A top environmental advocacy group is preparing a lawsuit against the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), helmed by Scott Pruitt, for the agency’s rollback of environmental protections under the Trump administration.
Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) President Rhea Suh told supporters in a note obtained by the Washington Examiner on Saturday that the federal court system is the best “antidote” to Pruitt’s policies.
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“It’s a new year, but EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt wants to roll back the clock on environmental protections and drag us back decades,” Suh wrote in the letter to supporters.
“The best antidote to Pruitt’s illegal attacks on our environment? Federal court,” she adds. “We’re gearing up to file suits on dozens of fronts in the year ahead.”
In a tweet Saturday, the group also quoted former EPA chief Carol Browner, who attacked Pruitt’s leadership of the agency.
“Under Pruitt, what [the EPA is] doing is conscientiously tearing the place down,” Browner said.
In the note, Suh notes a number of priorities for the NRDC in the year ahead, including preventing Pruitt from “greenlighting” neonicotinoid pesticides, which some scientists say pose a risk to pollinating insects such as bees.
The NRDC joined a number of groups last year in an unsuccessful push against President Trump’s “one in, two out” executive order, which directs federal agencies to repeal two regulations for each new one they issue.
“President Trump’s order would deny Americans the basic protections they rightly expect,” Suh said in a statement last year. “New efforts to stop pollution don’t automatically make old ones unnecessary.”
“When you make policy by tweet, it yields irrational rules,” she added. “This order imposes a false choice between clean air, clean water, safe food and other environmental safeguards.”