konkus

https://www.seattletimes.com/nation-world/nation-politics/top-aide-cancels-plans-to-leave-pruitts-epa/

no details

==

thehill

(EPA) media aide John Konkus is adding his name to the growing list of political aides leaving the agency this week.

Konkus became the fourth Pruitt aide to resign in five days — and the second in Pruitt's media department. Pruitt's communications head, Liz Bowman, announced her departure Thursday.

Konkus serves as deputy associate administrator in the EPA’s office of public affairs, which is the second in command on the communications staff.

Ryan Jackson, Pruitt's chief of staff, confirmed Konkus's departure Friday and said he was leaving to take a communications job at the Small Business Administration.

“From transition, working side by side with John as one of the ‘sherpas’ for Administrator Pruitt’s nomination, through his work on the beachhead early at EPA, and as Deputy Associate Administrator, John has been a valuable member of the EPA communications team," Jackson said in a statement.

"Administrator Pruitt is grateful for John’s service and wishes him well as he continues to serve the Trump Administration leading communications at the Small Business Administration."

Konkus did not respond to a request for comment.

Konkus's resignation comes amid reports that agency aide Michael Abboud had shopped around a story earlier in the week alleging that an Interior Department staffer was conspiring with a former EPA aide-turned-whistleblower to spread stories about Pruitt.

Pruitt did not issue his own statement of support for Konkus, as he had done earlier in the week for two other political aides who resigned, Albert Kelly and Pasquale Perrotta.

Kelly, who was hired to lead the agency's Superfund program last year, resigned Tuesday, and Perrotta, Pruitt's head of security, resigned on Monday.

Kelly has been under fire from the time he was announced to his position for his lack of a scientific background and his own financial history.

Perrotta has also been linked to concerns about some of Pruitt's security contracts, including an April 2017 security sweep in the administrator's office. The sweep was completed by Edwin Steinmetz, a business partner of Perrotta's at Sequoia Security Group.

He said the press was taking a toll on his family.

==

ref

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2018/05/epa-leaks/559607/?preview=ntqrDVAI0e6eHCcLKWkYujgOXcA

as Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt faces a seemingly endless stream of scandal, his team is scrambling to divert the spotlight to Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke. And the White House isn’t happy about it.

In the last week,a member of Pruitt’s press team, Michael Abboud, has been shopping negative stories about Zinke to multiple outlets, according to two sources with direct knowledge of the efforts, as well as correspondence reviewed by The Atlantic.

“This did not happen, and it’s categorically false,” EPA spokesman Jahan Wilcox said.

The stories were shopped with the intention of “taking the heat off of Pruitt,” the sources said, in the aftermath of the EPA chief’s punishing congressional hearing last week. They both added, however, that most reporters felt the story was not solid enough to run. On Thursday, Patrick Howley of Big League Politics published a piece on the allegations; he did not respond to request for comment as to his sources.

Abboud alleged to reporters that an Interior staffer conspired with former EPA deputy chief of staff Kevin Chmielewski to leak damaging information about the EPA, as part of a rivalry between Zinke and Pruitt. The collaboration, Abboud claimed, allowed the Interior staffer to prop up Zinke at the expense of Pruitt, and Chmielewski to “get back” at his former boss.

-

Abboud offered to connect reporters with Healy Baumgardner as a second source, according to a person with direct knowledge. Baumgardner, a former Trump campaign official, is a global energy lobbyist for the U.S.-China Exchange. She’s close to some EPA officials, the source, as well as an EPA official, confirmed. Baumgardner did not immediately return a request for comment.

According to the two sources, Interior staffers who fielded the reporters’ calls were able to ascertain that Abboud, who is a former Trump campaign official, was behind the stories. The Interior Department’s White House liaison then called the White House Presidential Personnel Office to complain about his conduct.

On Wednesday, a PPO official called top aides at the EPA “enraged” about Abboud’s efforts, according to a senior EPA official. The PPO official inquired whether Abboud was a “Schedule C” appointee, which would place him within PPO’s jurisdiction and thus give it the ability to fire him. But the official was informed that Abboud is an “administratively determined” hire, which means that only Pruitt himself has the ability to fire him. It is unclear the extent to which Pruitt was aware of these events.

Even so, the message from PPO, according to the senior official, was: “Basically, y’all are in trouble.” A White House official with knowledge of the events added: “Absolutely nothing Scott Pruitt did would surprise me.”

Heather Swift, a spokeswoman for Interior, and Raj Shah, a spokesman for the White House, both declined to comment.

We want to hear what you think about this article. Submit a letter to the editor or write to letters@theatlantic.com.

ELAINA PLOTT is a staff writer at The Atlantic,where she covers the White House.

==

wASHINGTON (AP) — A Leon County political operative and key aide to Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt has been granted permission to make extra money moonlighting for private clients whose identities are being kept secret.

:

A letter approving outside employment contracts for John Konkus — signed by an EPA ethics lawyer in August — was released Monday by Democrats on the House Energy and Commerce Committee.

The ethics official noted that Konkus' outside contracts presented a "financialconflict of interest" and barred him from participating in matters at EPA that would have a "direct and predictable" financial benefit for his clients.

More: Report: Tallahassee political operative ferrets out, rejects EPA climate change grant requests

Pruitt named Konkus, a Republican political consultant, to serve as the EPA's deputy associate administrator for public affairs. His duties have included signing off on hundreds of millions in federal grants.

The letter gave Konkus approval to work for at least two clients. Those names were blacked out by the agency before a copy was provided to Congress. The letter said Konkus was also expected to take on additional private clients, advising them about "strategy, mail and media production."

Konkus didn't respond to requests for comment Monday. The EPA's press office also did not respond to questions about his arrangement.

Federal regulations would still limit Konkus from receiving more than $27,765 from outside clients in 2017, according to the letter. His taxpayer-funded salary is about $145,000 annually.

Prior to joining the Trump administration, Konkus worked as an executive vice president for Jamestown Associates, a political consulting firm with an office in Tallahassee.

According to the firm's website last year, Konkus, who was the Trump campaign’s Leon County chair, "worked on the ground tirelessly to help President Trump win Florida."

Konkus also served two years as chief of staff to former Florida Lt. Gov. Jennifer Carroll. A Republican, Carroll was forced to resign in 2013 over consulting work she had previously done for a scam veteran's charity that state and federal prosecutors said laundered more than $300 million in proceeds from illegal gambling parlors.

In 2016, he guided the unsuccessful GOP primary campaign for his wife, Mary Thomas, in Florida’s 2nd Congressional District.

