Project 2025 - It's a Plan that Disrupts and Degrades Our Environment and Your Health
Greetings. For the next month and a half, I hope you will join us for a series of articles created by our passionate EPN volunteers - all retired Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) career and politically appointed public servants (from both sides of the aisle) who continue to fight for your health and that of the environment. In this series, our volunteer experts will delve into what the implementation of the Heritage Foundation’s “Project 2025” (a conservative playbook that will roll back climate regulations and gut the EPA) will mean for issues like “forever chemicals,” science, environmental justice, Superfund, and enforcement to name a few. EPN board chair Mark Hague introduces the series by reflecting on his time within the agency. Enjoy, and stay tuned. - Steve Fantes, EPN Public Affairs Manager
Project 2025 - It's a Plan that Disrupts and Degrades Our Environment and Your Health
By: Mark Hague
In 1980, as a student of government and policy with a deep desire to protect our natural environment and the health and well-being of my neighbors, I started my career at the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). In January 2017, I retired after 37 years of public service.
As I now reflect, the late ’70s and early ’80s were a tumultuous time. There was a rising tide of public debate that maybe, just maybe, the work being done by EPA had gone too far and was disrupting the country’s status quo and economic vitality. Well-funded and determined policy positions began surfacing, calling for actions to reign in the agency’s reach and the regulations and policies it was implementing. Many of those calls failed to consider or ignored the bipartisan laws passed nearly unanimously by Congress. The people’s body of government passed those laws to reverse decades of environmental and public health degradations.
Prior to the creation of EPA in 1970, a largely unregulated and outdated system of limited laws for environmental protection left us vulnerable to severe and adverse impacts from pollution. It’s easy to remember the photos of hazy skylines and ”killer smogs” from New York City to Denver and Los Angeles. How often have we been reminded of the burning Cuyahoga River, Love Canal, DDT’s impacts on wildlife, and discharges of a toxic stew of wastes into our rivers and streams? The list of problems that EPA faced in its early years was staggering. The hostile reaction to its efforts to carry out the direction of Congress to remedy those problems was resolute and well-funded.
Not unlike those times, today we face a new challenge from the authors, thinkers, and policymakers driving the agenda of Project 2025. The Heritage Foundation has compiled an exhaustive and specific playbook of policy directions for EPA and the entire federal government. If those plans, or even a significant part of those policies are implemented, we all face a return to the past unfettered environmental degradation across our country witnessed decades ago. That’s a sequel that I and my colleagues at the Environmental Protection Network (EPN) don’t want to see.
Shortly after leaving EPA, I was honored to join the EPN, created by a group of dedicated former career and appointed public servants from both political parties. We joined forces to fight disruptive efforts by the Trump administration meant to undo and totally discard decades of environmental protections. Protections that made all our lives better. The membership of the non-profit organization has grown to 650 people across the country who volunteer their time to protect EPA’s basic environmental mission and the continuing safeguards of drinking water, recreational waters, air and land enacted by Congress.
In spite of those safeguards, much work remains. We face a changing climate that is disrupting our lives and livelihoods. New science is emerging to help us understand the impacts of “forever chemicals” on our drinking water, the routes through which people in low-income and disadvantaged communities suffer more from air and water pollution, and to what extent our neighborhoods remain contaminated from decades-old pollution. Even with this new knowledge, skeptics continue to disregard the science and environmental laws that have been put in place to protect us. That is only what we know now. As we learn more, our science and understanding of environmental contamination continue to evolve, and we know more work must be done!
Project 2025 would toss aside the basic understanding of how science and the law inform our ability to protect the country and the world we live in.
During my career at EPA, I was honored to serve with dedicated, nonpartisan public servants who collectively wanted to protect our environment, remedy past pollution, and help understand emerging threats to our health and well-being. Many of them are now dedicated members of the Environmental Protection Network and remain steadfast in their desire to ensure we maintain the environmental protections and progress we’ve all achieved.
In the coming weeks, you can read about how the policy directions spelled out in Project 2025 would put us all at greater risk. My colleagues, who are dedicated scientists, legal and policy experts, and professional civil servants, will continue to rise to the calling we all responded to many years ago - How we can use science, the laws enacted by Congress and implemented by presidents both Democrat and Republican to protect our health and the world we live in. The policy objectives outlined in Project 2025 will undo our progress and leave our children and their children with a slew of environmental challenges that pale in comparison to polluted, burning rivers and brown and hazy vistas.
Please take time to read these thoughtful essays by my colleagues at EPN. Remember, we only have one chance to leave the planet better than we found it.
About Mark Hague: Mark is the former EPA Regional Administrator and Deputy Regional Administrator in Region 7 (Kansas City). He was at the agency from 1980 - 2017, holding multiple other positions, including Deputy Regional Administrator (2011-2015); Acting Deputy Assistant Administrator for the Office of the Chief Financial Officer from September (2014); Director of the EPA Region Enforcement Coordination Office; Acting Assistant Regional Administrator for Policy and Management; and Chief of the Program Operations and Integration Branch responsible for planning State and Tribal Relations. He was a member of the joint EPA, State and Tribal E-Enterprise for the Environment Governance Committee from 2014 through 2017.
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