EPA dismisses clean air, science advisory boards

The Trump administration dismissed members of the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) Clean Air Scientific Advisory Committee and Science Advisory Board on Tuesday, a day before the confirmation of new EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin, The Hill has confirmed.

“A decision has been made to reset the Science Advisory Board (SAB) and Clean Air Scientific Advisory Committee (CASAC) and reestablish its current membership. This action emphasizes the importance of SAB and CASAC to EPA’s mission of protecting human health and the environment,” then-acting administrator James Payne said in a Tuesday evening email obtained by The Hill.

“EPA is working to update these federal advisory committees to ensure that the agency receives scientific advice consistent with its legal obligations to advance our core mission,” Payne wrote. “A request for nominations to the SAB and CASAC will be announced in the coming weeks, and we encourage all members to reapply.”

“The decision to reset these federal advisory committees emphasizes the importance of SAB and CASAC to EPA’s mission of protecting human health and the environment and seeks to reverse the politicization of SAB and CASAC made by the previous Administration,” an EPA spokesperson told The Hill in an email.

During President Trump’s first term, his first EPA administrator, Scott Pruitt, dismissed 12 SAB members in 2017. His successor, Andrew Wheeler, appointed eight replacement members the following year — one of whom, John Christy, has been criticized by Columbia Law School’s Sabin Center for Climate Law for contradicting the scientific consensus on climate change.

President Biden’s EPA chief, Michael Regan, dismissed several Trump appointees to the boards, including Louis Anthony “Tony” Cox Jr., whose research into soot pollution allegedly used funding from the fossil fuel industry. However, Regan re-appointed two Trump-appointed CASAC members he had previously dismissed, James Boylan and Mark Frampton.

Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.), the ranking member on the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, condemned the dismissals as political in a statement.

“By removing these independent experts, this administration is—yet again—selling out our nation’s public health and environmental protections to the same polluting industries that bankrolled much of Trump’s campaign.  This is not about good governance, this is about rigging the system for polluters; corruption at the expense of the American people,” Whitehouse said.

Rachel Frazin contributed.