Since Konkus arrived in Washington in early 2017, hisresponsibilities have included reviewing and approving all EPA grants prior to being awarded to help ensure they "adhere to the policies and principles of the current administration," according to his online resume.

The Washington Post reported in September that Konkus had been scrutinizing grant applications for mentions of climate change, which he reportedly referred to as "the double C-word."

That's in line with statements by Pruitt, who as the administration's top environmental official has embraced a pro-fossil-fuel agenda while questioning climate science showing that global warming is primarily caused by man-made carbon emissions.

House Democrats decried what they called the politicization of the EPA's grants-making process in a letter sent to Pruitt on Monday.

"A political appointee cutting millions of dollars in funding to EPA grant recipients on what appears to be a politically motivated basis, while at the same time being authorized to serve as a paid media consultant to unnamed outside clients, raises serious concerns of potential conflicts of interest," said the letter.

Signatories included Rep. Frank Pallone Jr. of New Jersey, the top Democrat on the Energy and Commerce Committee.

==

Leon County political operative is roaming the halls of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency on the lookout for grant requests to study climate change, according to an article in the Washington Post.

John Konkus is the Trump administration's deputy associate administrator for public affairs at the EPA.

According to the Post, Konkus has veto power over the agency's grants and is waging a front-line war against  “the double C-word” — raising questions among researchers whether they will see any funding if they mention climate change in grant requests.

Konkus' vetting has resulted in the cancellation of about $2 million worth of projects.

“We’re draining the swampto ensure decisions about grants are in line with the Agency’s mission and policy priorities,” said EPA spokesman, Jahan Wilcox

Konkus is one of two Tallahasseans to join the EPA under President Donald Trump.

Over the holiday weekend, Trump announced Matthew Z. Leopold has joined the EPA’s General Counsel office. Leopold is a former general counsel of the Florida Department of Environment Protection and a former attorney with the U.S. Department of Justice. He had been working with the Carlton Fields law firm.

Konkus served as chief of staff for former Lt. Gov. Jennifer Carroll and was with the Tallahassee office of the Virginia-based political consulting company, Jamestown Associates. In 2016, he guided the unsuccessful GOP primary campaign for his wife, Mary Thomas, in Florida’s 2nd Congressional District. Konkus served as the Trump campaign's Leon County chair.

Since joining the EPA, Konkus has canceled $2 million in awards to universities, according to the Post. His appointment has raised questions from former EPA Administrator Christine Todd Whitman who served under George W. Bush.

“We didn’t do a political screening on every grant because many of them were based on science, and political appointees don’t have that kind of background,” Whitman told the Post.

Among the grants Konkus has canceled was a Bush-era project addressing indoor air pollution.

The EPA awards about $4 billion annually to fund research and projects addressing pollution. The EPA said that Konkus has targetted a "select few" for denial — 1 percent of the total reviewed by the new administration.

Reporter James Call can be reached at jcall@tallahassee.com.

==

E&E kevin b

Konkus, one of EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt's political aides, was approved by ethics officials to work outside the agency for a Republican political consulting firm and a Florida state representative.

E&E News won a Freedom of Information Act appeal to reveal that Konkus' "two likely clients" were a former employer, Jamestown Associates, and an unnamed state lawmaker from the Sunshine State, according to an unredacted copy of the ethics memo approving his outside activity.

Under the memo dated last August, Konkus, the deputy associate administrator in EPA's public affairs office, was allowed to advise clients about "strategy, mail and media production."

Other EPA records obtained by E&E News, however, indicate that Konkus never did any work for his prospective clients.

"Even though Mr. Konkus had sought prior approval of anticipated outside activity, he indicated that he did not in fact engage in any outside activity at all during calendar year 2017. Therefore, he has no outside income or position to report," reads a note from Justina Fugh, EPA's senior counsel for ethics, on Konkus' financial disclosure report for 2018.

In addition, in an email sent to Konkus last Friday, Fugh memorialized a conversation with him from earlier that day.

"Your report will not include any income from any outside clients because, as we discussed today, you never did engage in any outside activity for any clients in [calendar year] 2017," Fugh said.

"I approved you for the possibility of outside activity, but given the demands of your EPA duties, you never took on any clients at all. What you will be reporting in your [financial disclosure report] is that fact that you never had any clients after all, so have nothing to enter as additional income or outside positions on your financial disclosure report."

In addition, Konkus' approval from EPA to do work outside the agency has now been pulled back.

"You informed me that you simply do not have any time or inclination to consider any outside activity in the future. Thus, this note confirms that you no longer need the prior approval of outside activity. We will consider that approval to be rescinded since it's unnecessary," Fugh said in her April 20 email to Konkus.

EPA spokeswoman Liz Bowman said, "As the EPA ethics officer indicated, John followed the law, and furthermore never did any outside work."

Konkus declined to comment for this story when contacted by E&E News, including when asked who the Florida state representative was as one of his "likely clients."

Barney Keller, a partner with Jamestown Associates, confirmed to E&E News that Konkus has done no work for the firm.

"You're correct that John does no work for Jamestown since joining the Trump administration," Keller said. "As far as the state representative, I can't disclose that. But I am sure he wants to make America great again!"

Keller also told E&E News last month that Konkus had not worked for the firm after leaving it for federal service (*Greenwire*, March 5).

Also now unredacted in the memo is the name of another firm. Konkus was told not to contact the federal government on its behalf.

"You cannot contact the US government on behalf of Saint Luke Solutions LLC or any of your clients," said the EPA memo, which was also signed by Fugh. Konkus is a registered agent for a Saint Luke Solutions in Palm Harbor, Fla., according to state records.

Konkus' initial redacted memo approving his outside work attracted scrutiny from Democrats on Capitol Hill.

Last month, members of the House Energy and Commerce Committee sent a letter to Pruitt asking the EPA chief for the names of Konkus' clients and questioned whether he could be impartial in his service at EPA.

The lawmakers — Reps. Frank Pallone (D-N.J.), Diana DeGette (D-Colo.), Paul Tonko (D-N.Y.) and Kathy Castor (D-Fla.) — also noted his prior work at Jamestown Associates and noted that President Trump's 2016 campaign was one of the firm's clients.

Konkus, the Florida Panhandle field office manager for Trump's presidential campaign, also served as Pruitt's "media sherpa" for the incoming administration's transition team. Konkus joined EPA and in an unusual move for a political appointee was put in charge of reviewing its grant solicitations.

EPA, under the Trump administration, has had other financial ties to Republican consulting firms.

