PD Editorial: Environmental protection rules on the hit list

A year ago, Americans were focused on Flint, Michigan, where contaminated drinking water put thousands of children at risk.

State officials, who switched the city’s water supply, denied there was any problem with the cloudy, foul-smelling water. But the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency detected dangerous levels of lead.

Soon after, the EPA formed a Flint Safe Drinking Water Task Force and joined a federal investigation that resulted in criminal charges against some of the officials responsible for the city’s water supply. Charges include tampering with evidence and willful neglect of duty.

Turn the clock forward, and the Trump administration is seeking to eviscerate the EPA and roll back clean water rules.

Scott Pruitt, a litigious critic of the EPA who became the agency’s director, says environmental issues are better left to states and local officials.

The residents of Flint, who can only guess the long-term impacts of lead poisoning on their children, probably have a different opinion.

Even if they agreed, the administration’s budget proposal also targets federal funding for state and local environmental protection programs.

According to the Washington Post, the EPA’s annual budget would be cut from $8.2 billion to $6.1 billion, with up to 20 percent of the agency’s staff marked for elimination in the upcoming years. Grants to clean up abandoned industrial sites would be go away, and so would funding for climate change initiatives, including one established by President George W. Bush.

Even some Republican congressmen were stunned by the scope of the proposed cutbacks.

“There’s not that much in the EPA, for crying out loud,” Rep. Mike Sampson of Idaho told the Post, noting that he and fellow Republicans had cut its budget dramatically in recent years.

Trump has made no secret of his antipathy for the EPA and environmental programs in general. Indeed, his administration has signaled its intention to relax standards for coal-fired power plant emissions and roll back clean water rules enacted by the Obama administration.

We hope other Republicans won’t abandon their party’s long and proud history of environmental stewardship, which started with Abraham Lincoln, who set aside the land that now is Yosemite National Park.

President Richard Nixon created the EPA with an executive order in 1970. Nixon also signed the Endangered Species and Clean Water acts into law as well as a major update of the Clean Air Act. The future of all of these laws is in question.

And, in case you missed the news, the planet continues to suffer from record-breaking temperature increases as well as floods, droughts and other environmental crises that scientists attribute to global climate change.

The closest thing to good news about the Trump administration and environmental issues is a New York Times report this week that first daughter Ivanka Trump and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson are urging the president to reject other advisers’ entreaties to withdraw from the Paris Climate Accord, the 2015 agreement that requires nearly every country to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

Public pressure appears to be dulling Republican enthusiasm for repealing the Affordable Care Act and ordering mass deportations. Perhaps the same approach can remind Congress and the Trump administration that Americans expect their government to protect, not exploit, the environment.