Three Former E.P.A. Leaders: You’ll Miss It When It’s Gone
Three Former E.P.A. Leaders: You’ll Miss It When It’s Gone

In his first official cabinet meeting of his second term, President Trump on Wednesday indicated that the Environmental Protection Agency, the arm of the federal government essential to protecting our health and environment, is among the top targets for the next wave of major work force reductions. Mr. Trump said about 65 percent of the roughly 15,000 people working there could be fired. An E.P.A. official later said the president was referring to cuts to the agency’s budget, not to personnel.

As former E.P.A. heads under both Republican and Democratic administrations, we fear that such cuts would render the agency incapable of protecting Americans from grave threats in our air, water and land.

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William Reilly
The Catholic Church Must Challenge Trump on Deportations
The Catholic Church Must Challenge Trump on Deportations

Among Donald Trump’s most alarming, repeated and ambitious commitments as a candidate was to arrest and deport up to 12 million undocumented immigrants. Many are Mexican and have been in the United States for more than 10 years.

Now he is laying the groundwork to remove those immigrants from their homes, jobs and communities. It would be a “bloody story,” he said. One voice that has been largely absent in loudly criticizing this extreme and un-Christian plan, I am sorry to say as a Catholic, is the American Catholic Church’s.

Read more via the New York Times.

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William Reilly
Pa. efforts to curb Chesapeake pollution have stalled, leaving the bay at risk
Pa. efforts to curb Chesapeake pollution have stalled, leaving the bay at risk

This summer, the Chesapeake Bay has one of its largest dead zones in the last 30 years. And Pennsylvania pollution is a significant contributor to that problem.

One river, the Susquehanna, flowing mostly through Pennsylvania, is responsible for nearly 50 percent of the flow into the Chesapeake Bay. Frustratingly, pollution that has been entering the Susquehanna continues to flow downstream into the bay at levels that are putting the entire bay recovery at risk. The affected states, the District of Columbia, and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) can no longer stand by and let that happen. Read more via the Philadelphia Inquirer.

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William Reilly
Negotiating a Life of Service to the World

William Reilly shares his past experiences as president of the World Wildlife Fund and Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency with Stan Christensen, lecturer in civil and environmental engineering at Stanford University. Reilly recounts inspecting the Exxon Valdez oil spill, the possible ban of French wine in the United States and negotiating with former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher.

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William Reilly