Go BIG Media Inc., which has worked on behalf of GOP campaigns and groups, contracted with EPA to help draft the agency's year-end report praising Pruitt.

Definers Corp., a Republican-run public affairs firm, also signed a media clipping services contract with EPA that was canceled after it garnered attention (*Greenwire*, March 9).

Reporter Sean Reilly contributed.

==

june 2018

bogardis

Recently disclosed records shed more light on EPA's review of agency grants, which number in the billions of dollars.

Internal EPA emails, released to theNatural Resources Defense Councilunder theFreedom of Information Act, offer more details on a grants review managed by John Konkus, a deputy public affairs chief and one of President Trump's political appointees. The documents show the review involved several appointees at times and often flagged EPA funds that were flowing to the Obama administration's allies and priorities, like combating climate change.

Career officials at EPA also pushed back on decisions to pull funding from certain organizations. They also tried to make the case that agency money could be worked into the agenda of President Trump and Administrator Scott Pruitt.

Steven Fine, acting chief information officer at EPA, even used one of Pruitt's buzzwords — "cooperative federalism" — when defending one grant that happened to mention the Clean Power Plan, the Obama-era rule to curb power plants' carbon emissions that Pruitt has sought to roll back.

"The proposed work connects multiple types of information that are not related to CPP but are relevant to the interest of EPA and states," Fine said in one email.

"The work unrelated to CPP is the vast majority of the proposed work and would support Agency and Administration goals related to clean air, clean water reliable energy production, and Cooperative Federalism," Fine added.

Konkus was not convinced by Fine's argument.

"This is not going to be funded and we would kindly ask you to alert the organization in the morning that the award will not be granted," he replied.

But Konkus was later informed that the grant recipient in question had sent in a revised cover letter to better address its work. That sparked a softer response from him.

"FYI this is how most grant discussions end up, the program and grantee work on a solution together to make the grant work better reflect the priorities of the Administration," he said in an email.

Memo now rescinded

The grants review attracted scrutiny after E&E News reported last August that Konkus, a political appointee, was overseeing the process, which had been typically managed by career officials(*Greenwire*, Aug. 17, 2017).An EPA spokesman told E&E News that the Trump administration wanted to be "good stewards" of taxpayer money.

"EPA awards about $4 billion in grants annually, and the Trump EPA is committed to being good stewards of the taxpayers' huge investment in our agency by reviewing every grant award and solicitation," said the spokesman.

EPA issued a memo on Aug. 8 last year directing its Office of Public Affairs to review and approve all grant solicitations.

EPA's grants process, however, has changed again.

The agency shared with E&E News an email sent last month, which rescinded the Aug. 8 memo. Instead, regional administrators and assistant administrators at EPA now have to approve "solicitation issuance" for grants.

"Now that all of our Regional Administrators and most of our program AAs are in place, we have shifted the responsibility to these leaders to review and manage the grants that flow through their respective offices," said the EPA spokesman.

Konkus' grants review may have begun even before the memo was issued last August. In an email to EPA Chief of Staff Ryan Jackson, the public affairs aide described marking a grant from earlier in the year.

"This response is from July when I first flagged this grant," Konkus said.

Several of the EPA emails show Konkus inquiring for more information about grants. In one, he asked if the agency had "a position on human testing."

"See this proposed grant," Konkus said.

In other messages, he prodded EPA to release funds to those who needed it most.

"There are a lot of Puerto Rico grants in these files. I would love to get that money out to them!" Konkus said in one email sent last September after Hurricane Maria had devastated the U.S. island territory.

Other Trump political appointees were asked to help with the grants review at EPA. Jackson said in an email, "I could use your help with grant solicitations," with several appointees copied on the message.

"These need to be reviewed by OPA (John Konkus) before they go live," Jackson said.

In replying to Jackson, Konkus noted that EPA program offices were using guidance that included "a reliance on the 2014-2018 strategic plan which was implemented by the past administration."

Konkus sought other appointees' advice, as well.

"These seem fine to me," Nancy Beck, the deputy assistant administrator in EPA's chemicals office, said in an email to Konkus, who also asked her to review a pesticide cooperative agreement.

"No concerns from my end," said Mandy Gunasekara, a senior EPA adviser on air issues, when asked about certain grants in another email to Konkus.

'No to this please'

Konkus flagged several grants that included climate change in their descriptions or linked to environmental organizations. He even recommended some to be pulled back.

In one list, he noted a grant obligated toNRDCto perform energy efficiency work, saying he and Gunasekara would "need a briefing on this one." The green group has been a staunch critic of the Trump administration.

Konkus also said, "No to this please," on a grant for climate change research.

Other grants for an integrated assessment of greenhouse gases as well as a study on air pollution meteorology andparticulate matter also received a "No to this one please" message from Konkus.

It's not clear from the email if their EPA funding was withdrawn in the end. At least one group has confirmed that its agency grant was rescinded.

The Global Alliance for Clean Cookstoves, a public-private partnership launched in 2010 by then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, aims to reduce indoor air pollution. Its EPA grant would have been spent on a project intended in part to develop "an integrated and robust communications and outreach program," accompanied by biogas promotion activities, according to an EPA summary.

"This grant should NOT move forward. Thank you," Konkus said in one email about the project.

The actual amount of the rescinded grant is not clear. Kip Patrick, an Alliance spokesman, referred questions this morning to a statement issued last August by the organization expressing surprise at EPA's decision to rescind the money.

"EPA's previous support of clean cooking has provided a model of how the U.S. can lead on innovative solutions to global issues in ways that have bipartisan support, that benefit Americans directly, and that help drive increased investment from the private sector and other partners," the statement said.

In recent years, the Alliance, hosted by the U.N. Foundation, had received a total of $1.4 million in EPA money, along with more than $70 million in funding from other governments and the private sector, according to the statement.

Winrock International, based in Little Rock, Ark., takes its name from the late Winthrop Rockefeller, a Republican who served as Arkansas' governor from 1967 to 1971. The nonprofit group's EPA grant was also geared to reducing indoor air pollution, according to the agency.

"This grant should not move forward," Konkus said in an email about the funds.

A Winrock spokesman did not immediately reply to emailed queries this morning to confirm the actual dollar amount of the grant and whether the funding was in fact withdrawn.

When EPA funding was pulled from a group's grant, Konkus recommended that "a courtesy email or call" be made to them.

"It does not have to be complicated, just a courtesy so that they hear from us first," he said in an email.

Konkus did not respond this morning to a message left on his cellphone by E&E News seeking more information on his reasons for flagging the grants.

