Internal Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) correspondence obtained by The Hill shows that career staff members attempted to make Congress aware of the issue, but they believe their efforts were rebuffed — including by political appointees — under the Trump administration.
One employee lamented that career staff “had tried to tell” the Senate about the problem, but he could not get approval to do so.
The clause at issue, written by the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, said on Jan. 1, 2020, some of the chemicals — also known as PFAS — must be included in the EPA’s reporting database for toxic chemical releases.
But while the clause specified an annual reporting threshold for the compounds, it did not indicate whether Congress intended to deem them “chemicals of special concern,” as opposed to the baseline “standard chemical” label.
Without the stricter designation, polluters could hide their discharges under an exemption intended for chemicals released in small proportions.
Some EPA experts wanted to point this out to Senate staffers but said they were blocked from doing so.
In August 2019, EPA career official David Turk expressed concern that under the NDAA as drafted, companies would be able to get out of reporting their PFAS discharges if they only made up a small percentage of the total discharge.
But the messages apparently never reached the Senate.
“Starting in late July 2019 we became aware of this issue and tried to raise it with Michal on multiple occasions,” Turk wrote in a June 10, 2020, email chain.
Turk was referring to Michal Freedhoff, who at the time served as a Democratic staffer for the Senate committee.
Asked by colleague Stephanie Griffin where the breakdown in communication occurred, Turk said that it was “initially, Mark Hartman. And then Nancy Beck.”
Hartman is a career official. Beck was a Trump appointee.
In his exchange with Griffin, Turk then recounted a situation in which he and his colleagues were blocked from sharing the issue with the Senate committee.
“Then we finally did get approval to include it in materials to send to Nancy that she might then send to SEPW, which we knew she wouldn’t send to them,” Turk added.
Beck, who is no longer with the agency, said that in January 2019, Alexandra Dunn became the Senate-confirmed assistant administrator of the Office of Chemical Safety and Pollution Prevention — the position directly above her.
“She was the decision maker, not me,” Beck wrote in an email.
Read more from Rachel and our colleague Sharon Udasin at TheHill.com.
