Records for the fewest air-polluted days were set during the Obama administration.
It would be premature to blame Trump's anti-regulatory policies for this setback. Scientists say it is too early to see the effects of changes in environmental policy of the Trump administration. Air quality is affected by complex factors, both natural and manmade; last year's Western wildfires may have contributed, for example. Along the same lines, Trump cannot plausibly claim that his policies have delivered clean air in a year or two when citing developments that have been trending for years.
How is U.S. air quality doing overall? The Health Effects Institute's State of Global Air 2019 report ranked the U.S. 37th dirtiest out of 195 countries for ozone, also known as smog, worse than the global average for population-weighted pollution. Countries including Britain, Japan, Spain, Portugal, France, Germany, Albania, Cuba, Russia, Vietnam, New Zealand and Canada have less smoggy air. The United States ranks 8th cleanest on the more deadly category of fine particles in the air. It's still behind countries such as Canada and New Zealand but better than the global average.
TRUMP: "We've refocused the EPA back on its core mission, and, last year, the agency completed more Superfund hazardous waste clean-ups than any year of the previous administrations and set records in almost every year." — remarks on July 8
WHEELER: "We're making tremendous environmental progress under President Trump. ... There may be no better example than our renewed focus on Superfund — the federal program that cleans up large, hazardous sites. ...In fiscal year 2018, we deleted the most sites from the National Priorities List in one year since 2005." — remarks on July 8
THE FACTS: The Trump administration is taking undue credit for cleanup of hazardous industrial sites that was largely done under President Barack Obama and previous administrations. In addition, Wheeler's reference to a "renewed focus" on the Superfund program ignores the fact that the administration recommended cutting the program's budget by 15%.
It's true that the EPA announced last year that it had deleted 22 Superfund toxic waste sites from the government's national priorities list, the most since 2005. But it takes years, if not decades, to clean up a Superfund site before it is removed from the list. That means the construction work, such as removing soil or drilling wells to suck out contaminated groundwater, would have been largely done before the Trump administration.
For instance, an analysis of EPA records by The Associated Press found that at seven Superfund sites the EPA took off the list in 2017 and boasted about, the physical cleanup was performed before Trump took office.
Removing sites from the list is a procedural step that occurs after monitoring data show that remaining levels of harmful contaminates meet cleanup targets, which were often set by EPA decades ago.
There are more than 1,300 Superfund sites on EPA's National Priorities List at various stages in the cleanup process.
TRUMP: "The previous administration waged a relentless war on American energy." — remarks on July 8
THE FACT: This accusation is hard to sustain given the rise of U.S. energy under Obama. In 2013, the United States became the world's top producer both of natural gas and petroleum hydrocarbons, says the government's U.S. Energy Information Administration. As for crude oil specifically, the agency says the United States became the world's top crude oil producer last year. That is largely attributed to the shale oil boom that began late in George W. Bush's administration and proceeded apace during the Obama years.
The boom came because of fracking and other technology, such as horizontal drilling, that made it possible to find a lot more oil and gas without drilling more holes. (As a senator, Obama voted for a 2005 law that exempted fracking from a range of regulations.)
As president, Obama did impose fracking regulations on federal lands, which were challenged by industry, then overturned by Trump, but he did little to slow the surge of fracking, especially on state and private lands. Altogether, the government issued permits for about 30,000 new oil and gas wells on federal lands during Obama's presidency.
Perhaps the central paradox of the Obama energy policy is that, despite his keen focus on wind and solar power, the greatest energy revolution of the past half century happened on his watch as U.S. petroleum and natural gas production achieved pre-eminence.
TRUMP: "Today, the United States is ranked — listen to this — No. 1 in the world for access to clean drinking water — ranked No. 1 in the world." — remarks on July 8
THE FACTS: True in this respect: The United States is tied with nine other countries as having the cleanest drinking water, according to one leading measure. Yale University's global Environmental Performance Index finds 10 countries tied for the cleanest drinking water.
On environmental quality overall, the index puts the U.S. 27th, behind a variety of European countries, Canada, Japan, Australia and more. Switzerland was No. 1.
VETERANS
ROBERT WILKIE, secretary of Veterans Affairs, asked if he's achieved progress in fixing VA since being confirmed to the job one year ago: "Since that time, I can say yes. ... The Journal of the American Medical Association says our wait times are now as good or better than in the private sector. And the Annals of Internal Medicine say our care is as good or better than it is in the private sector, across the country. What that means is that morale is up, that VA is in a better place than it has been in the last few years." — interview Wednesday with Fox News
THE FACTS: The progress he cites in waiting times and quality of care happened before he became VA secretary.
It's true that a study by the medical association that came out in January found veterans got into a VA facility for an appointment faster on average than if they went to a private facility. But the study tracked progress from 2014 to 2017. Wilkie became acting VA secretary in late March 2018 and was confirmed as permanent VA secretary that July.
Similarly, a study published last December in the Annals of Internal Medicine did find that VA facilities outperform private hospitals in most health care markets throughout the country. But the finding is also based on data from as early as 2014 through June 30, 2017.
Wilkie, in fact, credits the VA's "concerted" effort to improve access to care "since 2014" in a VA press release in January announcing the medical association study's results.
The wait time study covered four specialties, primary care, dermatology, cardiology and orthopedics.
It found that in 2014, the average wait to get into VA medical center was 22.5 days, compared with 18.7 days in the private sector, which was not statistically different. By 2017, the wait at VA improved to 17.7 days, while increasing to 29.8 days for private doctors. Waits at VA medical centers were shorter in all specialties except orthopedics.
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