Twitter: @KevinBogardus Email: kbogardus@eenews.net

==

https://projects.propublica.org/trump-town/staffers/john-a-konkus

John A. Konkus

Environmental Protection Agency (joined: Jan. 25, 2017)

Senior Advisor, Office of the Administrator | Deputy Associate Administrator for Public Affairs | Deputy Associate Administrator for State and Regional Affairs | $153,730 | ...Executive-level manager, top strategist, and expert communicator with 20 years of experience at the highest levels of federal and state government, presidential and congressional campaigns, politics, and business. Thirteen years working at the U.S. House of Representatives in Member’s personal, district, and committee offices as well as managing campaigns. Constantly cultivating a vast national network in Florida and Washington D.C. Recognized by the Tampa Bay Times as a “Florida Insider” in 2016, 2017 and 2018. On-the-record spokesman for a cabinet official, quoted in the New York Times, Washington Post, and dozens of high profile publications. Experienced world traveler including academic study in Southeast Asia, and representing the State of Florida and the United States in missions to Africa and Oceania.

Former Positions Outside Government

• Jamestown Associates Vice President
• Office of the President Elect Media Sherpa

Former Compensation Sources

• Jamestown Associates Executive Vice President

Employment Assets

Other Income/Assets

Employment Agreements and Arrangements

Liabilities

Do you know something about John A. Konkus? Send us an email at trump@propublica.org or send a Signal

ref

https://www.latimes.com/local/california/la-me-secret-science-20190219-story.html

Scientist says some pollution is good for you — a disputed claim Trump’s EPA has embraced

By SUSANNE RUST

FEB 19, 2019 | 5:00 AM

Scientist says some pollution is good for you — a disputed claim Trump’s EPA has embraced

Water samples are taken for testing from a canal in the Cawelo Water District near Bakersfield in 2015. A researcher who has suggested that exposure to toxic chemicals can be good for humans is helping to shape Environmental Protection Agency policies. (Brian van der Brug / Los Angeles Times)]

In early 2018, a deputy assistant administrator in the EPA, Clint Woods, reached out to a Massachusetts toxicologist best known for pushing a public health standard suggesting that low levels of toxic chemicals and radiation are good for people.

“I wanted to check to see if you might have some time in the next couple of days for a quick call to discuss a couple items …,” Woods wrote to Ed Calabrese.

Less than two weeks later, Calabrese’s suggestions on how the EPA should assess toxic chemicals and radiation were introduced, nearly word for word, in the U.S. government’s official journal, the Federal Register.

“This is a major big time victory,” Calabrese wrote in an email to Steve Milloy, a former coal and tobacco lobbyist who runs a website, junkscience.com, that seeks to discredit mainstream climate science.

“Yes. It is YUGE!” wrote Milloy, in response.

It was a glorious moment for Calabrese, who had been snubbed for decades by mainstream public health scientists because of his controversial research and theories.

Massachusetts toxicologist Ed Calabrese

Massachusetts toxicologist Ed Calabrese (University of Massachusetts)]

It also signified the major shift the EPA has taken under the Trump administration. More than any before it, this White House has actively sought out advice from industry lobbyists and the scientists they commission in setting pollution rules.

Denouncing the Obama-era EPA as an agency beholden to environmental extremists, the administration has not only dismissed mainstream science but embraced widely discredited alternatives that critics say are not consistent with the agency’s focus on improving public and environmental health.

Calabrese’s role illustrates a different side of this shift: the potential removal of longstanding public health practices and the incorporation of industry-backed and disputed science into federal environmental policy.

Calabrese spent decades advancing his ideas, facing skepticism and criticism from peers in the toxicology community while winning funding from companies whose bottom lines conformed with his views.

He says most of the pushback he receives comes from left-of-center toxicologists who see him as “the devil incarnate” for accepting industry funding and challenging their ideology. He maintains his science is solid and will be vindicated in time.

“These environmental regulatory people are very closed-minded,” he said. They won’t reconsider their standards, [note trumpian pop psych] and see that some of the agents they call harmful “actually can induce adaptive responses,” Calabrese said.

This view — that pollution and radiation can be beneficial — has many experts worried. The fact that such a position may become EPA policy, they say, portends a future in which corporate desires outweigh public and environmental health.

“Industry has been pushing for this for a long time,” said David Michaels, former assistant secretary of labor for the Occupational Safety and Health Administration who’s a professor of environmental and occupational health at George Washington University. “Not just the chemical industry, but the radiation and tobacco industries too.”

If the EPA ultimately adopts Calabrese’s proposed new regulations, researchers say it could change decades of standards and guidelines on clean air, water and toxic waste. It could also fundamentally alter the way the government assesses new chemicals and pesticides entering the marketplace.

“This is industry’s holy grail,” said Michaels.

If the EPA ultimately adopts Ed Calabrese’s proposed new regulations, researchers say it could change decades of standards and guidelines on clean air, water and toxic waste, such as those that apply to PBF Energy's Torrance Refining Co.

If the EPA ultimately adopts Ed Calabrese’s proposed new regulations, researchers say it could change decades of standards and guidelines on clean air, water and toxic waste, such as those that apply to PBF Energy's Torrance Refining Co. (Luis Sinco / Los Angeles Times)]

Can pollution be healthy?

For decades, federal agencies charged with investigating and regulating carcinogens, toxic chemicals and radiation have been guided by the assumption that if a substance is dangerous at some level, it is harmful at any level. The higher the exposure, the more harm done. The lower the dose, the less. And the risk doesn’t entirely disappear until the substance is removed.

This is known as the linear no-threshold model, and industry dislikes it because it generally assumes that there is no level, or threshold, of exposure that can be considered totally safe.

But research done on low exposures to toxins has been less than definitive. Experiments designed to test carcinogens and radiation at low levels often produce conflicting results — with, for example, some studies of a chemical showing harm, other studies showing no effect, and a few suggesting a net benefit. In other cases, there is no information at all to guide regulators.

In the face of such uncertainty, the EPA and other agencies have taken a cautious approach by relying on the linear no-threshold model. Where data are absent or uncertain, they assume some level of risk.

It is an imperfect but protective approach, say many public health specialists. They argue that in a human population that varies widely in age, health and levels of chemical exposures, it is imperative that the agency cast a wide, conservative and protective net.

For decades, national and international scientific bodies have upheld this approach. It has been reviewed and re-reviewed dozens of times, including most recently by the congressionally chartered National Council on Radiation Protection and Measurements, the National Academy of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine and the EPA.

