Leaders of the House Sustainable Energy and Environment Coalition (SEEC) have responded to the announcement that the EPA will roll back dozens of lifesaving air and water pollution regulations.
On Wednesday, the Trump Administration announced reduced protections for waterways, rollback of tailpipe pollution curbs and repeal of emissions limits for power plants, as reported by Reuters.
Trump campaigned on promises to deliver an energy dominance agenda after he became president.
Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator Lee Zeldin’s announced the roll back of dozens of lifesaving air and water pollution regulations that are essential for protecting public health and the environment.
SEEC leaders include Co-Chairs Reps. Doris Matsui, Mike Quigley, and Paul Tonko and Vice Chairs Reps. Don Beyer of Virginia, Suzanne Bonamici, Sean Casten, Mike Levin and Chellie Pingree. The SEEC is a coalition of 100 members of the U.S. House of Representatives that was founded in January 2009 to be a focused, active and effective coalition for advancing policies that address climate change, promote clean energy innovation and domestic manufacturing, develop renewable energy resources, create family-sustaining clean jobs, protect our nation’s air, water, and natural environment and promote environmental justice.
“Administrator Zeldin’s announcement represents yet another wholesale attack on the American right to breathe clean air, drink clean water, and lead healthy lives. This is a blatant giveaway for Donald Trump’s Big Oil and polluting megadonors, who are puppeteering the Trump Administration to remove any and all protections for American families,” the SEEC said in a statement.
According to the SEEC, America is “witnessing the agents of the Trump Administration blindly serve President Trump’s whims while ignoring the very real problems Americans are facing each day. Americans didn’t elect a President to increase household energy costs and medical bills so that the fossil fuel industry can maximize its profits, but the Trump-sanctioned order to eliminate regulations on mercury and air toxics, wastewater from coal power plants, particulate matter air quality, hazardous air pollutants, coal ash, and more, would do exactly that. And dismantling the suite of EPA’s carbon pollution protections for power plants, vehicles, and the oil and gas industry will only exacerbate costs for Americans by failing to address the ever-increasing number of billion-dollar extreme weather events that will keep growing worse.”
The SEEC is troubled that Zeldin is following through on plan to overturn landmark regulations that will threaten public health and welfare.
“As we wrote to him on February 27, when rumors of this potential action were first reported, such an action: ‘can only be described as a cynical, brazen, and dangerous partisan giveaway to polluters. Overturning the Endangerment Finding is a disturbing new level of science denial and corruption ripped straight from the pages of Project 2025. This is an astonishing betrayal of the American people by the very agency that has been entrusted to make science-based decisions to protect the American public.’”
The EPA was created by a Republican president with bipartisan support in Congress to protect human health and the environment, and Republicans seem to have forgotten that fact.
“We at SEEC understand that we were elected to make the lives of everyday Americans fundamentally better. Administrator Zeldin and President Trump are yanking America backwards and worsening the health and wellbeing of the American people. And though this administration only cares about the bottom lines of polluting corporations, American lives and livelihoods are truly on the line.”
The EPA will remove 31 regulations which were instituted during President Joe Biden‘s term and were intended to
boost American industries such as agriculture, oil, automobiles, petrochemicals and electric vehicles.
“Today is the most consequential day of deregulation in American history,” Zeldin said in a video message on X.
Zeldin will next reconsider Biden’s clean power plant rule and roll back gas vehicle emissions for heavy- and light-duty vehicles for model year 2027 and afterward.
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Rebecca Barnabi
