Trump Granted 202 Polluters Clean-Air Waivers Through EPA Email Process
Updated
Updated · The New York Times · Oct 24
Trump Granted 202 Polluters Clean-Air Waivers Through EPA Email Process
3 articles · Updated · The New York Times · Oct 24
Summary
202 industrial facilities won Trump administration waivers from new clean-air rules after the EPA invited companies to seek exemptions by email through a special inbox.
Those approvals covered some of the nation’s worst polluters, including chemical manufacturers, copper smelters and coal-burning power plants, effectively letting them bypass recently adopted toxic-emissions limits.
Residents near several exempted plants said the waivers heightened health risks, including outside Richmond, Virginia, where a medical-device sterilizer uses a cancer-causing gas, and in Clairton, Pennsylvania, near a steel plant emitting another carcinogen.
Records reviewed over six months also pointed to heavy chemical-industry lobbying behind the decisions, adding to what earlier reporting described as the largest presidential intervention in the Clean Air Act’s 50-year history.