Are you the owner of a coal- or oil-burning power plant eager to keep emitting as much dangerous stuff as possible? Do you, as a member of the “regulated community,” feel that requirements to limit your emissions of mercury or ethylene oxide, among other things, is an affront not to the health of babies who live nearby but to your own freedom to poison those babies? Good news!
The Trump administration wants you to email the Environmental Protection Agency. It’s easy, the address is [email protected], and you’ve got until Monday. Just an email! And then, because laws are meaningless and letting companies pollute and giving people cancer and asthma and so on are core principles of American freedom, the president himself will rule on whether you get a two-year exemption from the carefully crafted rules that thousands of experts spent years studying and writing. Really!
“The President will make a decision on the merits” of each request, the EPA says, revealing a deep well of toxicology and public health knowledge and experience to which, in his unyielding modesty, Trump has never before laid claim.
Many companies can take advantage of that wellspring of expertise! Any facility covered by nine separate regulations is eligible to request an exemption — though, to be clear, the EPA and the president will take these very seriously, noting that “Submitting a request via this email box does not entitle the submitter to an exemption” — including a rule on hazardous air pollutants in rubber manufacturing, another on copper smelting, even one on taconite iron ore processing. All are welcome.
Never mind that experts on environmental law have said this move seems to be “setting up a rubber stamp process” to allow companies to poison people, or that this interpretation of a Clean Air Act provision is “in defiance of Congress’s intent.” Don’t listen to the activists who say that this email inbox is “where vital protections for the air we breathe go to die” or that the move lets “the greediest polluters click their way to causing more birth defects and heart disease.”
To make this direct violation of its own regulations as smooth as possible, the EPA has even graciously provided a template for the email your company can send, featuring the subject line “Presidential Exemption: [Name of Regulation]: [Facility(ies) Name]”. Hurry and submit your request to keep polluting, companies! Do not worry for even a second about the FOIA request for any messages sent to that inbox — again, [email protected] — that will eventually reveal your desires to poison anyone downwind.
GET SPLINTER RIGHT IN YOUR INBOX
The Truth Hurts
