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EPA Administrator’s Absence At East Palestine Train Disaster Is Inexcusable

https://www.iwf.org/2023/02/14/epa-administrators-absence-at-east-palestine-train-disaster-is-inexcusable/

By Mandy Gunasekara

If 80 to 90% of the job is just showing up, the Biden Cabinet is absolutely failing. This is the legacy of an absentee president who has brought on board an absentee cast of secretaries and administrators whose aloof approach to serious jobs is causing harm to the American people today.

The Secretary of Energy has laughed at high gas prices. The public knows more about Pete Buttigieg’s personal life than his plans for safeguarding and streamlining our transportation systems. And in the face of a major environmental disaster in East Palestine, Ohio, the EPA Administrator is nowhere to be seen.

The reality is that these actions—or rather inactions—and affiliated harm are the result of the Biden administration’s skewed priorities. They regularly elevate the wants of globalists pushing an extreme climate agenda over addressing the needs of everyday Americans. Cleaning up the air, ensuring access to clean drinking water, and addressing legacy pollution don’t grab the headlines like empty promises for a net zero future, but that is the work of the U.S. EPA. When agencies are distracted from their actual mission, preventable environmental problems occur.

During the Obama administration, the United States experienced some of the worst environmental disasters in recent history yet just like today, corporate media largely gave the Democrat administration a free pass. In 2014, the Flint, Michigan water crisis came to light after local residents were exposed to high concentrations of lead and serious health issues were discovered by local doctors. At the time, Obama’s D.C.-based political leadership was busy pursuing its all-encompassing climate agenda and ignored concerns raised by regional staff that could have prevented the proliferation of this disaster.

Then in 2015, there was the Gold King Mine spill that unleashed millions of gallons of toxic waste into the Animas River creating a series of harm to residents and wildlife. It was caused by mishaps from U.S. EPA contractors and a causal aloofness that, by then, had permeated the agency’s culture. There was also a massive backlog of state environmental plans that were never approved. Obama appointees claimed it was due to a lack of resources. The reality is that there were plenty of resources, they had just been diverted to other, more politically important projects.

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