Trump EPA Chief Sputters When Pressed By Fox Anchor on Loosening Regulations on Water and Air

Fox Business News Host Liz Claman had some tough questions for EPA chief Lee Zeldin on Monday about the Trump administration’s loosening of regulations meant to ensure clean drinking water and air.

Claman began by asking about gas flaring for natural gas pipelines.

“That, of course, some would argue are not great as far as emissions are concerned for the environment. Can you point to something where you have actually tightened regulation, to make sure that we have clean air?”

“We made some decisions that increase regulation …and obviously in our agency it’s air, it’s water, it’s land, and we want to strike that balance every day,” Zeldin said. “We believe strongly that we don’t have to choose between the two. So in some cases we’ve pursued some of the largest acts of deregulation in the history of the country, and with other decisions that we made, we’ve increased regulations.”

“Well, the deregulation part again, when you’re just talking about people who care about the quality of their drinking water, I think it’s important to note the Trump administration has allowed, basically loosened regulation on the way wastewater is allowed to be disposed of near critical waterways,” Claman said. “And I’m just interested to know how much does it matter when it comes to loosening regulations on the amount of chemicals that can go into the water that can then be accessed in the aquifers and then eventually in the drinking water?”

“There are a lot of different examples across chemicals and much more, whether it’s laws on the books, regulations that followed, this is regulated with maximum contaminate levels, and the thousands of water systems then have to come into compliance. A long, rich history of the application of a landmark law and Clean Water Act and the Safe Drinking Water Act, as well,” Zeldin said.

Claman then asked about manmade climate change, which President Donald Trump has repeatedly called a hoax.

“When we look at how the planet appears to be heating up, at least even by a degree over 10 years, it makes people wonder, you know, how committed is the Trump administration to ensuring that we do at least something, our part…Can you give people a bit of insight into emissions and how concerned you are in focusing on making sure that emissions – at least the dangerous ones – go down?”

Zeldin answered that the agency “continues to enforce regulations regarding criteria air pollutants, hazardous air pollutants. The Clean Air Act is another landmark law, half a century old, where there are many different regulations that continue to get enforced, and over the last couple of decades, we have seen dramatic decreases in the emissions of these different categories that are named inside of the Clean Air Act.”

The Clean Air Act was signed into law in 1970, followed by the Clean Water Act in 1972, and the Safe Drinking Water Act in 1974. Zeldin did not name any new initiatives being considered by the Trump administration.

Watch the clip above via Fox Business Network.

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