The Environmental Protection Agency is set to take a big step forward Thursday toward implementing a contentious “secret science” rule, a move that critics fear will undermine the scientific process in favor of cherry-picking research that supports specific outcomes.
The “Strengthening Transparency in Regulatory Science” rulemaking, as it is formally titled, would require EPA’s scientific studies to be independently verified through a peer-reviewed process outside the agency. It wouldn’t address any one issue or regulation, but rather would undergird the science behind much of what the agency does.
The rule would help the industry contain the cost of new regulation by giving them the ability to question the basis of new pollution standards, especially if the “public is likely to bear the cost of compliance” with those regulations, according to the EPA.
The deadline to receive input from the public on the rule closes at midnight, and already it has garnered nearly a quarter of a million comments.
The comment deadline was extended from May 30 to Aug. 16 due to increased interest in the rulemaking and the potential significant harm that critics say it will pose to the scientific integrity of the EPA.
The Natural Resources Defense Council, in its formal request to extend the comment period, said environmental groups’ meetings to discuss the rule at the White House were canceled, while industry groups were given unabated access in the rule’s early development stages.
“The exclusion of environmental groups from these preliminary discussions is cause for significant concern,” wrote John Walke, the environmental group’s clean air director. “In light of this imbalance, EPA should extend the comment deadline to ensure that the public is fairly represented in the rulemaking process.”
However, tens of thousands of the comments arriving in the EPA’s inbox are from private citizens, not major trade associations or environmental groups, arguing both for and against the regulation.
Most of the comments are not substantive and read more like tweets than formal comments on policy. “[C]ut the crap epa – showyourwork — no secrets!” reads one comment from a private citizen.
Climate change skeptics say the rule is critical to reining in the agency under the administration’s broader deregulation agenda.
“Given the Environmental Protection Agency’s constrained mission, flawed paradigm, political pressures to chase the impossible goal of zero risk, and evidence of actual corruption, we can have no confidence in any science it produces in justification of its regulations,” the Heartland Institute said in its comments. The group argued that new guardrails for EPA science are necessary because of the agency’s lack of transparency and integrity and its “culture of disrespect for the scientific method and independent peer review.”
Other comments raised more practical, economic concerns for increasing scientific oversight at the agency.
The Sacramento-based construction company Delta submitted comments that detailed how the company was forced to close because of the EPA’s use of a scientific study to form the basis of pollution rules.
“Facing bankruptcy of my 73 year family business due to the imposition that I must replace all of my previously owned and once legal diesel ‘assets’ with new, I closed my doors in June 2017,” wrote Norman R. “Skip” Brown, owner of both Delta Construction Company, Inc. and Asphalt Consulting Services, LLC.
“My equipment was sold at auction and employees ranging to 40 years with me lost their jobs,” Brown said. He sees merit in the science rule by giving industry a voice when a single study can mean life or death for a business. In his case, it was a 1995 study on the harmful effects of soot from diesel engines.
Larger industry trade associations like the American Petroleum Institute, the largest oil and natural gas industry association, see similar reasons for supporting the science rule, but appears to be walking a careful line on how far it thinks EPA should go in implementing the regulations.
In a preview of the group’s opinion, Ted Steichen, API senior policy adviser, told the EPA at a public hearing last month that “[s]cience used when developing policy and regulations impacts all aspects of API member business,” but that they are simultaneously “dedicated to continuous efforts to improve the compatibility of their operations with the environment.”
The API supports the use of sound and transparent science in public policy making, said Steichen, outlining ways the EPA can ensure the science it uses is able to be reproduced by outside parties. His remarks were submitted to the EPA comment docket, but other more substantive comments are expected to also be submitted on Thursday.
Meanwhile, environmental groups are pressuring the agency to withdraw the proposed regulations as an affront to science.
The Clean Air Task Force said it is “concerned about EPA’s current attitude towards science,” senior scientist David McCabe said at a public hearing. He said the Trump administration’s recent approach to environmental rulemakings “show the Agency’s disregard for objective information and the scientific process, and its move to rely on analysis that supports particular outcomes.”
McCabe said this should be of “great concern for all Americans, whose health and welfare depend upon effective environmental regulation,” according to the remarks submitted to EPA.
