Tell Your Senators to Oppose Andrew Wheeler as EPA Administrator

Tell Your Senators to Oppose Andrew Wheeler as EPA Administrator

Donald Trump has nominated former coal lobbyist and current acting EPA Administrator, Andrew Wheeler, to head the agency full time.

As acting administrator, Andrew Wheeler has already worked to allow more pollution into our air and water and done the bidding of corporate polluters. This includes gutting the coal ash rule and clean car standards, weakening methane pollution safeguards, and putting forward a Dirty Power Plan that EPA's own analysis says will cause an additional 1,400 deaths each year due to more pollution. He is also pushing plans to reverse how the EPA calculates public health impacts from its own rules. This would ruin the lifesaving Mercury and Air Toxics Standards finalized in 2012, opening the door to more toxic mercury pollution from coal plants and jeopardizing women and children. Furthermore, Wheeler is pushing to redefine which U.S. waterways are covered by the Clean Water Act, putting drinking water for 1 in 3 Americans at risk.

He has also allowed dangerous chemicals like chlorpyrifos, TCE, NMP and methylene chloride to remain on the market, despite serious health concerns and previous EPA plans to ban or restrict these chemicals.

As if that weren't enough, Wheeler, like his ousted predecessor, Scott Pruitt, has seen his share of scandal. Wheeler has shared and liked racist posts on social media and engaged with right-wing trolls and conspiracy theorists.

Tell your senators to oppose his nomination!

As your constituent, I am deeply concerned about public health, the environment, and who is in charge of the EPA. Former Administrator Scott Pruitt was plagued by scandal and endangered public health during his time as administrator. Now, Andrew Wheeler, Pruitt’s former deputy, is serving as acting EPA administrator. Wheeler has his own dangerous record, and his actions at EPA to roll back lifesaving health protections and pollution standards have put countless Americans’ health at greater risk and our environment in jeopardy. That’s why I urge you to oppose the nomination of Andrew Wheeler for administrator of the EPA.

For a decade, Wheeler has been a lobbyist for the coal industry and has denied the science of climate change. And as acting administrator, he has stacked the deck in favor of polluters and against the public by attacking bedrock principles of clean air and clean water, failing to act on toxic chemicals like methylene chloride and chlorpyrifos, halting progress on clean car standards, and undermining how EPA calculates health benefits of proposed safeguards. Under Wheeler, the EPA has recently proposed to ignore the public health benefits provided by the Mercury and Air Toxics Standards (MATS), arbitrarily decreeing the harms posed by mercury and other neurotoxins to be insignificant, and turning a deliberately blind eye to the dangers of particulate pollution. The MATS rule produces massive reductions in toxic particulate pollution and is currently saving up to 11,000 lives per year (and preventing approximately 130,000 asthma attacks per year), yet Wheeler has proposed to ignore these benefits in a massive handout to corporate polluters.

He has also allowed dangerous chemicals like chlorpyrifos, TCE, NMP and methylene chloride to remain on the market, despite serious health concerns and previous EPA plans to ban or restrict these chemicals..

The Senate should staunchly oppose Andrew Wheeler or any nominee for EPA administrator that does not put people, our health, our climate, clean air, and clean water before the interests of corporate polluters.


Environmental Working Group
Friends of the Earth Action
Just Label It
Only Organic
Sierra Club