Environmental Protection Network Details Trump Administration Actions to Undermine 50 Years of Environmental and Public Health Progress
As we mark the 50 th anniversary of Earth Day, we are at another historic moment as the world faces environmental and public health challenges barely imagined 50 years ago. Sadly, in less than four years, the Trump administration has repealed or rolled back many of the protections spurred on Earth Day 1970 by millions of people around the globe who recognized the urgent need to clean up our air, water and land.
Recognizing the real-life implications of actions of the Trump administration, the Environmental Protection Network (EPN) has created the Trump Environmental Record, a snapshot of the most significant decisions or proposals by the Trump EPA, and their expected negative effects on people’s health and environmental conditions.
“The actions by the Trump administration to undermine environmental and public health protections are not acceptable,” said EPN Executive Director Michelle Roos. “Fortunately, EPN members, EPA alumni with decades of expertise and experience, have volunteered their time to detail how this administration is hurting people and the natural world on which we all depend.”
The rollbacks and efforts to weaken the rules have serious and measurable consequences, especially for already overburdened low-income communities and communities of color. Increased air pollution will lead to more respiratory illness and heart disease, and shorten people’s lives. Decreased water quality threatens our drinking water and the rivers, lakes and streams that support fisheries and support outdoor recreation in every state. Reduced Superfund cleanups are leaving communities peering through fenced properties at acres of contaminated land. And climate change and its devastating consequences have been left largely unchecked.
“We simply cannot allow 50 years of hard-won environmental progress to be reversed in just four years,” said EPN member Elizabeth (Betsy) Southerland, PhD, former Director of the Office of Science and Technology in the EPA Office of Water, who spearheaded the information collection project. “We owe that to the generation that will celebrate the 100th anniversary of Earth Day in 2070.”
ABOUT THE ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION NETWORK
Founded in 2017, the Environmental Protection Network (EPN) harnesses the expertise of more than 500 former EPA officials to provide an informed and rigorous defense against efforts by the Trump administration to undermine EPA’s mission to protect public health and the environment. To date, our volunteers have produced almost 100 analytical documents, submitted over 50 formal comments and letters, and testified at almost 30 agency hearings and advisory board meetings. EPN has become a trusted resource to reporters, NGOs, and Congress, and continues to help answer the call for objective analysis and scientific accuracy about public health and EPA when all of these are under siege.
CONTACT: Caren Kagan Evans, 301-467-6337 (cell)
www.environmentalprotectionnetwork.org
