Playing a key role in Trump’s decision to exit the Paris climate accord, the former Oklahoma attorney general has emerged as one of the most influential policy architects in the president’s cabinet By Juliet Eilperin and Brady Dennis / The Washington Post WASHINGTON — Scott Pruitt, the head of the Environmental Protection Agency, has emerged as one of the most influential policy architects in the president’s Cabinet, a skilled and sometimes brash lawyer who is methodically taking apart a slew of regulations and agreements affecting everything from manufacturing operations to landfills.
Many of these actions remain a work in progress: It will take years for the United States to exit the Paris climate accord, as Trump announced Thursday, and EPA officials have just begun to rewrite many of the rules he has vowed to scrap.
Jeremy Symons, associate vice president of climate political affairs at the Environmental Defense Fund, an advocacy group, said that while Pruitt would appear “to be too far removed from the center of power,” he has already had an outsized impact.
Pruitt is better positioned to make headway than other Cabinet members, because so many of President Barack Obama’s climate policies were advanced through executive actions rather than legislation.
At the outset of the administration, the lawyer explained, Pruitt sought to soften the budget ax and get more political appointees on board by acting conciliatory toward other senior administration officials.
The administrator is pursuing a similar strategy to what he did in Oklahoma when suing EPA on 14 different fronts, Walke said.
That’s the easy part.
But there have been many other policy reversals.
The agency is also seeking to delay oral arguments in two cases challenging EPA’s 2012 standard for air toxins from power plants as well as its 2015 smog rule.
Without question, Pruitt has a narrower view of EPA’s role than both his Democratic and Republican predecessors.

Three Wisconsin workers die in corn mill explosion, several more seriously injured.
An explosion at a Cambria, Wisconsin corn mill and ethanol plant Wednesday night took the life of three workers and injured nearly a dozen.
Spokesmen for the company reported that 16 workers were in the mill at the time of the explosion.
OSHA and other federal agencies have cited Didion Mills for multiple safety and environmental violations as far back as the early 2000s.
Purdue University, which tracks fatalities from grain dust explosions, reported five having occurred in the United States last year, killing two workers.
The company received no further OSHA citations thereafter.
In 2010, Didion agreed to pay $1.05 million to the Wisconsin Department of Justice to settle lawsuits that alleged the company violated state clean air and water regulations regards emissions from its plants into the air and into neighboring streams and lakes.
A month later, Democratic Governor Jim Doyle announced that Wisconsin had been awarded $14.5 million in federal stimulus money for so-called green energy projects, $5.6 million of which went to Didion Mills to significantly expand its corn milling and ethanol production.
The US Environmental Protection Agency had already referred to Didion as “a high priority violator” that had violated the federal Clean Water Act many times in 2008-2009, using excessive amounts of chlorine and other chemicals that found their way into water systems nearby.
When Didion Mills applied for the corn gas stimulus package, US officials overseeing the grants did not ask about previous environmental or OSHA safety violations.

Airway Heights tap water still contaminated.
They seeped into groundwater from a fire training site on the eastern edge of the base.
Airway Heights Fire Chief Mitch Metzger said 20 samples were recently collected from water lines throughout the city, and four showed concentrations of the chemicals ranging from 85 to 141 parts per trillion.
The rest of the samples, Metzger said, showed no trace of the chemicals or tested well below the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s recommendation of 70 parts per trillion, a guideline based on “lifetime exposure.” City officials had hoped to lift the water advisory more than a week ago, but Metzger said Friday that an ongoing flushing process has proved successful at decreasing contamination levels.
Some contamination remains because the city can’t drain its system completely.
It needs to keep reservoirs about halfway full to maintain pressure for firefighting operations, Metzger said.
“The first couple of weeks, that was a real challenge,” said Justin Davis, a co-owner of Wolffy’s Hamburgers in Airway Heights.
The restaurant has been spending hundreds of dollars a week to ship in fresh ice, even though it’s equipped with an ice machine.
And employees have been making frequent trips to the nearby Yoke’s grocery store to stock up on canned soda, Davis said.
The city and the Air Force have been providing 100 gallons of bottled water a day to local businesses, but even that posed some logistical challenges during the first few days.

