Trump Administration backs off plan to scrub climate pages from EPA website

The Trump Administration backed away from plans to take down some climate change information from the Environmental Protection Agency's website. Photo / AP

The Trump Administration today backed away from plans to take down some climate change information from the Environmental Protection Agency's website, which employees said had been planned for this week.

Doug Ericksen, spokesman for the so-called "beachhead team" currently in charge at the agency, told The Hill in an interview that officials are reviewing all "editorial" parts of the EPA's website and discussing possible changes, not necessarily looking to take down all climate data.

"We're looking at scrubbing it up a bit, putting a little freshener on it, and getting it back up to the public," Ericksen, a Republican state lawmaker from Washington, told the publication. "We're taking a look at everything on there."

Earlier this week, reports began to surface that members of the Trump Administration team working at the agency had instructed EPA staffers to remove the climate change page from its website. Reuters reported that EPA officials had told communications employees to remove the information within days. The pages include links to emissions data and explanatory pages about global warming.

One EPA employee familiar with the requests, who also spoke on condition of anonymity because staffers have been under a gag order, told the Washington Post that Trump Administration officials recently made a verbal request to managers to take down the climate portions of the EPA's site. EPA career staff pushed back on that plan, the employee said, saying they wanted the request in writing before anyone removed content.

"Management was pushing back as far up the chain as we could get to say this was not an acceptable move and to delay it," the employee said.

In addition, some staff members spent part of the week before Trump's inauguration downloading "everything" from the EPA's climate change pages so that it would be preserved no matter what happened, the employee said.

The employee said some people had been asked to preserve data on physical media, such as flash drives, so that a hard copy existed - even though much of the scientific and emissions data on the agency's site exists elsewhere in the government.

The site also links to scientific data on climate change, including emissions data the agency gathers and temperature data from other federal agencies. The pages also are catalogued in places such as the Internet Archive.

"It would be a travesty," the EPA employee said about the prospect of climate data being removed from EPA's website, noting that some of the information posted includes congressionally-mandated data. "You're saying the American public will have that removed from their ability to look at? That [would be] pretty unprecedented."

EPA's Climate Change website dates back to the Clinton administration, when it was called EPA's Global Warming site. The site has long served as a comprehensive portal to climate change information, including basics about climate science and the impacts of climate change, a section on various indicators of climate change around the United States, details about the EPA's climate change policies and programs and guides to what individuals and local governments can do to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

Greenpeace protestors hang a "RESIST" banner near the White House after President Trump freezes EPA grants pic.twitter.com/K7qlON4rDq

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But it isn't unprecedented for the White House to exercise control over the EPA's climate site.

During George W. Bush's first term, new political staff initially placed a hold on updating the website. That was followed by a stretch during which staff were told updates required review from White House staff.

Given that the site contained hundreds of individual pages, this policy meant a number of pages became outdated. But aside from speeches from Clinton administration about climate change and information about policies specific to the Clinton administration, which were removed, the content involving the science and impacts of climate change and emissions data remained untouched.

Later in Bush's tenure, constraints on updating the site were lifted, though major additions or revisions required clearance through the public affairs office - a policy that continued into the Obama Administration.

Asked about the push at several agencies to clamp down on public communications, White House press secretary Sean Spicer said, "From what I understand, is that they've been told within their agencies to adhere to their own policies. But that directive did not come from here."

Asked if some federal agencies are becoming politicized, Spicer said, "[President Trump's] focus has been . . . much more focused on getting the job done than various tweets that are getting tweeted and untweeted."

In its first week, the new administration has been scrutinising several aspects of EPA's operation, including the money it provides through grants and awards.