EPA administrator Scott Pruitt stars in a 78-second National Cattleman’s Beef Association video that urges farmers and ranchers to file comments about repeal of the so-called Waters of the United States (WOTUS) rule, “and …about how to get it right as we go forward.” Pruitt’s role in the video, which directs viewers to the NCBA website to file comments, “has drawn the attention of experts in government ethics,” says E&E News.
Jeffrey Lubbers, an administrative law expert at American University, told E&E that EPA participation in the video “makes the rule-making process seem like it is not open-minded and that public participation doesn’t matter.” The EPA says Pruitt did nothing more than ask for public input. “There was no script and no cost to EPA” for an interview at a Colorado ranch. An EPA spokeswoman responded to questions about the ethics of the situation by saying, “It’s absurd that E&E thinks we need their permission on what media outlets we can accept interview requests from.”
The NCBA, like many other ag groups, opposed WOTUS. Pruitt, then attorney general of Oklahoma, sued to block implementation of it.
In the video, Pruitt inaccurately describes WOTUS, which spelled out the upstream reach of clean water laws, as including “puddles, dry creek beds and ephemeral drainage ditches,” says E&E. “But the regulation specifically lists puddles among features that are not considered waters of the United States and also specifies that it excludes dry creek beds that do not have a bed, bank and high-water mark and ephemeral ditches that ‘flow only after precipitation.'”
Lubbers told E&E that Pruitt’s lawsuit against WOTUS made his participation in the NCBA video problematic. “As part of an EPA ethics waiver he signed in May, Pruitt agreed to recuse himself from the lawsuit he filed as Oklahoma attorney general over WOTUS,” says E&E. “But his waiver doesn’t cover lawsuits other states filed over the regulation or the agency’s efforts to repeal the regulation.”
To watch the NCBA video or read an NCBA statement about it, click here.