The Connecticut Fund for the Environment and its bi-state program, Save the Sound, say they’ll lobby the Senate to reject Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt, President-elect Donald Trump’s choice to head the EPA.
Pruitt is a climate change denier and has sued the EPA five times trying to overturn laws that protect waterways and regulate emissions at power plants. Connecticut Fund for the Environment President Donald Strait says as the head of the EPA, Pruitt could cause long-term damage to air quality in Connecticut and to water quality in Long Island Sound.
“The world is in climate crisis. We can’t afford four years of going backward under an EPA chief who doesn’t believe the climate change data and has a history of using his government position to advance the interests of the fossil fuel industry,” Strait says.
U.S. Senator Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., said he would vigorously oppose Pruitt’s confirmation and take every possible step to stop it.
“His positions are an anathema to the goals and mission of the EPA, and he’s being appointed in effect to destroy it, not to discharge its essential mission,” Blumenthal says.
During the campaign, Trump threatened to defund or eliminate the EPA. That would put Connecticut and New York at risk of losing millions of dollars in funding for restoring coastal wetlands and monitoring water quality in Long Island Sound.
