EPA political and career staffers rushed to stand up a program to peel back environmental regulations on industrial polluters, newly released emails show.
The almost 300 pages of internal communications, made public Thursday by the Environmental Defense Fund, show the high level of EPA participation in creating the White House’s “presidential exemption” program to allow power plants, chemical manufacturers and other businesses two-year compliance breaks merely by emailing an application.
Environmental groups have denounced the arrangement, unveiled in March, as an “inbox from hell.”
While the agency has previously downplayed its involvement, the email traffic shows that EPA staff actively solicited industry applications and that in at least one case, a top political appointee was in direct touch with a candidate for an exemption.
