Washington Report

Advocacy Updates from Washington D.C.

EPA Proposes Regulatory Science Reforms

On April 24th, U.S. EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt signed a proposed rule to strengthen the science used in regulations issued by EPA. The rule will ensure that the regulatory science underlying Agency actions is fully transparent, and that the underlying science is publicly available for independent validation.

This proposed rule is consistent with data access requirements for major scientific journals like Science, Nature, and Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences as well as recommendations from the Bipartisan Policy Center's Science for Policy Project.

The proposed rule builds upon President Trump's executive orders on regulatory reform and energy independence:

Executive Order 13777, issued in March 2017, provides that regulatory reform efforts shall attempt to identify "those regulations that rely in whole or in part on data, information, or methods that are not publicly available or that are insufficiently transparent to meet the standard of reproducibility."

Executive Order 13783, also issued in March 2017, provides that "It is the policy of the United States that necessary and appropriate environmental regulations comply with the law, are of greater benefit than cost, when permissible, achieve environmental improvements for the American people, and are developed through transparent processes that employ the best available peer-reviewed science and economics."

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