© 2024 KLCC

KLCC
136 W 8th Ave
Eugene OR 97401
541-463-6000
klcc@klcc.org

Contact Us

FCC Applications
Play Live Radio
Next Up:
0:00
0:00
0:00 0:00
Available On Air Stations

Choice Of Scott Pruitt To Run EPA Frustrates Some Oregonians

<p>Pruitt has sued the EPA for everything from the Clean Power Plan to the Clean Water Act.</p>

Sue Ogrocki

Pruitt has sued the EPA for everything from the Clean Power Plan to the Clean Water Act.

President-elect Donald Trump’s choice of Scott Pruitt as head of the Environmental Protection Agency, has ruffled some feathers in Oregon.

He’s sued the EPA for everything from the Clean Power Plan to the Clean Water Act.

But Pruitt’s assertion that it was states, and not the EPA, that were intended to be the nation's foremost environmental regulators, has antagonized Frank Potter.

He’s now retired and living in Portland. But Potter worked for Congress in the 1970s and helped draft the National Environmental Policy Act.

Potter says polluters back then were large companies that were too big to be controlled by one state, and a federal agency was needed to regulate them.

Scott Pruitt is part of a group of Republican attorney generals to form an alliance with some of the nation’s top energy producers, to push back against the Obama administration’s regulatory agenda.

Copyright 2021 EarthFix. To see more, visit .

Kristian Foden-Vencil is a veteran journalist/producer working for Oregon Public Broadcasting. He started as a cub reporter for newspapers in London, England in 1988. Then in 1991 he moved to Oregon and started freelancing. His work has appeared in publications as varied as The Oregonian, the BBC, the Salem Statesman Journal, Willamette Week, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, NPR and the Voice of America. Kristian has won awards from the Associated Press, Society of Professional Journalists and the Association of Capitol Reporters and Editors. He was embedded with the Oregon National Guard in Iraq in 2004 and now specializes in business, law, health and politics.