Will a change at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency bring about change … or more of the same?

This is Trahant Reports.

Scott Pruitt the controversial agency administrator resigned last week after the White House determined that scandal after scandal was finally too much. The list of allegations and infractions was long, some 14 current investigations ranging from attacks on whistleblowers to special personal favors from the industry he was supposed to regulate.

Pruitt was hostile to climate change science and even the process of government itself.

A columnist for The Guardian newspaper called Pruitt: “The worst. EPA administrator. Ever.”

But will anything change? The acting head of the EPA, Andrew Wheeler is a former lobbyist for the coal industry.

And the acting EPA leader is already involved in a controversy about the cleanup of abandoned uranium mines in the Navajo Nation. Wheeler was once the lobbyist for Energy Fuels International. That Canadian company is now seeking federal contracts to clean up those mines as well as engage in new ones. Energy Fuels was one of the companies pushing to shrink the Bears Ears National Monument.

Energy Fuels chief executive Mark Chalmers was quoted by CNN saying that the 500 abandoned mines – already on the Superfund list – should be cleaned up by his company because the company has the only mill in the area and routinely processes uranium there. “We offer the EPA an established, low-cost option to move material off the Navajo Nation, recycle it into fuel for carbon-free nuclear energy and dispose the remnants in our existing state-of-the-art facilities,” he told CNN.

This contract also fits into a broader scheme for more uranium development in the Four Corners. A blog for The Grand Canyon Trust said:  “Wheeler’s name should ring a bell for those following the Bears Ears National Monument issue, and his ascension to EPA chief could be cause for concern.”

Tribes have opposed the return of uranium mining in the Four Corners. Many communities are still living with a toxic past and the failure of the industry to clean up its mess. The 1979 spill of an uranium tailing wastewater pond near Churchrock, in the Navajo Nation, is considered the single largest release of radioactive material in American history, surpassing the crisis at Three Mile Island. Drinking water in the area remains contaminated.

As acting administrator Wheeler will not be subject to Senate confirmation. Should President Donald J. Trump nominate him for the post permanently he would need to get that nod again. Wheeler was confirmed by a vote of 53 to 45 for the Deputy post back in April.

I am Mark Trahant.