At the same time, industry has funded scientists to conduct and promote research designed to poke holes in the linear no-threshold model.

And that is where Calabrese comes in. He has long argued that regulators “erred on the side of being protective” at the cost of billions of dollars per year to industry.

Calabrese is a proselytizer of hormesis, the idea that dangerous chemicals and radiation are beneficial at low doses. He says they have a stimulating effect.

Polluting industries have promoted hormesis as an alternative to linear no-threshold for decades, but they had gotten little traction until the EPA embraced it last April.

“It’s clearly not mainstream,” said Thomas Burke, professor and director of the Risk Sciences Institute at Johns Hopkins’ Bloomberg School of Public Health.

Burke and other experts say there are clearly scenarios where toxic chemicals can have beneficial effects in clinical and pharmacological settings, such as in the case of tamoxifen, which at low doses is effective at preventing and treating breast cancer but at higher doses can lead to blood clots, stroke and uterine cancer.

But, they say, what happens in a clinical setting can’t and shouldn’t be immediately applied to a regulatory, public health setting.

In the clinical case, “you have a doctor controlling and administering the medication to an individual,” said David Jacobs, a professor of public health at the University of Minnesota, who has published studies showing hormetic effects in some industrial pollutants. “The doctor can pull the medication at any time.”

“There is no way to control the dose a person gets from an industrial or agricultural chemical,” he said. “It’s not being doled out in pills and monitored by a physician who can lower it if the patient isn’t responding well.”

Therefore, Jacobs said, it would be dangerous to use hormesis as a framework for protecting public and environmental health.

“It really doesn’t pass the sniff test” when applying it to public health, Burke said, while allowing for its place in the forum of ideas. “I always teach my classes that there are other theories. It’s like any part of science, there are different points of view. Whether it’s about climate change or low doses.”

But he also teaches that one needs to know who has skin in the game. And in the case of hormesis, he said, that’s industry.

EPA headquarters in Washington, D.C.

EPA headquarters in Washington, D.C. (Associated Press)]

Big Tobacco embraces disputed research

In the early 1980s, Calabrese was a tenured professor at the University of Massachusetts, stringing together public agency and industry-funded grants to study chemicals in drinking water and the effects of ozone on mice.

His funders included the EPA, the state of Massachusetts, the Hoffman-LaRoche pharmaceutical company and semiconductor giant Digital Corp.

Then in 1985, he reached out to the Council for Tobacco Research, the research arm of the tobacco industry, seeking a grant to examine “a possible inherited and metabolic susceptibility to lung cancer in smokers.” His proposal was declined.

Sheldon Sommers, a physician at New York’s Lenox Hill Hospital and scientific director of the council, wrote in response to the grant application that Calabrese’s proposal “...is a mad hatter’s tea party sort of epidemiologic approach, and a total $2.1 million plus would likely be frittered away in my opinion,” according to documents from the UC San Francisco Truth Tobacco Industry Documents archive.

But by the 1990s, Calabrese had solidly established himself as a trusted scientist with the tobacco industry. He found they were interested in research that questioned the methods that regulatory agencies use to assess risk.

In a 1994 proposal to R.J. Reynolds, Calabrese offered to investigate a new kind of smokeless cigarette for the company, but also incorporate into his research “the loss of current benefits associated with smoking, such as protection from certain types of cancers and other illnesses…”

It was when he began his work on hormesis that Calabrese got attention from a broader range of industries.

With seed money from R.J. Reynolds, Dow Chemical, Procter & Gamble and others, as well as the EPA, Calabrese established a hormesis working group at the University of Massachusetts, which he called the Biological Effects of Low Level Exposures, or BELLE. Minutes from a 1990 advisory board meeting show the group chose not to use the word “hormesis” in its official name.

According to documents, Calabrese and his funders also held off on pushing a hormesis regulatory agenda until they’d built a sizable base of published scientific research.

Between 1990 and 2013, Calabrese received more than $8 million from companies and institutions, including R.J. Reynolds, Exxon Mobil, Dow Chemical, General Electric, the Department of Energy and the U.S. Air Force, to conduct research on hormesis.

Spokesmen from Exxon Mobil and the Air Force say they no longer fund Calabrese’s work.

Calabrese established his own scientific society, the International Dose Response Society, and his own hormesis journal — now called Dose Response — where he served as editor-in-chief.

He wrote hundreds of articles, in his own journal and in others (including “Should hormesis be the default model in risk assessment?” and “The importance of hormesis to public health”), organized dozens of conferences and delivered scores of talks.

And while his publication portfolio is vast, it is also broad. It includes not just studies of hormesis, but research on soil ingestion, opinion pieces on law and regulatory policy, historical treatise on science, and a few scathing, posthumous rebukes of revered scientists, such as Herman Muller, a Nobel prize-winner and supporter of linear no-threshold.

Calabrese insists his funding does not influence his work.

“My job involves finding financial support to do studies in my field,” said Calabrese. “I seek support from the private and public sectors. The University independently evaluates each of these for compliance with the rules.”

Not all of his money comes from industry or government agencies with extensive toxic waste sites. Between 2000 and 2013, Calabrese received $50,000 from the EPA to hold a conference on soil ingestion, and $50,000 from CalEPA for a reference database he built on cancer publications. He also received a $750,000 joint grant from the EPA and the American Chemistry Council, the chemical industry’s trade group, to study soil ingestion by construction workers.

Yet, despite his prolific career, he has instigated criticism and rebuke from many of his peers for his push on public and environmental health policy. He has been described as a “prominent industry consultant,” having “outlying views,” whose science is “way out there.”

For years he failed to get regulatory agencies to take him seriously.

Then Donald Trump was elected president.

President Trump and former EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt

President Trump and former EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt (Associated Press)]

‘We are winning’

On Sept. 5, 2017, nearly nine months after Trump was sworn in as president and seven months after Scott Pruitt was confirmed as head of the EPA, Calabrese wrote an email to Milloy, the former coal lobbyist who is a Fox news commentator. The Los Angeles Times obtained the emails through a public records request to the University of Massachusetts.

“I wanted to connect with you on whether and how it may be possible to get the EPA to consider changing the LNT [linear no-threshold model] to something far better,” Calabrese wrote.

Milloy had served on Trump’s EPA transition team and was still in touch with high-ranking officials in Pruitt’s agency.

A few months later, Calabrese wrote to Milloy again, letting him know that he’d corresponded with Ryan Jackson, Pruitt’s chief of staff, and sensed interest in a move against linear no-threshold.

