President-elect Trump formally announced his plan to nominate Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt to serve as the leader of the Environmental Protection Agency.
The statement released by Trump on Thursday confirmed reports that Pruitt, who has sued the EPA over regulations on multiple occasions, would be the country’s top environmental cop. He said Pruitt’s nomination is a sign that the EPA’s role will be reconfigured in his administration.
“For too long, the Environmental Protection Agency has spent taxpayer dollars on an out-of-control anti-energy agenda that has destroyed millions of jobs, while also undermining our incredible farmers and many other businesses and industries at every turn,” Trump said.
“As my EPA administrator, Scott Pruitt, the highly respected attorney general from the state of Oklahoma, will reverse this trend and restore the EPA’s essential mission of keeping our air and our water clean and safe.”
Pruitt’s lawsuits have often been based on state sovereignty arguments. He generally argued the federal government was impeding on state’s ability to regulate the environment on their own.
In a statement, Pruitt said he’ll help bring a more business-friendly environment to the agency.
“I am deeply grateful and honored to serve as President-elect Trump’s EPA administrator,” Pruitt said. “The American people are tired of seeing billions of dollars drained from our economy due to unnecessary EPA regulations, and I intend to run this agency in a way that fosters both responsible protection of the environment and freedom for American businesses.”
Trump once promised to eliminate the EPA, but has since backed off that promise and now says it will get back to its original mission of ensuring clean air and clean water. He doesn’t want the agency involved in regulating fossil fuel production and has promised to open up more federal land to energy production.
Among the top priorities for Pruitt will be repealing the Obama administration’s environmental regulations, which Trump described as job killers.
“My administration strongly believes in environmental protection, and Scott Pruitt will be a powerful advocate for that mission while promoting jobs, safety and opportunity,” Trump said.
Pruitt is one of 28 attorneys general opposing the EPA’s Clean Power Plan in federal appeals court. The plan, which requires states to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from power plants by one-third, is being weighed by a 10-judge panel of the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals.
Trump has vowed to repeal the Clean Power Plan in his first 100 days in office, along with a number of other environmental rules that directly harm the coal industry.
Pruitt’s state is a major oil and gas hub and is at the center of developing rules for the fracking industry, including wastewater injection standards to avoid the hundreds of earthquakes in the state that have resulted from oil and gas drilling.
It is safe bet that his tenure at EPA would be marked by taking regulation of fracking wells out of the federal domain and placing it with the states. The EPA is currently looking to develop new methane regulations for oil and gas industry. That effort likely would be put on ice under Pruitt’s leadership.
