Four former EPA chiefs from past Republican and Democratic administrations endorsed Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden on Monday and slammed the direction of the agency under the Trump administration, The Hill reports.
Christine Todd Whitman, the former Republican governor of New Jersey who ran the EPA under President George W. Bush, told reporters: “I’ve never seen an administration that actually seems to me to have a war against the environment and a war on science. The Environmental Protection Agency has a very simple mission. It’s to protect human health in the environment. This administration seems determined not only to do away with it but to turn its back aggressively on that mandate.”
Bill Reilly, who led the EPA under former President George H.W. Bush and Gina McCarthy who led the agency under President Obama both praised Biden for his climate plan which would transition the United States to a net-zero economy by 2050.
The former chiefs were also blunt in their assessment of the EPA under the Trump admnistration and of the current head, Andrew Wheeler.
“This administration is simply gutting the Clean Water Act, letting polluters dump whatever they want into the waters,” Carol Browner who was head of the EPA under President Bill Clinton said. As for Trump’s claims about his environmental record, Browner said, “the closest he has come to the Everglades is to golf.”
She also took offense to Wheeler comparing himself to Bill Ruckelshaus.
“How dare he compare himself to Bill Ruckelshaus, who served two different terms as EPA administrator and launched the agency in a very, very significant way, making it about protecting the health of the American people. Mr. Wheeler is no Mr. Ruckelshaus,” she said.
Read more from The Hill.
