WASHINGTON, DC -- Attorney General Sessions has issued another anti-environmental directive, this time blocking money from going toward environmental cleanups and other community assistance projects as part of federal agency settlements. As the Washington Post reports: in 2016, as part of a civil settlement, the Justice Department required Volkswagen to invest $2 billion to fund zero-emission technology and infrastructure and to promote zero-emission vehicles. These funds will help those communities harmed by the higher levels of smog caused by VW’s cars, by advancing cleaner vehicles that pollute less.
Attorney General Sessions clearly opposes helping such communities going forward. Session’s policy is a patent effort to try to undermine direct aid to communities in the cases of Fiat Chrysler and Mercedes, which like Volkswagen, have all been accused of lying about vehicle emissions.
In response, Sierra Club Environmental Law Program Director Pat Gallagher released the following statement:
“Jeff Sessions and the Trump administration are once again undermining critical policies that benefit the public through cleaner air and water. In this case, Sessions is seeking to prevent federal settlement agreements from benefitting local communities directly affected by environmental wrongdoing. This radical reversal of a decades-old policy could deprive communities of direct assistance for improvements in air and water quality, and is nothing more than an effort by the Trump administration to let companies like Fiat-Chrysler and Mercedes off the hook. Attorney General Sessions’ maneuver is as dirty and dangerous as the smog illegally spewed by Volkswagen’s vehicles.”
###