Andrew Wheeler wants you to know he’s a different person than the man he has just replaced as head of the Environmental Protection Agency. He hopes that his attention for detail and appreciation for transparency will allow him to more successfully pursue President Trump’s deregulatory agenda.
“I am not faulting anything my predecessor did,” Wheeler, the acting administrator of the EPA, told the Washington Examiner last week in an interview on his first day in the spacious, wood-paneled office that Scott Pruitt used to occupy.
“I am a different person. I approach my job differently, and we both came at this from different backgrounds. I’ve always believed the more information we put out to the public on the decisions, and what constitutes the decisions at the agency, it makes for better rules and better policy. So I have always been a transparent person, and that’s just the way I approach things.”
Wheeler, like Pruitt, is eager to implement Trump’s regulatory rollbacks at EPA. His EPA will soon release rewritten, weakened replacements of Obama administration rules affecting carbon dioxide emissions from coal power plants, the fuel efficiency of cars, and the agency’s control over waterways.
“Of course, we are implementing Presidents Trump’s agenda,” Wheeler said.
But he’s distinguishing himself in other ways, unlocking the doors to his third-floor administrator office, which Pruitt kept closed, providing proactive updates of his daily schedule, and allowing the public to keep eyes on him during events, such as his opening address to EPA career employees.
Wheeler himself is a former EPA career staffer, Republican Senate aide, and, yes, a lobbyist who represented a major coal company. But he says he’s other things, too, an outdoorsman who “cares a lot about the environment” and is most proud of his college job being the nature conservation director at Boy Scout summer camp.
On his third day in office, Wheeler spoke to the Washington Examiner about where he came from and what happens next. The interview transcript below has been edited for length and clarity:
Washington Examiner: You told me a few weeks ago you weren’t seeking this job. You are in it now. What’s it been like the first few days?
Wheeler: It’s been … I don’t know if I really want to say that or not. It’s been a little overwhelming. We have a great team here, both political and career, and I have gotten a lot of support from all of the career employees I have seen [whom] I run into in the halls, emails from a lot of them.
I have just gotten a good outpouring of support from a lot of people and it’s been really gratifying.
Washington Examiner. You’ve made light of the “coal lobbyist” tag that people are giving you. Now that you have a clean slate and can define yourself, what should people know about you?
Wheeler: I care a lot about the environment. I really do. I practice it in my personal life. I go hiking. I go camping. I go fishing occasionally — not as much anymore. I like the outdoors. And I have a tremendous respect for the agency and the mission of the agency.
And I think we can protect the air, we can protect the water, and still deregulate at the same time. We have to transform to the 21st century and a lot of the apparatus we are using is still in the 20th century.
I don’t expect to change everything in the brief tenure that I will have here, but I hope to put the agency on the glide path to looking at things differently. And that’s why I am talking about risk communication when I go everywhere in the agency. We have to do a better job at communicating the risk people face in their daily lives.
Washington Examiner. Conservatives who support the deregulatory agenda at EPA were concerned about the pace under Pruitt and on how thorough he was. These same people are saying you are uniquely positioned to advance things. How can you advance the agenda?
Wheeler: Part of my background, having worked here at the agency in the Bush administration and the Clinton administration, having worked on the Hill during Clinton and Bush and then lobbied during Obama, I have seen the change in administrations. I have seen the change in priorities, and the change in regulatory approaches.
So I understand that what we do needs to be lasting, and we need to make sure we get it right. So I am going to be very cognizant of that. I am going to be very cognizant in our rule-makings that we follow the law and that our regulations can stand up to legal challenges. Because the American people needs that certainty.
We can’t just keep pingponging back and forth every time there is a change in administration or there is a change in the court make-up. We have to be able to have regulations that follow the laws that Congress has given us, and they need to be sound, and we need to move forward to protect the environment. But a lot depends on the statutes that we have.
Washington Examiner: Turning to policy, I am assuming your priorities are the big three that people know about: the Clean Power Plan, CAFE (fuel efficiency standards), and WOTUS (Waters of the U.S.)?
Wheeler: We are doing so much more than that. I would put WOTUS in there. I would put the Clean Power Plan in there. I would also put our Superfund reform efforts. I would also put what we are doing to implement the new TSCA (Toxic Substances Control Act). Every one of our offices are really busy. It would be hard for me to point to what is the one or two things.
Of course, we are implementing President Trump’s agenda. President Trump made it very clear on the campaign that he wanted to repeal the Clean Power Plan, repeal WOTUS, and replace them with something that actually followed the letter of the law, and we are working to do that. And those are certainly two presidential priorities that we are doing.
Washington Examiner: As you talk about creating durable policy, do you believe you can satisfy that while also doing something to address climate change? Is there a way to follow the letter of the law while also helping combat climate change?