Not long after Woods, the EPA’s deputy assistant of the Office of Air and Radiation, emailed Calabrese asking if he wanted to talk about “default linear assumptions” and other items.

The two arranged a call, and on April 19, 2018, Woods sent Calabrese draft language for a small section in the EPA’s proposed new ruling on transparency, called “Strengthening Transparency in Regulatory Science.”

“It is good what you have but you need a little more,” wrote Calabrese, who then suggested a line, which he altered twice, in email exchanges with Woods, before settling on this: “EPA shall also incorporate the concept of model uncertainty when needed as a default to optimize low dose risk estimation based on the major competing models (LNT, Threshold, and Hormesis).”

In other words, if the EPA is uncertain about a particular chemical’s impacts at low doses, it would abandon linear no-threshold as a default, and try other models instead, including hormesis.

On April 25, Milloy sent Calabrese the final wording for the draft proposal, which included Calabrese’s line nearly word for word.

“I am almost passing out with surprise and euphoria… ” Calabrese wrote Milloy after seeing the document.

The rule was posted for comment in the Federal Register on April 30, although a final ruling has not been announced.

John Konkus, an EPA spokesman, said the input and perspective from “the Editor-in-Chief of the journal, Dose Response” was welcomed, and reflected the perspective of “a wide variety of scientific experts” the agency reached out to when drafting the proposal.

Public health specialists outside the agency say that if the final language is adopted, it is likely to tie the EPA up in knots as it tries and then debates all the alternative models. It could also have profound effects on current and future standards for drinking water, air and toxic waste sites.

“EPA tries to be conservative in its setting of risks,” said Jan Beyea, a retired radiation physicist who has worked with the National Academies of Science. “Calabrese and collaborators think that most pollutants are good for you at low doses, so no need to be conservative.”

EPA spokeswoman Molly Block declined to speculate on whether the rule would be passed and how it would affect environmental rules that were set based on the linear no-threshold model.

Industry groups have praised the proposed change.

“We support moving away from over-reliance on the linear no -threshold default,” wrote a spokesman for the American Chemistry Council, the trade group for the chemical industry. It’s a method, he says that “frequently results in inflated health risk estimates and unwarranted, costly risk management decisions.”

Milloy also seemed pleased with the proposed ruling.

“The EPA should be open and transparent about how and what they are basing their decisions on,” he said, “and they should be using the best science available.”

In any case, he said, “we’re winning.”

Susanne Rust

CONTACT

Susanne Rust is an investigative reporter specializing in environmental issues. Before coming to the Los Angeles Times, she was the editor of Columbia University’s Energy & Environmental Reporting Project, where she oversaw several reporting projects, including a series that examined ExxonMobil’s understanding of climate science in the 1980s, 1990s and early 2000s. Rust started her career in 2003 as a science reporter at the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. She is the recipient of numerous journalism awards, and was a John S. Knight fellow at Stanford University in 2009, and the Center for Investigative Reporting’s environment reporter between 2010 and 2014.

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https://www.ecowatch.com/epa-climate-denial-groups-2573273596.html

cf AP

Emails Show EPA's Cozy Alliance With Major Climate Denial Group

Newly released emails show that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) under Scott Pruitt has routinely been in contact with one of the most prominent climate denier groups, the AP reported this weekend.

The emails, obtained under a Freedom of Information Act request by the Environmental Defense Fund and the Southern Environmental Law Center, show that John Konkus, a deputy public affairs official, routinely reached out to senior staffers at the Heartland Institute to collaborate on denier invitee lists for a proposed public hearing on climate science last May.

Konkus and EPA spokeswoman Liz Bowman also regularly commiserated with Heartland officials on negative press coverage of the agency, and collaborated on ways to amplify positive messages. Then-Heartland president Joseph Bast celebrated the retirement of New York Times climate reporter Justin Gillis in an email shared with EPA staffers last fall, writing that he is "still waiting for Chris Mooney and Juliet Eilperin at the WaPo and Seth Borenstein at AP to flame out."

As reported by the Associated Press:

"The emails underscore how Pruitt and senior agency officials have sought to surround themselves with people who share their vision of curbing environmental regulation and enforcement, leading to complaints from environmentalists that he is ignoring the conclusions of the majority of scientists in and out of his agency especially when it comes to climate-changing carbon emissions."

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https://www.politico.com/story/2018/05/04/epa-political-aide-to-depart-568601

EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt's inner circle continued to shrink Friday with the departure of yet another political aide — the fourth staffer to exit the agency this week amid the ongoing investigations into Pruitt's expensive travel and security spending and his tight relations with lobbyists.

Sources close to EPA expect more political appointees to join the exodus soon.

The news comes just a day after EPA’s top spokeswoman, Liz Bowman, announced she was heading to a job on Capitol Hill. On Tuesday, Pruitt’s lead security agent and Superfund task force head both quit. Policy chief Samantha Dravis left last month, and before that agriculture adviser Jeff Sands departed.

John Konkus, the second-in-command on the public affairs team, is leaving for a top communications job at the Small Business Administration. He has worked with Pruitt since helping prepare him for his Senate confirmation last year.

The raft of departures comes just a week after Pruitt sat through a day of grilling in front of two House subcommittees in which he blamed staff for many of the controversies surrounding his penchant for first-class travel, his spending on a round-the-clock security detail and a $43,000 soundproof phone booth and the $50-a-night Capitol Hill condo lease he secured last year from the wife of an energy lobbyist.

Pruitt is due back in the Capitol on May 16, when he's expected to testify before a Senate Appropriations subpanel, a Republican aide said Friday.

Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), who chairs the subcommittee, has previously described the growing oversight efforts on Pruitt as "absolutely appropriate."

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newsweek

http://www.newsweek.com/under-trump-epa-more-about-politics-science-659578

A former Trump campaign aide is now vetting hundreds of millions of dollars in grant money the EPA gives out to worthy environmental science and projects each year. It could mean that thousands of science projects are in jeopardy under the Trump administration.

John Konkus—a public relations expert who chaired Trump’s 2016 campaign in Florida’s Leon County—has told agency staff he’s scrubbing climate change “the double C-word” from projects the EPA funds, according to The Washington Post.

In late August the energy and environment website E&E News revealed a directive from EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt instructing all grants to be routed to Konkus. If Konkus “has any concerns, comments, or questions on the solicitation,” it reads, he will intervene in the grant process.

Konkus’ title at the agency is deputy associate administrator for public affairs, placing him in the EPA’s communications department. From 2013 to December 2016 he served as executive vice president at the political consultancy Jamestown Associates. Konkus joined the EPA in early February after acting as Pruitt’s “sherpa” during his confirmation hearings.

