Press Releases

The leaders of the House Sustainable Energy and Environment Coalition (SEEC), including Co-Chairs Reps. Doris Matsui, Mike Quigley, and Paul Tonko and Vice Chairs Reps. Don Beyer, Suzanne Bonamici, Sean Casten, Mike Levin, and Chellie Pingree, released the following statement condemning the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator Lee Zeldin’s announcement that the EPA will roll back dozens of lifesaving air and water pollution regulations that are essential for protecting public health and the environment.

“Administrator Zeldin’s announcement represents yet another wholesale attack on the American right to breathe clean air, drink clean water, and lead healthy lives. This is a blatant giveaway for Donald Trump’s Big Oil and polluting megadonors, who are puppeteering the Trump Administration to remove any and all protections for American families. 

“We are witnessing the agents of the Trump Administration blindly serve President Trump’s whims while ignoring the very real problems Americans are facing each day. Americans didn’t elect a President to increase household energy costs and medical bills so that the fossil fuel industry can maximize its profits, but the Trump-sanctioned order to eliminate regulations on mercury and air toxics, wastewater from coal power plants, particulate matter air quality, hazardous air pollutants, coal ash, and more, would do exactly that. And dismantling the suite of EPA’s carbon pollution protections for power plants, vehicles, and the oil and gas industry will only exacerbate costs for Americans by failing to address the ever-increasing number of billion-dollar extreme weather events that will keep growing worse.

“Further, we are deeply troubled that Administrator Zeldin has followed through on reported plans to overturn the landmark Endangerment Finding that planet-warming greenhouse gases threaten public health and welfare. As we wrote to him on February 27, when rumors of this potential action were first reported, such an action ‘can only be described as a cynical, brazen, and dangerous partisan giveaway to polluters. Overturning the Endangerment Finding is a disturbing new level of science denial and corruption ripped straight from the pages of Project 2025. This is an astonishing betrayal of the American people by the very agency that has been entrusted to make science-based decisions to protect the American public.’

“Republicans seem to have forgotten that the Environmental Protection Agency was created by a Republican president with bipartisan support in Congress to protect human health and the environment that we all live in. We at SEEC understand that we were elected to make the lives of everyday Americans fundamentally better. Administrator Zeldin and President Trump are yanking America backwards and worsening the health and wellbeing of the American people. And though this Administration only cares about the bottom lines of polluting corporations, American lives and livelihoods are truly on the line.”