Top 122 EPA Quotes & Sayings - Page 2

Explore popular EPA quotes.
Last updated on April 19, 2025.
Having started my career at EPA, having worked on the Hill for two different members who didn't agree on every issue, and then working in the private practice, where I've worked on behalf of different clients - I don't think I'm biased.
Every day, the hard-working men and women of Alabama's Department of Environmental Management are on the ground, protecting Alabama's rivers and lakes in a way that is beneficial to all. EPA should support them in that work, not make it more difficult.
When I was mayor of Tulsa, Tulsa County was in nonattainment of the 1979 ozone NAAQS, so I have seen firsthand the economic impacts associated with the challenges of attainment and the legacy of EPA intervention that continues long after meeting the standard.
When you declare a 'war on coal' from a regulatory perspective, the question has to be asked: where's that in the statute? Where did Congress empower the EPA to declare a war on coal?
How do these people have any credibility? How do they get away with this? It's mind boggling that its gotten to a point where the EPA is dictating policy based on what is an obvious fraud, or if you want to be gentle about it, creates enough doubt to back off.
We need to improve our horrible position within the petroleum game by eliminating the EPA and other crippling bureaucracies that have turned the U.S. from the game's biggest winners into its worst losers.
The American Petroleum Institute filed suit against the EPA [and] charged that the agency was suppressing a scientific study for fear it might be misinterpreted... The suppressed study reveals that 80 percent of air pollution comes not from chimneys and auto exhaust pipes, but from plants and trees.
I think there is some overreach in the sense that the EPA now says: if Congress doesn't pass greenhouse emissions regulations or testing, we'll simply do it on our own. I think that's an arrogance of a regulatory body run amok.
For an American, as mad you may be about whatever the EPA or the IRS does, just imagine if you only had a one twenty-eighth vote over what it does. You were in this place with this big bureaucracy that sets rules, and you only have a small vote. You'd feel like you've given up your sovereignty, wouldn't you?
Contaminated water is not a problem limited to Flint. Think of New Jersey, where school fountains were found to contain unsafe levels of lead. Or the EPA's 33,000 superfund sites, which are highly-polluted areas that require long-term clean-up operations. The problem is so large that it feels insurmountable.
Since the first Earth Day, the EPA has regulated lead out of paint, air, and gasoline. It started fuel-economy testing (and then caught those cheating on them), phased out ozone-depleting aerosols, and removed cancer-causing pesticides from the marketplace.
As a former EPA administrator under a Republican president, I recognize that it is easy to hate regulations in general. After all, regulatory action causes people to spend money or change behavior, often to solve problems they do not believe exist.
I think people really understand that clean air and clean water and not having factories dumping their emissions into the atmosphere and into the rivers and into the sea has been a very good thing for America. EPA stands watch for very important principles that go all the way back to Teddy Roosevelt.
The Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) own computer model easily shows that President Obama's proposed regulations would reduce global warming by around 0.02 of a degree Celsius by the year 2100. Actually, the true number is probably even smaller because that calculation assumes a future rate of warming - there hasn't been any for 17 years now - quite a bit higher than it is likely to be.
The EPA issued the MATS rule in 2012, and it is the first national standard created to address power plant emissions of toxic air pollutants. Under MATS, power plants are required to install equipment to reduce emissions of specific pollutants, such as mercury and sulfur dioxide.
In the immediate aftermath of the hurricane, I sent a letter to EPA Administrator Stephen L Johnson urging him to waive regulations to allow for the early sale of winter grade fuel to help with gasoline shortages and gasoline prices.
Five states - Ohio, Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Illinois and North Carolina - have been identified by the EPA as contributing significantly to Rhode Island pollution. As of 2010, 284 tall smokestacks - stacks over 500 feet - were operating in the United States: needles injecting poison into the atmosphere.
From 1859 to 1971, the U.S. oil industry grew virtually continuously, in the process serving mightily to drive our economy and win our wars. But that growth was stopped dead in 1971 and sent into decline thereafter, as the advent of the EPA and the accompanying National Environmental Policy Act made it increasingly difficult to drill.
Energy is under siege by the Obama administration, under absolute siege. The EPA, the Environmental Protection Agency, is killing these energy companies, and foreign companies are now coming in and buying our, buying so many of our different plants and then re-jiggering the plants so that they can take care of their oil. We are killing, absolutely killing our energy business in this country.
As congressional Republicans and the Trump administration continue to attack the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), it came as no surprise that the House voted on two bills that would weaken emissions standards and, as a result, put our public health at risk.
