Donora smog survivor, environmentalist concerned over new leader of EPA
Environmentalist Dr. Devra Davis, a Donora native, said recently that she is concerned about the new head of the Environmental Protection Agency. Davis was 2 when smog blanketed her hometown.
Davis
An environmentalist who was 2 years old when a catastrophic smog hit her hometown of Donora said it would be impossible to abolish the Environmental Protection Agency.
“(New Administrator Scott Pruitt) will find that the agency has numerous legal mandates that developed over many years,” said Dr. Devra Davis, who was born in Washington, D.C., but grew up in Donora and Pittsburgh.
“The job shapes the person as much as the person shapes the job,” Davis said, though she is concerned about Pruitt’s past hostility to the EPA.
As Oklahoma attorney general he took the EPA to court to block its rules, believing that under President Barack Obama the agency overstepped its legal authority, especially with fossil fuels.
“I greatly appreciate the leadership Attorney General Pruitt has shown in suing to stop the EPA’s Clean Power Plan and look forward to watching him dismantle it piece by piece as EPA administrator,” U.S. Sen. Steve Daines, R-Montana, was quoted on a blog administered by American Coal Council communications director Terry Headley.
According to multiple reports prior to his most recent speech to Congress, President Trump proposed a 25 percent cut in the EPA’s budget.
Trump did not mention such a cutback in his speech but said, “My administration wants to work with members in both parties … to promote clean air and clear water,” among other priorities.
“Of course, the devil is in the details,” Davis said. “EPA’s budget has been cut more than 20 percent in the past two years, so cutting it another 25 percent effectively puts the agency on a footing where it was during the devastating time of Ronald Reagan. Of course, it depends on where and what they cut, but frankly this is such a large cut that it’s hard to imagine that this would not be devastating.”
She said Republicans are not signing on to these proposals, noting that Rep. Tom Cole, R-Oklahoma, “is on record as raising serious concerns” and that Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-South Carolina, has said that the Trump budget is “dead on arrival.”
Last month Cole congratulated his fellow Oklahoman for being confirmed as EPA administrator and said in a news release, “I know he will find the right balance between protecting our environment while also respecting the rights of property owners, state governments and businesses.”
In his first remarks as EPA administrator on Feb. 21, Pruitt said he believed the U.S. can be both pro-energy and jobs, and pro-environment.
“We don’t have to choose between the two,” he said as he was introduced as the administrator of an agency established to consolidate a variety of federal research, monitoring, standard-setting and enforcement activities to ensure environmental protection
“I think our nation has done better than any nation in the world at making sure that we do the job of protecting our natural resources, and protecting our environment, while also respecting economic growth,” Pruitt said.
“He is correct,” Davis said. “American support for environmental protection remains strong. As the Republican response so far suggests, the president will not get a free pass on this.”
Davis said she would agree that jobs and the environment are a “false tradeoff” in the Mon Valley.
“It’s not a question of either jobs or environment, it’s a question of both,” she said. She also said, however, that nothing has been said or done to give her any more assurance about what might be expected of Pruitt’s EPA.
Davis said the EPA was “broadly bipartisan” in its formation 47 years ago and in tune with “American values.”
“American values are not Republican or Democrat,” said Davis, who wrote about the 1948 Donora smog emergency in “When Smoke Ran Like Water,” published by Basic Books in 2002.
She does not want to see a repeat of five days in October 1948 when 20 people died as lethal smog descended on what then was one of numerous steel towns along the Monongahela River.
“Yet when it comes to environmental health, we are expected to wait until after the fact — until there are dead bodies or ill people to count — before taking action to prevent those and other harms from happening,” she wrote. “(And) sometimes not even then.”
Davis and the late University of Pittsburgh clinical professor of psychology Dr. David Servan-Schreiber co-founded Environmental Health Trust, a Wyoming-based nonprofit which aims to educate individuals and communities about controllable environmental health risks and policy changes needed to reduce those risks.
It is building environmental wellness programs in Wyoming and Pennsylvania to address impacts of energy development, the built environment and radon.
“History is not destiny,” Davis said. “If we do not learn from it we are doomed to repeat the mistakes of the past.”