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US EPA agrees to extend comment period for new science transparency rule

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US EPA agrees to extend comment period for new science transparency rule

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency agreed to extend the comment period for its controversial science transparency rule and will hold a public hearing in July to collect public feedback.

"EPA is committed to public participation and transparency in the rulemaking process," EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt said. "By extending the comment period for this rule and holding a public hearing, we are giving stakeholders the opportunity to provide valuable input about how EPA can improve the science underlying its rules."

The EPA said the public hearing will be held July 17 at its Washington, D.C., headquarters. The comment period has been extended to Aug. 17.

Pruitt on April 24 announced a proposed rule, Strengthening Transparency in Regulatory Science, declaring the era of so-called secret science over. That term is used by some critics of the EPA's regulatory process to refer generally to studies that rely on information that is not made available to the public. The proposed rule seeks to ensure that the science used to develop regulations, including any data or models used within a scientific study, is publicly available in a way that allows for independent verification.

But the proposal was met with swift backlash from environmental groups, legal experts and scientists, who said it was a front for the EPA's effort to disqualify critical public health studies from consideration for rulemakings. Without critical public health information taken into consideration for regulatory decisions, critics argued that the EPA could simply opt not to regulate.

The EPA's Science Advisory Board also weighed in, agreeing with some outside groups that the proposal seemed designed to exclude human health studies. Members of the board also said they were excluded from review of the proposal.

Pruitt defended the rule during several appearances on Capitol Hill in April and May. Pruitt told lawmakers that the rule would lead to the release of more information, not the suppression of public health studies. He insisted that so long as researchers "provide the data and methodology to the agency and the findings, then [those studies] will be used."

A public comment period was opened April 30 for 30 days, but stakeholders objected to the short time frame. The docket had received more than 96,000 comments in the 24 days since the rule was published.

John Walke, who leads the Natural Resources Defense Council's clean-air advocacy work but previously served as an attorney for the EPA's Office of General Counsel, said in an interview May 16 that the 30-day comment period was one of the shortest he had seen for a major regulatory change in his career as a lawyer.

Dozens of groups agreed, including the Southern Environmental Law Center, National Association of Clean Air Agencies, National Association of Home Builders, Natural Resources Defense Council and Union of Concerned Scientists, and had asked the EPA to extend the comment period at least 60 or 90 days and to hold multiple public hearings on the matter.