Local and state governments have outrun the federal government. The EPA has served notice that it will enact a rule requiring CO2 reductions by major emitters in the absence of major legislation. But it's a blunt instrument that is a little more difficult to use than a legislative remedy.
Electric service providers in Missouri have warned that the EPA's so-called Clean Power Plan will raise energy costs for Missourians, reduce jobs, and hurt our state's economic competitiveness. As a member of the Senate Appropriations Committee, I've fought hard to ensure provisions that would defund this harmful power grab were included in the final appropriations bill. I also support legislation to block this harmful rule and protect workers and families from the damaging effects of the Obama Administration's executive overreach and costly energy regulations.
Dust is part of rural America. It is completely unreasonable for the EPA to put a price tag on communities for carrying out activities essential to their well-being. This is a prime example of federal regulations gone too far.
When the EPA says that property owners, farmers, and livestock producers must stomach higher costs, longer delays, and bigger headaches, it's up to Congress to put up a roadblock.
Under President Donald Trump's leadership, EPA has sought to undo and correct the Obama administration's failed regulatory decisions, proving that environmental protection and economic prosperity go hand-in-hand.
EPA takes its Clean Air Act responsibilities seriously and is committed to providing certainty to state and industry partners. We will not use our authority to pick winners and losers in the energy marketplace.
Way back in 2000, the EPA was poised, and, in fact, had drafted a rule, to specially regulate pollution - water pollution and other types of pollution - from power plants, but the energy industry pushed back pretty significantly.
I will lift the restrictions on the production of American energy, which is getting clobbered with the EPA, and by the way, and with the restrictions - including shale, oil, natural gas, and clean coal. We are putting our miners back to work.
EPA will set a national standard for greenhouse gas emissions that allows auto manufacturers to make cars that people both want and can afford - while still expanding environmental and safety benefits of newer cars.
Just wait and see this stuff play out as it does. But if, for example, why would he say some human activity linked to climate change when he has gone on record as saying that he doesn't believe it and we're gonna get people out of the EPA who do and we're gonna stop playing games with this. Why would he say it? [Donald Trump] wants to build a bridge with the opposition. This is why you don't see me at Trump Tower going up and down the elevators.
The EPA could act to open the transportation-fuel market to vigorous competition from natural gas as well as coal, biomass, and trash, by legalizing methanol. This would force oil prices down, expand the economy, and create millions of jobs.
Hillary Clinton has promised to build on President [Barack] Obama's policies. That means build on Obamacare, build on Dodd-Frank, build on the regulations coming out of the EPA. If that's the case, that will not be good for the economy.
Nearly every policy during the Obama years was anti-growth: tax increases; minimum-wage hikes; ObamaCare; Dodd-Frank regulations; massive debt spending; the Paris climate change accord; an EPA assault against American energy; massive expansions of food-stamps programs and more.
As soon as it was clear, in Copenhagen in 2009, that the Senate was blocking Obama from introducing meaningful climate legislation, the push was for him to use executive authority, use the EPA, use the tool of federal leases, and there was just a refusal to do it.
The fact is there are a lot of things happening at the federal level that are absolutely beyond the jurisdiction of the Constitution. This is power that should be shifted back to the states, whether it's the EPA - there is no role at the federal level for the Department of Education.
Before Alar, there was EDB, a potent human carcinogen allowed in the grain supply and other food for more than a decade after it was known to be dangerous. There was heptachlor, linked to leukemia, and aldicarb, which poisoned thousands of California watermelons, yet is still allowed in potatoes and bananas at levels exposing up to 80,000 children a day to what EPA itself says are unacceptable high risks. Trust the government? Why should we?
We need responsible regulations, not regulations that have gone wild. For example, the EPA has a rule that is going to be implemented Jan. 1, 2012, where they're going to begin to regulate dust. That's right, dust. It's called PM 2.5. That is focusing on the wrong thing.
The EPA's greenhouse gas regulations, along with a host of other onerous regulations, are unnecessarily driving out conventional fuels as part of America's energy mix. The consequences are higher energy prices for families and a contraction of our nation's economic growth.
During the presidential campaign, Donald Trump promised to roll back government regulations.Trump plans to nominate fast food executive Andrew Puzder to head the Labor Department and Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt to lead the EPA. If confirmed, the two men would signal a sharp break from the policies of the [Barack] Obama administration.
Unfortunately, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has been especially aggressive in pursuing regulations that specifically target coal power plants. These regulations have already put hundreds of Pennsylvanians out of work and will continue to cause economic distress while yielding negligible benefits for our environment.
