Texan Who Shouldn’t Play a Role in the Trump Administration Is Rumored to Be Interviewing Today for EPA Administrator
Texan Who Shouldn’t Play a Role in the Trump Administration Is Rumored to Be Interviewing Today for EPA Administrator
Statement of Tom ‘Smitty’ Smith, Director, Public Citizen’s Texas Office
Note: It is rumored that Kathleen Hartnett White may be interviewing to run the Environmental Protection Agency in the Trump administration. White already serves on Trump’s transition team. As director of Public Citizen’s Texas office, Tom ‘Smitty’ Smith has had direct experience with White.
Kathleen Hartnett White would be one of the biggest unnatural environmental disasters the nation has ever experienced if she were appointed to run the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. She is rumored to be formally interviewing with the Trump administration this week. She was a disaster as the chair of the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ). She voted for almost every industry-supported project, ignored the impact on public health from pollution, failed to reduce ozone emissions to safe levels, supported new coal plants that would have worsened pollution in our most polluted cities, failed to clean up or shut down the cement kilns that were the largest source of pollution in the Dallas-Fort Worth area and ignored global warming. She actively sought to restrict citizens’ rights to intervene and provide critical local insight into permits.
Since leaving the TCEQ, she has worked for the Texas Public Policy Foundation, which is supported by the Koch brothers and a who’s who of polluters. As director of the foundation’s energy and environment program, she has issued report after report spouting the wonders of oil, gas and coal, and ignored or dismissed the environmental impacts of those fuels.