Obama May Kill EPA Performance Track, ‘Green Club’

March 16, 2009

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Within a week, President Obama is expected to terminate the Environmental Protection Agency’s Performance Track program.

The Bush-era program allows companies who implement voluntary pollution controls to benefit from reduced environmental inspections and less stringent regulation. Companies complying with the program were in the so-called “Green Club.”

Senior EPA officials signaled over the weekend that EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson would sign a memo terminating the order, perhaps as early as this week.

“Smoke and Mirrors,” an investigative series from the Philadelphia Inquirer may have played a role in EPA’s decision to reconsider Performance Track, a senior EPA official told the Inquirer.

The EPA official, who was involved in the decision to kill the program, told the Inquirer that voluntary programs like Performance Track can work, but that “this one wasn’t doing what it was created to do.”

Performance Track membership was nearly 550 companies during the Bush years, with a $4.7 million budget.

Last September, John Deere and Intel were among 40 new members of Performance Track.

Last May, EPA said that Performance Track members had achieved the following goals:

Reduced greenhouse gas emissions by 309,780 metric tons;
Increased the use of recycled materials for production processes by 559,991 tons; and
Reduced water consumption by 5.2 billion gallons.

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Reader Comments

That seems to be the Obama way. Get rid of things that actually work and implement more stringent, more costly, less business friendly rules that will hogtie America’s manufacturing even further. He and his minions at EPA will do more damage than all the greenhouse gases combined.

Glennis | March 17th, 2009

And that generalization is valid after less than 2 months ? how about giving them maybe a little more time before condemning the entire effort…

Ben | March 17th, 2009