President Donald Trump, Pruitt has questioned the very existence of climate change and whether it is man made. President Donald Trump outlined his plan to cut $2.4 billion from the EPA’s budget in 2018 last March. About half of the agency’s annual $8 billion budget goes to grants.

Konkus is now making decisions about which scientific projects are worthy of funding. So far he has cancelled nearly $2 million for university and nonprofit organization projects.

An EPA spokeswoman pointed out to The Post that the figure represents just 1 percent of grants that have been given since Pruitt took office.

Read more: Are government agencies taking their lead from Trump and going after journalists?

The new policy is a break with tradition and shows a politicization of the grant process. Public relations are not usually involved in funding decisions.

Yet Konkus is not the only political appointee at the agency. Pruitt is staffing the upper ranks of the agency, which regulates America’s energy and oil and gas industry, with climate change deniers.

At the end of August former secretary of the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources (DNR) Cathy Stepp was appointed to head one of the EPA’s regional offices. “Her qualifications?” a release from the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) asked, “Stepp doubts human activity is the primary cause of climate change.”

While Stepp was serving in Wisconsin the EPA had to step in twice to spur her to deal with issues such as manure-contaminated drinking water. She also told her department to remove information from their website talking about how carbon emissions impact climate change. Fines for violating environmental rules shrank during the six-years Stepp headed Wisconsin’s DNR.

Over the weekend the EPA took a page from President Trump’s playbook and began attacking journalists from the Associated Press who reported that the EPA had not yet visited toxic dumps in and around Houston, Texas, after Hurricane Harvey made landfall August 25.

A majority of the sites, AP reporters found, were accessible by foot or vehicle. The EPA accused the newswire of ‘fake news.’

Since Trump’s inauguration the EPA’s news releases have taken a decidedly pro-energy industry turn, New Yorker magazine fact checker Talia Lavin pointed out in a series of tweets Saturday. The press releases, Lavin said, show an EPA “that has near utterly abdicated its duty to regulate” that industry.

In calling the AP’s reporting false and targeting Biesecker, the agency “is engaging in political smearing of the press and critics,” she said.

In late August a group of Democratic Senators accused Pruitt in a letter of taking “deliberate steps to thwart transparency” at the agency, including forbidding “staff from taking notes during meetings, so that they do not create records of your questions or directions.”

When questions about Konkus’ qualifications to evaluate scientific and other environmental projects applying for grants were put to the EPA by E&E News, a spokesperson said, the “grants are being reviewed to ensure they adhere to the Trump administration's goals and policies and the EPA's back-to-basics agend

Scott Pruitt hadn't long been Oklahoma's attorney general in 2011 when he sallied into his first public clash with U.S. EPA. The target: a proposed clampdown on power plant pollution clouding views at wilderness areas in three states.

It turned into a testy legal showdown that fizzled three years later when the Supreme Court refused to hear Oklahoma's appeal of a lower-court ruling in EPA's favor. But with Pruitt, a Republican, now poised to lead the agency he has often sued, his views on what's known as the regional haze program remain unchanged, recent statements suggest.

As EPA administrator, he could offer relief to power companies that cumulatively face billions of dollars in cleanups for older coal-fired plants.

Meanwhile, utilities and their allies in state government are buoyed by the possibility of a federal about-face. In a statement, Utah Attorney General Sean Reyes (R) said he hoped EPA would reconsider and accept the state plan."We're very concerned," said Michael Shea, senior policy associate at HEAL Utah, an environmental group backing EPA's plan to require two 1970s-era plants in the state to install new curbs on nitrogen oxides (NOx). The plants' owner, PacifiCorp, pegs the price tag at $700 million; together with Utah state officials, the firm is suing to void the federal plan in favor of a less stringent state alternative. Should Pruitt win confirmation to head EPA, he could pull the agency out of the lawsuit or roll back enforcement of the plan, Shea said.

It is a similar story in Arkansas, where Attorney General Leslie Rutledge (R) and Entergy Arkansas are suing to block EPA from requiring new pollution controls at several plants with total costs estimated at $1 billion or more. Last week, Rutledge asked the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to stay the EPA blueprint. In a news release, she voiced hope that Pruitt would scrap it (E&ENews PM, Feb. 8).

The stakes may be highest in Texas, where state leaders and power companies have already forced EPA to retreat on a haze plan that would force seven coal-fired plants to install or upgrade sulfur dioxide scrubbers.

No state's power sector spews more sulfur dioxide (SO2) than that of Texas, which in 2015 released some 260,000 tons of the acrid pollutant, according to the latest official figures. "The regional haze rule would cut that by more than half," said Dan Cohan, an associate professor of environmental engineering at Rice University, who in an op-ed in The Hill dubbed it "the most important pollution rule you've never heard of."

But the Texas plan carries a projected $2 billion price tag. After the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals froze implementation last July, EPA is now seeking to voluntarily remand the plan but has infuriated state officials by advancing a fresh proposal that would require controls on many of the same plants under another provision of the haze program (Greenwire, Dec. 12, 2016).

At the Competitive Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank deeply critical of EPA's approach, Senior Fellow William Yeatman called it "inconceivable" that Pruitt would allocate resources toward an EPA plan for Texas "that makes no sense."

Enforcement results

The heated polemics are a testament to the belated impact of the regional haze program, created by Congress four decades ago but seriously enforced only in the last few years.

The program's overall purpose is to return pristine views to 156 national parks and wilderness areas — most of them in the West — by 2064.

Lawmakers acted out of alarm that man-made air pollution was besmirching the Grand Canyon and other cherished landmarks; nitrogen oxides and sulfur dioxide are major contributors to the problem. The program has proved to be an unexpectedly powerful backstop for forcing cleanup of older coal-fired plants that had managed to skirt installation of up-to-date pollution control equipment under other EPA programs. The key lever — and the biggest flashpoint — is a requirement that power producers adopt "best available retrofit technology" (BART) for plants that launched operations between 1962 and 1977.

At the Four Corners Power Plant in New Mexico, once the nation's single largest source of NOx, regional haze regulations prompted the 2013 retirement of three generating units and requirements for tough new controls on the remaining two.Nationally, the haze program's impact is difficult to gauge because EPA leaves implementation up to its regional offices and makes no apparent attempt to keep tabs on either total costs or benefits. But in a 2014 paper, researchers concluded that requirements already in place would slash SO2 emissions from 35 power plants and other industrial facilities by some 85 percent from a starting figure of 590,000 tons. NOx releases from a slightly larger set of plants would tumble by two-thirds, from 430,000 tons to 130,000 tons, the paper projected. A separate study published the same year found that visibility had improved significantly in many remote parts of the United States since the early 1990s.