By: Commissioner Jim Chard Special to the Delray newspaper The City is engaged in an intensive effort to write a new Comprehensive Plan which will guide City staff and elected officials for the next 25 years.
A friend of mine used to say “if you don’t know where you are going, any road will get you there.” As long term residents, recent arrivals, and visitors who love our Village by the Sea, the Comprehensive plan is the very best way for you to make sure that our City evolves in the right direction and is prepared for what the next quarter century has in store for us.
Re-invigorating neighborhood retail and commerce – Many cities have revived their walkable corner markets and repurposed them as restaurants serving locally grown produce, galleries, specialty coffee, and co-op work space.
We require new development to underground utilities but the City as a whole does not have a policy.
Canopy trees – Speaking of trees, Delray has a “tree canopy” of around 20%, in some neighborhoods, like the Southwest communities, the canopy declines to 10%.
Canopy trees cool our streets (think Atlantic Avenue), generate gentle breezes, sequester carbon, provide homes for birds and wildlife, clean the air, and reduce water pollution.
Alternative mobility – Many residents are frustrated by traffic congestion and parking challenges and yet the City continues to maintain automobile friendly policies rather than encourage alternatives to the automobile.
And yet City regulations require significant parking space based on use, not evolving transportation technologies.
This is a long term trend the City is already recognizing (via recent regulations for Urban Agriculture) and should encourage as part of our thriving hospitality ecosystem.
These are just a few ideas which could be incorporated into our Comprehensive Plan.

EPA Awards $651,709 to Arkansas Department of Environmental Quality.
EPA and Arkansas partner to prevent water pollution 06/02/2017 DALLAS – (June 2, 2017) The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) awards a water quality grant to assist the Arkansas Department of Environmental Quality (ADEQ) in administering the state’s water quality and ground water programs.
These pollution control programs support the goals of the Clean Water Act to protect rivers, lakes, bays, wetlands, and coastal waters.
Streams and wetlands benefit communities by trapping floodwaters, recharging groundwater supplies, removing pollution and providing habitats for fish and wildlife.
Families and farms located downstream understand the importance of healthy headwaters upstream.
One in three Americans get their drinking water from public systems that rely on seasonal and rain-dependent streams.
The Clean Water Act provides funding to water pollution control programs to build and sustain effective water quality programs that ensure the health of our nation’s water bodies.
The funds are awarded under section 106 of the Clean Water Act.
Programs under the act support monitoring, assessment, protection, and prevention of polluted runoff in waterways.
To learn more about ADEQ visit: https://www.adeq.state.ar.us/ To learn more about ADEQ’s water quality program visit: https://www.adeq.state.ar.us/water/

READ: How Prisons Are Affected By Climate Change.
It states: [T]he toxic impact of prisons extends far beyond any individual prison, or any specific region in the United States.
Across the country, federal environmental violations are abundant state by state.
Another spill occurred in 2008, again in 2014—and yet again in 2015 and in January of this year.
Or the water they drink is contaminated with arsenic or lead.
In the Southwest, where summer temperatures can be extreme, a metal bedframe can become dangerous if a facility lacks proper air conditioning.
As in California, 2011 was a deadly year in Texas prisons.
We lay in the water, put the sheet over us while blowing the fan under the sheet, to keep the body temps down.” The Texas Department of Criminal Justice’s solution during periods of extreme heat was to tell Pack Unit prisoners to simply drink more water, recommending up to two gallons of water a day on extremely hot days.
The prisoners drank thousands of gallons of the arsenic-tainted water for more than 10 years before a federal judge ordered TDCJ to truck in clean water for the prisoners last year.
The report takes the reader into the lives of several prisoners and the various health impacts these conditions have had on their lives.

