Save the EPA!

 

President Trump

The White House

1600 Pennsylvania Avenue

Washington D.C.  20500

27 January 2017

Dear President Trump:

The Chicago Tribune reported on January 25 that you have issued an order to Environmental Protection Agency employees telling them to “temporarily suspend new business activities” and also “barring news releases, blogging, or social media posts.”

The Tribune did not report the reasoning behind this move, but I wanted to write you to let you know that, as a citizen of the United States, I consider the work that the EPA does to be vital and important in protecting the quality of life of the American people and I encourage you to lift both these orders immediately.

My dad spent his entire work life as a construction manager and I know that sometimes environmental quality rules made his work difficult.  There were times when he was frustrated by the need to preserve wetlands on a job-site, or to have to wait for an environmental impact report before starting work.  I understand his frustration.  Perhaps it is these aspects of the EPA’s work that you are reacting to.

But I also know that there have been huge environmental disasters in the United States as a result of either ignorance or deliberate choices to maximize corporate profits at the expense of the people who live in the regions where the disasters have occurred.  Whether we are talking about the Love Canal disaster in the 1970s, where the Hooker Chemical company left 20,000 barrels of toxic waste on a site, causing higher rates of leukemia for residents and requiring a superfund operation that only finished cleaning up the site in 2004, or the current USS Lead Superfund site in East Chicago – we are talking about an agency that can make life better and safer for many Americans. 

I do not understand the order to prevent EPA officials from talking about what they do.  Free and open communication leads to informed legislators and citizens.  A gag order is the sort of thing I would expect from a totalitarian despot, not a president of a democracy. 

I don’t work for the EPA, but I am glad it exists.  I want it to continue cleaning up disaster sites and continue enforcing anti-pollution laws so that more of this sort of thing does not happen.  If you shut down this agency, you will cause people to get sick and die.  That is plain and simple.  

It is my hope that, as President of this country, you will reverse these decisions that put the people of our country at risk.

Regards,

Bill Boerman-Cornell

 

 

 

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