EPA Tag Archives — Page 4 of 5 — Illinois Personal Injury Lawyer Blog

An American Tragedy: The Victims of Environmental Contamination are Mostly the Poor and Minorities

March 18, 2017 | Shawn Collins

A recent article titled “Righting Civil Wrongs” sadly describes how the poor, minority residents of communities throughout the United States have been left with no choice but to sue their government (the US EPA, specifically). Years ago, these residents formally claimed that they were the victims of environmental racism because the government had permitted a local landfill to continue to expand into their neighborhood. By law, the US EPA is required to respond to these serious claims (they are claims of Civil Rights violations, after all) within 180 days, to say whether it agrees that environmental racism is at work. However, some of these residents have been waiting up to 20 years for an answer, and still do not have one.

So they are suing their government just to get an answer. Represented by an extraordinarily dedicated lawyer named Marianne Engelman Lado, they are asking that their government not only obey the law but, more fundamentally, acknowledge their basic humanity.

Of course, to make someone wait decades for the answer to their question is in itself an answer. It says: “We don’t believe you”. Or worse: “We don’t think you’re important enough to get you an answer…..even though the law says that we have to.” The EPA would rather ignore the law than get them an answer. What does this say? Worse, the EPA’s statistics reveal how it is, literally, impossible to get the EPA to take you seriously if you claim to be the victim of environmental racism. In the 22 year history of the EPA’s Office of Civil Rights, while nearly 300 complaints of environmental racism have been filed, not a single one, not a single one, has resulted in a finding of a civil rights violation.

Will the Threat of Vapor Intrusion be Ignored by Trump and Pruitt?

March 17, 2017 | Shawn Collins

Will President Trump and the man he appointed to head the EPA, Scott Pruitt, rig our system for determining which sites are the most environmentally dangerous in the country by ignoring the threat of vapor intrusion that these sites pose to human beings living near them?

Sadly, there are many thousands of industrial sites around the US that are badly contaminated. These are sites where, years ago, companies dumped, spilled, or buried toxic chemicals. The key question for each of these sites is: does it threaten human health? Can its dangerous chemicals travel in water or air to where people live and work?

For years, the US has evaluated these contaminated sites to determine which pose the greatest threat to Americans, and therefore which deserved the greatest attention and resources for getting cleaned up. The most contaminated sites appear on the “Superfund National Priorities List.” They are often referred to as “Superfund” sites.

Trump’s Massive EPA Budget Cuts Give the ‘OK’ to Pillaging the Environment

March 16, 2017 | Shawn Collins

More than perhaps anything else he does, a president’s budget proposal tells us what he thinks is important.

By that measure, President Trump’s just proposed massive budget cuts for the EPA tell us that Trump does not value the EPA mission of ensuring clean air and water for Americans, and in fact that he believes we have been too harsh on the corporate polluters whose behavior deprives us of those things. Stated bluntly, the President is trying to disband the environmental police. Polluters should be licking their chops.

It is impossible to reach any other conclusion when we review what Trump proposes to do to the EPA’s funding:

“The Arsonist is Now in Charge of the Fire Department” Scott Pruitt is Prepared to Ruin the Environment Because Big Oil Told Him To

March 10, 2017 | Shawn Collins

Two things that Scott Pruitt just said prove that he is so deep into the pocket of big oil company polluters that he can’t find his way out. He’s not fit to head the EPA.

Here’s what Pruitt said:

(1) “I think people across this country look at the EPA much as they look at the IRS.” That’s what he recently told the Conservative Political Action Conference. But he’s dead wrong. Here’s the truth: It’s not the “people across this country” who look at the EPA like it’s the IRS. It’s polluters who look at the EPA like it’s the IRS. Because the EPA has the power to make them stop polluting, to clean up the pollution they cause, and to protect the American people against pollution. This can cost the polluters a huge amount of money. Polluters fear the EPA because of this power. Polluters hate the EPA because of this power. But “people across the country” don’t fear or hate the EPA. They think of the EPA as the cavalry, riding in to protect them when some polluter has ruined their environment. They know they don’t have the political or financial power to stop polluters-especially the biggest and worst ones, like the big oil companies. So, they think of the EPA as someone who will stop polluters for them, as the people’s protector (even if the EPA doesn’t always merit this respect). I know this because, during my 17 + years of representing literally thousands of families whose air, water, or soil has been contaminated by reckless polluters, that’s what they tell me. That’s what they think of the EPA. That’s what they want and expect the EPA to be. Nothing remotely like the IRS.

