EPA moves to politicize the offices of environmental justice and NEPA

In a memo discussing the reorganization of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Administrator Scott Pruitt told staff members that he is moving the offices of environmental justice and the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) to be housed within the Office of Policy. Running the policy office is Samantha Dravis, a political appointee who worked with Pruitt at the Republican Governors Association when Pruitt was Oklahoma attorney general. President Trump has already proposed defunding the environmental justice office, so reducing its autonomy “is not a move to enhance environmental justice,” says Cynthia Giles, who headed the EPA enforcement office during the Obama administration. She also found relocating the NEPA office, which reviews the environmental analyses of other agencies, troubling. Giles told E&E News that the only reason behind moving NEPA would be "to inject politics.”