Exclusive — EPA Chief Lee Zeldin: ‘No Better Time than Now’ for Democrats to End Shutdown

Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator Lee Zeldin said during a Breitbart News policy event on Monday that there is “no better time than now” to end the Democrat shutdown, noting that the shutdown threatens the agency’s ability to ensure clean air, land, and water for the American people.

Breitbart News Washington Bureau Chief Matthew Boyle spoke to Zeldin as eight Senate Democrats broke with the rest of the party to advance legislation that would reopen the federal government.

He explained that, although the agency operated on some carryover funding, the weekslong government shutdown threatens the government’s ability to protect the environment.

Zeldin said, “Let’s get the government open and functioning. If you ask the average American what they want from their federal government and one of the very basic things is that they want to see it function. At the very least, it’s one of the very lowest expectations, at the very least there would be for these agencies for federal employees to get paid. At EPA, we operate off of a lot of carryover funding. It was about three weeks ago today, we had a big furlough kick in of about four thousand, but most of the agency was still working.”

Zeldin warned that if the deal were to fall through there would be “major impacts” to the agency’s ability to carry out its mission to ensure Americans clean air, land, and water.

“There’s no better time than now” to end the government shutdown, the EPA administrator added.

Zeldin noted that Democrats “knew there was a lot of pain and suffering that was resulting for American families and that would continue to increase.”

Breitbart News reported how the EPA has continued its critical agency operations despite the Democrat shutdown.

The EPA enacted a contingency plan to ensure they would continue to deliver for the American people.

An EPA spokesman told Breitbart News:

The Trump EPA is committed to protecting the environment and ensuring America has the cleanest air, land and water in the world while growing our economy, but Democrats are content to allow our funding to run out. They are preventing us from securing funding needed to continue these important programs and impeding our ability to deliver clean air, land, and water for Americans.

They are prioritizing their own radical policy agenda that could undermine both environmental progress and economic stability in pursuit of their $1.5 trillion poison-packed wish list at the expense of the American people.

In the EPA’s contingency plan for the shutdown, the agency continues:

• Protection of EPA land, buildings, equipment, and research
• Law enforcement and criminal investigations
• Emergency and disaster assistance
• Superfund response work
• EPA’s emergency response readiness operations

On the other side, there will be many significant agency operations that will lapse due to the Democrat shutdown, including:

• Issuing new grants or interagency agreements
• Civil enforcement inspections
• Approvals of pending state requests, such as authorized/delegated state-issued EPA permits, SIPs, TMDLs, Water Quality Standards

The EPA has fulfilled many agency tasks despite the Democrat shutdown, including:

• Updated lead guidance to accelerate cleanup of superfund, hazardous waste sites across the country
• Issued policy guidance to prevent wildfires and promote use of prescribed fires for risk mitigation
• Entered into a consent order with Louisiana-based Smitty’s Supply Inc, requiring the company to take responsibility for cleanup at a facility damaged by an August fire and pay certain response costs incurred by the United States government
• Struck a first-ever memorandum of understanding between the EPA and Virginia Agriculture Forge for agricultural practices that benefit the environment
• Began removing hazardous waste from former Glycerin Traders in La Porte, Indiana
• Approved blueprint for cleanup of Berry’s Creek in Bergen County, New Jersey
• Completed Dededo Transfer Station Removal Action, removing roughly 31,000 cubic yards of heavy metals from contaminated soil

“Congressional Democrats can end this shutdown right now by voting for our clean, bipartisan funding extension instead of playing political games,” the spokesman added.