That work, which carries a projected $630 million price tag, is already under way. Once it's complete, annual NOx emissions, which had run as high as 38,000 tons earlier this decade, are in line to plummet to 3,000 tons, according to Annie DeGraw, a spokeswoman for Arizona Public Service Co., the plant's operator.

More recently, a tentative court settlement with the owners of the Laramie River Station, a 1,710-megawatt plant in Wyoming, could also curb combined NOx and SO2 releases by thousands of tons per year (Greenwire, Jan. 5).

And only last month, EPA signed off on a draft haze plan for Nebraska that would require new controls on the Gerald Gentleman Station, the state's largest source of SO2. That proposal is now caught in a broader Trump administration freeze on new regulations. It must still be published in the Federal Register and put out for public comment, a step "which could result in revisions, withdrawal or full implementation," David Bryan, a spokesman for EPA's Region 7 office, said in an email.

Fierce opposition

The Senate Environment and Public Works Committee approved Pruitt's nomination earlier this month; the full Senate could vote on it as early as this week.

If confirmed to head EPA, Pruitt would not have unfettered freedom to reverse course. Any attempt to undo haze rules already on the books, for example, would have to go through public notice and comment procedures. Environmentalists are already vowing to fight him every step of the way.

In general, "I think we're most likely to see delays, we'll likely see lower stringency required, and I think we'll likely see cost considerations take a much larger role," said Julie Domike, a former EPA enforcement attorney who is now a partner in the Washington, D.C., office of the firm Haynes and Boone LLP.

The backlash from utilities and elected officials has been fierce. Under the Obama administration, they charged, EPA used the haze program as a pretense for slapping new pollution controls on coal-fired power plants — even if the result was little or no visibility improvement. They also say that federal regulators are sidestepping Congress' intent by repeatedly substituting their own cleanup strategies for state plans.

The Obama EPA had "run roughshod" by imposing 15 regional haze federal implementation plans (FIPs), Yeatman said at a congressional hearing last March. That number far outstripped the number of FIPs employed by the three preceding presidential administrations combined under all facets of the Clean Air Act, he said.

No one from EPA testified at the hearing, held by the House Science, Space and Technology's Environment Subcommittee. In an interview late last year just before stepping down, Janet McCabe, the agency's acting air chief, acknowledged that there were situations "where we just couldn't approve the" state implementation plans.

In some cases, McCabe noted, EPA was under the gun from court-ordered deadlines, but she praised the haze program for delivering a "remarkable" amount of pollution reduction at a reasonable cost.

"That's one of the things that's really notable about it, is that for sources that were uncontrolled, there's available technology, NOx controls and SO2 controls, that are very cost-effective that make a huge difference," McCabe said.

To environmental groups that have repeatedly sued to goad EPA into action, federal intervention is a crucial counterweight to the electric industry's political might.

"In state after state, utilities and operators of larger coal-fired power plants have intimidated and persuaded and sometimes colluded with state regulators," said Al Armendariz, the former head of EPA's Region 6 office in Dallas, which pushed the Oklahoma haze plan. "The result has been that plant owners have been able to go decades without installing modern pollution controls." Armendariz is now with the Sierra Club's Beyond Coal campaign.

Pruitt's fight

At his confirmation hearing last month, Pruitt criticized EPA's handling of the haze program in the context of a broader pattern of trampling on state prerogatives.

"It shows an attitude of indifference," Pruitt said in response to a question from Sen. John Boozman (R-Ark.), "an attitude of trying to be dictatorial in some respects toward the state's role or manipulative of the state's role in a way that's, I think, counterproductive for air quality." He struck a more conciliatory note in replying to follow-up written questions from committee Democrats, saying he would consider all matters "with an open mind."

But Pruitt's pugnacious side was on full display in March 2011. He had been Oklahoma's attorney general for just two months when EPA officials disapproved a state haze plan on the grounds that it didn't do enough to cut SO2 emissions wafting into parts of Oklahoma, Arkansas and Missouri.

"Let the EPA be put on notice, as attorney general, I plan to do all that I can to protect and preserve the state's authority and responsibility under the Clean Air Act to craft and implement solutions for our state," Pruitt said in a news release.

Three months later, he took those objections into federal court, arguing that the EPA plan could raise power rates for Oklahoma consumers by as much as 20 percent over three years. The suit was the first of many he has brought against the agency; the reams of legal filings furnish a window into the tensions between state and federal regulators about compliance with BART mandates.

The state, in concert with Oklahoma Gas & Electric Co., argued that requiring the company to burn low-sulfur coal was enough. Pruitt also complained that EPA was eviscerating the state's authority and that requiring scrubbers at two OG&E plants would cost more than $1.2 billion.

EPA fired back with a suggestion that the state was credulously accepting inflated cost estimates from OG&E. "Far from the empty, rubber-stamping role" urged by Pruitt, the Clean Air Act affords EPA "a critical oversight" position, agency lawyers wrote in one brief.

When the time came for oral arguments before the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, Pruitt personally shouldered the job of presenting the state's case. In a 2-1 decision, the court in 2013 ruled in EPA's favor; the litigation sputtered to an end the next year when the Supreme Court declined to take Pruitt's appeal.

"Oklahoma ratepayers will bear billions of dollars in costs for an onerous federal regional haze plan," he said in a statement at the time.

To date, however, the effect has been limited. OG&E ultimately agreed to install scrubbers on two coal-fired generating units and convert another two to natural gas. The company has also cut its anticipated compliance costs from $1.2 billion to about $700 million.

Because OG&E has not yet sought to recover those expenses through higher rates, there has so far been no effect on electricity prices, Thomas Schroedter, executive director of Oklahoma Industrial Energy Consumers, said in an email this week. For Public Service Co. of Oklahoma, a smaller power producer also covered by the haze plan, rate hikes have averaged about 5.5 percent, Schroedter said.

As attorney general, Pruitt has accepted some $15,000 in campaign contributions from OG&E, according to the National Institute on Money in State Politics, a research clearinghouse. Pruitt was not available for comment, but a Trump administration spokesman said such contributions have never affected his work.

"To suggest otherwise is a politically motivated attack that should not be considered real news," the spokesman,John Konkus said, also by email. "As Mr. Pruitt stated time and again during his confirmation hearing, and as his record indicates, every decision he has made in public life has been based on what is best for the American people."

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