James Inhofe, R-Okla.Ĭareer staff members - lawyers, scientists, analysts - are largely being frozen out of decision-making, current and former agency employees say. Four of these people - and another 21 - worked for, or donated to, politicians who have questioned established climate science, such as Pruitt and Sen.

At least 16 of the 45 appointees worked for industries such as oil, coal and chemicals. A few dozen political appointees brought in under the Trump administration are driving policy. Today’s EPA is wracked with internal conflict and industry influence, and is struggling to fulfill its mission, according to more than two dozen current and former agency employees. What happened with Superfund is hardly an anomaly. “We’re missing a huge opportunity to do something new and different with Superfund,” said one of two EPA employees who described the process to the Center for Public Integrity on the condition of anonymity. Gone, for example, was the idea that EPA officials be identified early on to lead discussions with communities on how contaminated land should be used after cleanup. But then Kelly closed off the process, conferring with Pruitt to produce a final plan that altered or excluded many of the staffers’ suggestions. Kelly started by consulting career staff members - often-knowledgeable officials who work at the agency regardless of who holds the White House. The following month, Pruitt - Oklahoma’s attorney general before he joined the EPA - tapped one of his former donors, banker Albert “Kell” Kelly, to find ways to accelerate and improve Superfund cleanups.

In April, he toured a site in East Chicago, Indiana, contaminated with lead and arsenic, and told residents, “We are going to get this right.” Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt doesn’t hide his contempt for how the agency has been run, but does profess to care about one of its key programs: Superfund, which oversees the cleanup of the nation’s worst toxic-waste sites.

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