Christine Berg’s Feb. 19 critique of EPA Acting Administrator Andrew Wheeler was replete with inaccuracies and disappointing personal attacks and ignored the real record of EPA’s actions to protect human health and the environment here in Colorado (“Pending pick for EPA chief is bad for kids, bad for Colorado”).  While the matter of Mr. Wheeler’s confirmation to lead EPA is currently in the hands of the Unites States Senate, I feel obliged to address the false statements in the article.

First, the claim that Andrew Wheeler wants to “roll back” a rule that establishes standards for mercury emissions is not true. In fact, in 2015, the Supreme Court determined that the previous administration failed to perform the required steps in developing the Mercury and Air Toxics Standards, including considering a cost-benefit analysis.  Our proposal corrects flaws in the previous administration’s 2016 response to the Supreme Court order.  We completed the long-overdue cost-benefit analysis and maintained the existing rule, while soliciting feedback from the public on an array of options.  If Ms. Berg were truly concerned about the impacts of mercury on children, she should have held the previous administration to account for failing to take the necessary steps to produce a rule that would withstand legal scrutiny.

Even more egregious, and inaccurate, are Ms. Berg’s attacks on EPA’s actions to address harmful contaminants in our water resources. Take for example PFAS, a class of contaminants found in groundwater at three known locations here in Colorado. These substances pose significant human health concerns, and EPA has worked closely with state and local agencies, as well as water utilities, to address exposure. In fact, last week, at Andrew Wheeler’s direction, EPA released the first comprehensive national plan to address this threat to our nation’s drinking water. The plan provides concrete steps to ensure that we can prevent future risk of human exposure.

The progress EPA is making to clean up Superfund sites under the leadership of Acting Administrator Wheeler should also be noted. In 2014, several neighborhoods in Pueblo were found to be contaminated with heavy metals to the extent that they required cleanup under Superfund, a law designed to clean up the nation’s most polluted sites. These communities are dealing with lead and arsenic contamination in their homes and yards deposited from the stack of a smelter owned by a company that no longer exists.

At the funding levels EPA had originally established for this site, it would have taken well over a decade to clean up impacted homes, meaning a decade of exposure for children. When brought to the attention of Andrew Wheeler, he accelerated funding for the site to complete the cleanup in three to four years.  We are working in a similar manner to improve the quality and pace of progress at other sites here in Colorado, and across the West. 

This administration made working more effectively with states and communities a priority, and our partnerships to deliver environmental results in Superfund, and in air and water quality, reflect that priority. Here in Colorado, our response to contaminants in drinking water and to contamination in Pueblo are but two examples of the leadership of Andrew Wheeler.

While the Senate will deliberate and vote to determine who the next EPA administrator will be, that process should not be an invitation to engage in scare tactics that mislead the people of Colorado. The public deserves better. 

Doug Benevento

EPA regional administrator

Denver