Trump admin tells EPA to take down its climate change webpage

EPA press releases, blog post updates, and social media posts are banned for an indeterminate amount of time.

President Trump, how does your clamp down on government communications square with your goal of returning government to the people? “I will continue to work toward fixing the Obama Administration’s broken promise”.

And it’s not just the EPA. “It puts our country at risk”.

“Vladimir Putin must be proud”, Environmental Working Group President Ken Cook said in a statement Tuesday. In addition, EPA meets Section 207 (f)(2) of the E-Government Act of 2002, a rule that requires federal agencies to publish information online by teaching the public, students and educators about environmental issues that affect health.

But Doug Ericksen, the communications director for Trump’s transition team at EPA, confirmed the communications ban, but said he expected it be lifted by the end of the week. “Until we receive further clarification, this includes task orders and work assignments”, the email said. The document proposes that the EPA should cease funding scientific research entirely.

The 22 active Colorado grants, worth tens of million of dollars, primarily fund drinking water safety and wastewater management efforts statewide but also fund cleanup of the Captain Jack Superfund site in Boulder County, assistance to the Colorado River Indian Tribes’ Environmental Program and a handful of university research projects.

Members of Michigan’s congressional delegation raised concern that the freeze could jeopardize aid to Flint, a city still dealing with lead contamination of its water supply. According to the memo, EPA staff were informed of the following restrictions, which are “effective immediately and will remain in place until further direction” from the Trump administration.

“I report directly to President Trump and my job as senior White House advisor is, as we are awaiting the confirmation of the administrator, to make sure that the president’s wishes and the president’s executive orders are being implemented”, Benton told OPB in an interview.

A staffer for EPA Region 3, which includes Pennsylvania and DE, told StateImpact that their only knowledge of the media blackout and grant freeze came from media reports. It bans employees from issuing press releases, sharing information on agency social media, blogging, putting new information on the agency website, or sending messages on agency listservs, because those messages might leak to the public.

The Huffington Post notes that “there also appears to be a lockdown on external communication at the Environmental Protection Agency”.