How Donald Trump and Scott Pruitt are Going to Hurt Pollution Victims

February 20, 2017 | Shawn Collins

It’s hard to say what’s worst about Scott Pruitt, Donald Trump’s choice to head the EPA. Among the choices are:

·He’s a paid shill for big oil companies who masqueraded as a public servant, i.e., the Attorney General of Oklahoma.

·He used his public office to do what big oil and other polluters wanted him to do. He sued the EPA 14 times, alleging that the agency didn’t have the right to try to restrict pollution.

Michael Flynn Had the Russians; Scott Pruitt Has the Oil Companies: Why the US Senate should reject Pruitt to Head the EPA

February 16, 2017 | Shawn Collins

The recent resignation-in-disgrace of Trump Administration National Security Advisor (NSA), Michael Flynn, and the resulting damage to the country could have been avoided. If the President and his advisers had looked at Flynn more carefully before he was appointed to head the NSA (and assuming that they even cared about what they would have found), they would have realized that the conflicts created by Flynn’s unusual coziness with the Russians would explode in their faces, and badly damage our national security interests.

Are Trump and his people about to screw up again?

Trump has nominated to head the federal EPA Scott Pruitt, the Attorney General of the State of Oklahoma. And, in typical Trump fashion, the President is insisting that Pruitt’s nomination be rushed through the Senate, despite the growing number of warning signs screaming that Pruitt’s coziness with big oil and gas companies is going to result in another disastrously conflicted Presidential appointee. For example:

Scott Pruitt: Too Many Conflicts of Interest to be Next EPA Chief

February 15, 2017 | Shawn Collins

It is well known that President Trump’s pick to run the EPA, Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt, has sued the EPA 14 times.

What is not so well known is that many of these lawsuits are still pending. Specifically, still pending are lawsuits that Pruitt filed charging that the EPA is behaving illegally for requiring big polluters-like the oil and gas companies that have given hundreds of thousands of dollars to Pruitt’s political campaigns-to cut down on the tonnage of toxic chemicals that they belch into the environment.

What happens to these lawsuits when Pruitt takes over at EPA? He goes from the one suing EPA, to the one being sued.

Scott Pruitt has no Business Running the Environmental Protection Agency

February 13, 2017 | Shawn Collins

This week, the U.S. Senate votes on whether to approve President Trump’s choice, Scott Pruitt, to head the Environmental Protection Agency (“EPA”). Why should every Senator in the building vote “No”?

Let me ask you this:

Would it be OK with you if a lawyer for the world’s largest oil companies-who has spent his career attacking the environmental protections which the EPA is charged with enforcing-was suddenly in charge of whether your family was protected against pollution caused by the world’s largest oil companies?

Scott Pruitt: Donald Trump’s Pick to Dismantle the US EPA

February 5, 2017 | Shawn Collins

I’ve written recently about President Trump’s determination to get the EPA out of the business of protecting the environment and the lives and health of the American people. (EPA Blog) (Gorsuch blog). Huge corporate polluters-including petroleum and mining companies-are tired of having to comply with the federal clean air and water laws, and, in Trump, have found their man to take them off the hook.

Trump, in turn, has selected the man whose job it will be to starve the EPA of the resources necessary to do its job-resources like money, scientists, and the right to speak, so the EPA can warn families living in contaminated neighborhoods that they need to protect themselves. This is the blueprint for how the Trump EPA will clear the way for polluters who want to get back to profitable polluting.

Trump’s man is Scott Pruitt, Attorney General of the State of Oklahoma. If you care about clean air and water for yourself and your children, you’ll want to know about Pruitt. And once you know about him, I hope you will contact your US Senator, and insist that he/she vote to not confirm Pruitt to head the agency charged with the sacred obligation of protecting our environment. Because Pruitt has no intention of protecting the environment.

Why Trump’s Supreme Court Nominee, Neil Gorsuch, Matters so much to Those Whose Lives and Health are Threatened by a Polluted Environment

February 3, 2017 | Shawn Collins

If you care about the environment’s impact on our life and health, should you care about whether Judge Neil Gorsuch, who President Trump has just nominated, is approved for a seat on the U.S. Supreme Court?

Yes. You absolutely should. Here’s why:

(1) Trump has a plan to dismantle environmental regulation [cite to my blog of earlier this week]. That plan includes Trump’s determination to encase in American law his scientifically fraudulent view that climate change/global warming is a “hoax”. To leave no room for doubt on this, Trump appointed to head the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (“EPA”) a man named Scott Pruitt, who, as the Attorney General of Oklahoma, has sued the EPA some 14 times, mostly arguing that EPA has no right to regulate the petroleum industry. That’s the industry most responsible for global warming. In plain terms, Pruitt doesn’t want the EPA to have the power to stop polluters from polluting. And, courtesy of our new President, he’s going to be in charge of the EPA in a few days.