EPA Freezing Grants to Air Quality Monitoring, Water Quality Testing

by Ken Silverstein, originally posted on January 25, 2017

 

The Trump administration is reported to be freezing monies that it grants to such projects as air quality monitoring and water quality testing, although the it says that such freezes are customary when a new White House comes to town and needs to reassess the situation.

“They’re trying to freeze things to make sure nothing happens they don’t want to have happen, so any regulations going forward, contracts, grants, hires, they want to make sure to look at them first,” said Myron Ebell, as reported by the Huffington Post. “This may be a little wider than some previous administrations, but it’s very similar to what others have done,” Ebell added, who is leading the transition at the Environmental Protection Agency that is the division freezing the grants.

Of course, a key difference between the outgoing Obama team and the incoming Trump administration is their views over environmental protection and how the monies are allocated. The latter says that EPA has been restraining business growth and that it would place more emphasis on traditional energy resources as opposed to sustainable technologies.

What the Huffington Post says is that this type of leak — the information about the freeze — is because existing EPA staffers feel that their mission might be undercut.

“I will say it’s pretty unusual for us to get these kinds of anonymous contacts from people at the agency, which makes me think it’s unusual,” said the Hill source, in the Huffington Post.

Here is what the Huffington Post has reported: No press releases will be going out to external audiences.

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