The EPA's [Clean Power Plan] is another example of Washington's lack of understanding when it comes to rural and Western energy issues. I oppose this new rule because it hurts my district, which has four coal-fired plants that power Arizona's big cities, small towns, businesses and residences. These plants also provide good-paying jobs in our tribal and rural regions.
Overall, you know, no state in our country has been hurt more by the eight years of Barack Obama than Wyoming has been, and whether it's the absolutely unconstitutional role that the EPA is playing and the president trying to kill our coal industry - Wyoming is the nation's largest coal-producing state. So when President Obama and Hillary Clinton say they're gonna put coal out of business, it hits us harder than just about anyplace else.
Today's political leaders demonstrate their low opinion of the public with every social law they pass. They believe that, if given the right to chose, the citizenry will probably make the wrong choice. Legislators do not think any more in terms of persuading people; they feel the need to force their agenda on the public at the point of a bayonet and the barrel of a gun, in the name of the IRS, the SEC, the FDA, the DEA, the EPA, or a multitude of other ABCs of government authority.
Regulations have certainly gone too far in a number of areas, but it's important to remember that regulations are meant to be protective, and when it comes to the EPA, that means protecting human health and our world.
In addition to virtually banning methanol outright, the EPA has created regulations to prevent cars from being modified by small businesses to optimize their performance, including through the use of methanol.
There's been a false sense of security in the American people when it comes to environment issues and our water, because they believe that the EPA is there to protect us, and unfortunately, that system's not working right now. They're overburdened, understaffed, and underfunded.
Remember that sign they hung up in an EPA office during the Reagan administration, "No good deed goes unpunished"? Under George Bush, no good science goes unpunished. — © David Helvarg
Remember that sign they hung up in an EPA office during the Reagan administration, "No good deed goes unpunished"? Under George Bush, no good science goes unpunished.
Were the United States to pass a law requiring all cars to be methanol-capable flex-fuel vehicles, or simply repeal EPA regulations that prevent such conversions from being carried out privately, our immense natural-gas capacity could make a dramatic entrance into the liquid-fuel market.
We can be thankful President Barack Obama is taking aim at one of the prime causes of climate change and extreme weather: air pollution. The EPA's carbon pollution standards are the most significant step forward our country has ever taken to protect our health by addressing climate change.
President after president has said energy independence is critical. But then you have the EPA tasked to go after American companies producing coal and penalizing them. You can't have it both ways.
Our battles against the EPA and other rogue federal agencies aren't about a desire for dirtier air or zero regulation. They are about our right as a state to control our own destiny and resist attempts by the administration to ramrod a wish list of regulations through agency heads instead of garnering approval from Congress.
The Obama administration's EPA ruling to cut carbon emissions at power plants is a direct affront to workers in states like Alabama, which not only rely upon coal-fired plants to generate most of their electricity but are also home to thousands of coal industry jobs.
The great fear that hung over the business community in the 1970s was death by regulation, and the great goal of the conservative movement, as it rose to triumph in the 1980s, was to remove that threat - to keep OSHA, the EPA, and the FTC from choking off entrepreneurship with their infernal meddling in the marketplace.
There was pressure on the EPA to come out with a drinking water guideline, which it did in 2016. And when that guideline came out, it spurred even more testing across the country, including by the Department of Defense.
I couldn't help but be struck that this guy I had thought was the embodiment of everything wrong with American politics, a lot of his domestic policy was mind-numbingly, head-spinningly to the left of Obama's. It was under Nixon that the EPA was created. It was under Nixon that OSHA was created. Under Nixon that the Clean Air and Clean Water Acts were passed.
It seems the EPA has worked hard to devise new regulations that are designed to eliminate coal mining, coal burning, usage of coal.
'Sue and settle' involves the creation of environmental rules and regulations through lawsuits filed by environmental groups against the EPA, not through Congress or proper rule-making.
The EPA code needs to set forth a clear, regular, and rational system of penalties for violations of its code, with the amount of the penalty set in proportion to the amount of pollutant released by a given defendant, and no penalties imposed in the absence of any pollutant released.
EPA's role is even broader than water infrastructure and cleaning up contaminated land - the agency also has a key role in allowing projects to move forward by reviewing environmental impact statements during the permitting process.
Without the EPA and the national pollution safeguards it enforces, more children would have asthma. Our water would be less safe. More chemicals would poison our bodies. And more people would die prematurely from respiratory diseases and heart attacks.
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