “beachhead team” in charge at the agency, told The Hill in an interview Wednesday that officials are reviewing all “editorial” parts of the EPA’s website and discussing possible changes, not necessarily looking to take down all climate data.

“We’re looking at scrubbing it up a bit, putting a little freshener on it, and getting it back up to the public,” Ericksen, a Republican state lawmaker from Washington, told the publication. “We’re taking a look at everything on there.”

Reports began to surface this week that members of the Trump administration team working at the agency had instructed EPA staffers to remove the climate-change page from the agency’s website. Reuters reported that EPA officials had told communications employees to remove the information within days. The pages include links to emissions data and explanatory pages about global warming.

One EPA employee familiar with the requests, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because staffers have been under a gag order, told The Washington Post that Trump administration officials recently made a verbal request to managers to take down the climate portions of the EPA’s site. EPA career staffers pushed back against that plan, the employee said, saying they wanted the request in writing before anyone removed content.

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Read more: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/energy-environment/wp/2017/01/25/trump-administration-backs-off-plan-to-scrub-climate-pages-from-epa-website/?utm_term=.9c60589f703a