Stormwater retention ponds may not protect surface waters from road salt contamination.
Stormwater management practices are designed to intercept water runoff from roads and parking lots before pollutants reach surface waters.
Detaining runoff in retention ponds can reduce flooding, increase the amount of water that is absorbed into the ground, and allow pollutants to bind to sediments in the ponds or be absorbed by algae and plants instead of traveling to streams and wetlands where they may harm wildlife and human health.
The research team recently completed a study, published in Environmental Science and Technology, to determine how well current stormwater management practices mitigate the effects of road salts and how those salts might be impacting both the surface waters in streams and ponds, and the groundwater that many citizens using well systems rely on daily.
If the stormwater ponds were working effectively, Snodgrass explained, he and his team could test the groundwater between the ponds and streams and expect to find very little sodium chloride because it would have been retained in the ponds.
The researchers discovered that routing runoff contaminated with road salts to stormwater ponds actually resulted in plumes of highly contaminated groundwater moving from the ponds to streams.
If salt levels continue to increase in freshwater areas, many fish and amphibians will stop breeding and eventually die because their bodies cannot adjust to the change.
"Some counties are already reimbursing people for the costs associated with replacing contaminated water wells," he added.
Snodgrass and his team plan to continue researching how road salts and other chemicals affect wildlife and the environment, while other researchers are exploring the effectiveness of alternatives to road salts and their potential effects on the environment and human health.
"It’s a balance sheet we’re looking at between economics and the environment and human health," Snodgrass said.

water pollution project made by grade 3 students with recycle material.
K-ESS3-3 = "Communicate solutions that will reduce the impact of humans on the land, water, air, and/or other living things in the local environment."
Each group will be given a bucket of water and "garbage."
Once they have destroyed their water, they will need to try and fix it.
They will need to discuss some possible solutions on how they can reduce the amount of garbage that gets into our water.
Experiment ~ Can You Undo Water Pollution?
We grabbed a bucket of clean water, some household trash, vegetable oil (to stand for toxic oil spills), tongs, and a strainer.
Challenge your students to an oil spill clean-up!
Read on for a STEM challenge that teaches environmental consciousness, problem solving, and team work along with extension math problems that use measurement, percentages, and volume calculations.
Our students loved this activity, and we think yours will too!

Chinese vice premier stresses implementation of major sci-tech programs.
BEIJING, June 2 (Xinhua) — Chinese Vice Premier Liu Yandong Friday stressed the need for implementation of major science and technology programs to improve the country’s innovation capability.
"Implementing major science and technology programs is essential to raising our country’s innovation capability and realize leapfrog development," said Liu when addressing a national conference on these programs.
Liu hailed progress made in the past decade since these major projects were launched in 2006, saying they have helped to lift the country’s sci-tech and industrial core competitiveness and support its supply-side structural reform and enhancement of its national strength.
The vice premier ordered targeted efforts and clarified responsibility to ensure preset objectives will be achieved.
Efforts should be made to achieve major breakthroughs in key technologies, speed up the process from lab results to production, and deepen reform to train more leading sci-tech talent and innovative companies, Liu said.
China has nailed down 16 major sci-tech programs including developing its own large aircraft, manned space programs and water pollution control and treatment in the country’s middle and long-term program for sci-tech development from 2006 to 2020.

FREMONT – The Spiegel Grove Squires, the vintage base ball team at the Rutherford B. Hayes Presidential Library and Museums, will play its first home game with local celebrities on June 11.
Admission is free.
It was in the 1860s that base ball — spelled two words back then — became an organized sport with rules of play and standards for base ball clubs.
Members of the Squires are volunteers.
They have studied and learned the methods of play used in the 1860s, including playing bare-handed.
Players are called ballists, and they wear period-style uniforms and adopt the language of 19th-century base ball during their matches — as games were called back then.
The Squires are sponsored by Wright Leather Works LLC.
The Hayes Presidential Library and Museums is America’s first presidential library and is located at Spiegel Grove at the corner of Hayes and Buckland avenues.
The facility is affiliated with the Ohio History Connection.
For information, call 419-332-2081, or visit rbhayes.org.