Wheeler: It’s interesting because the CO2 emissions have already decreased significantly since the Obama administration put out the CPP (Clean Power Plan), which was never implemented.
What we are focusing on, and what our replacement regulation will focus on, is what is in the law itself? I really believe the Obama administration went outside the four corners of the Clean Air Act, which is why the Supreme Court took the unprecedented move to issue a stay for that regulation. What we are trying to do is make sure the replacement follows the Clean Air Act and follows the law.
I am sure we will be criticized by some members of Congress who would prefer us to go further and some environmental groups who would prefer us to go further, but frankly we don’t have that authority under the Clean Air Act to do what everybody would like us to do.
So we will protect the environment, we will make the air cleaner, the air is getting cleaner. The water is getting cleaner. We are following the laws and making sure the environment is sound and gets cleaner.
At the end of the day, and I think of this every single day, the mission of the agency is to protect public health and the environment.
Washington Examiner: Have you thought at all about the Supreme Court, and how it’s going to be solidly conservative and how if stuff gets over there, you have a court that will probably empathize with your view of the statute? Is that something you have to take into account?
Wheeler: We of course take the the courts into account, but we got the stay with the old Supreme Court. So I don’t think this change will impact that decision that much since we already got five justices who supported issuing a stay on the Obama regulation (Clean Power Plan).
And listening to them, and listening to them in other court cases, we are designing regulations that follow the letter of the law of the statutes. So hopefully they would be upheld by any Supreme Court 9-0 because we are following what the Clean Air Act tells us to do.
Washington Examiner: On CAFE standards, what is your message to California officials who might see a fresh start with you, who might see you as more of a figure they can work with than Pruitt?
Wheeler: I am happy to work with California on this. We really want a 50-state solution. We don’t want to go to court over this.
The Obama administration put out a proposal in the 11th hour on the way out the door that we had to take a separate look at it. It’s just good public policy. It was supposed to be a midterm review. They did it, what, a year after they issued the original? You can’t regulate that way. You have to follow what was laid out.
So we are taking a look at the midyear review. We are going to move forward. And we are working with the Department of Transportation, our federal partner there. And we really want to work with California. We really want to come to a conclusion that will not require either of us going to court.
Washington Examiner: What happened with the “glider rule”? [the EPA recently decided to at least temporarily allow for the expansion of the manufacturing of so-called “super polluting trucks” that the Obama administration had sought to restrict]. That was one where overwhelmingly people did not quite understand [your decision on that].
Wheeler: What we announced on Friday was an enforcement discretion while the agency continues to look at that issue. Part of the problem there is you had a company [the main producer of glider trucks, Fitzgerald Glider Kits] that was basically on the verge of going out of business while we tried to decide what we are doing.
In an instance like that, it’s important not to jump in. It’s important not to wait too long to come to a decision, while, at the same time, real world market forces are taking shape.
The regulatory process sometimes can be slow. We don’t want unintended consequences in the private sector while they wait for a decision from the agency.
Washington Examiner: You supported and were involved with the decision to allow the production of these glider [trucks] in the meantime?
Wheeler: I knew about the decision. I am aware of the discussions. There are still ongoing discussions internally on what the the appropriate move is. We have a proposed regulation out and want to make sure we get that right. There has been no decision yet on that regulation.
Washington Examiner: Where are you on the RFS (renewable fuel standard)?
Wheeler: I will follow the law and the intent of the law. I would love to see if we can work out a compromise between the ethanol industry and the oil refining industry, but we will do that within the bounds of the law. We will implement the RFS, both the statute and the letter and intent of the law.
Washington Examiner: You are someone who has been in environmental policy your whole life. EPA was your first job. Why did you get into environmental policy?
Wheeler: What brought me to environmental policy? Wow. I am an Eagle Scout. I am very proud of that. When I was in college I worked summers in a Boy Scout summer camp. I was a nature conservation director. That, so far… I am going to reserve judgment on this job, but so far in my life, being the nature conservation director at the Boy Scout summer camp was my favorite job ever.
It only paid… I think I made $1,000 for the entire summer. This is only my third day as acting administrator. I am going to withhold judgment on this. But so far that is my favorite job and has influenced me throughout my life and career.
Washington Examiner: Clearly we have all observed in your first few days you are trying to paint some distinctions between yourself and Pruitt, around the importance of transparency. Why are you going about it in that way? Why is that the right approach?
Wheeler: I am not faulting anything my predecessor did. I am a different person. I approach my job differently, and we both came at this from different backgrounds. When I worked at EPA in the early 1990s I cut my teeth on the Community Right to Know Act. I’ve always believed the more information we put out to the public on the decisions, and what constitutes the decisions at the agency, it makes for better rules and better policy. So I have always been a transparent person, and that’s just the way I approach things.
