President Donald Trump has abandoned or restricted Environmental Protection Agency regulations that were "extremely important" to the nation's health and environment, former EPA Administrator William Reilly said Thursday.
"The EPA is on a deregulatory tear," Reilly, who served under President George H.W. Bush, told CNN's "New Day." "The fact (is), some 33 regulations have been essentially abandoned or severely restricted. He said the advantage of that was to reduce by $2 billion the burden on various sectors of the economy."
His comments come a day after another former EPA chief, Republican Christine Todd Whitman, appeared on the program to voice her own concerns about Trump's restrictions.
Some of the regulations that have been rolled back included pulling out of the Paris climate agreement, proposals to lower core emissions standards, relaxing rules on methane leaks, and more, and Reilly said he is concerned about moves to weaken air and water quality laws by the allocation of budget resources and deregulatory actions.
"All of those things are being done," Reilly said.
"Not only that but in two years or more of service to the country, this administration, there is no inspector-general at EPA, no head of research and science at EPA," he added. '
Further, there has been an across-the-board fall off in enforcement numbers, and all that is "worrisome."
He also called the administration's refusal to believe in climate change disturbing, and called a proposal by the administration that the next climate estimate will not go out beyond 2040 a "head-in-the-sand thing to do."
Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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