WASHINGTON – Trump administration appointees overruled concerns from their own technical experts in deciding not to impose tougher smog requirements on the Wisconsin county where Foxconn Technology Group planned a $10 billion manufacturing facility, newly released documents show.
Under President Donald Trump, the Environmental Protection Agency initially had recommended labeling Racine County as violating federal air quality standards for ozone in 2017 — a designation that could have required Taiwan-based Foxconn to install expensive state-of-the-art pollution controls at its flat-screen manufacturing plant.
But after appeals by GOP Gov. Scott Walker and at the apparent direction of then-EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt, the EPA reversed course in 2018, ruling Racine was in compliance with the ground-level smog standard. The decision followed weeks of objections from EPA career staff, who said they saw no technical basis to justify it, according to correspondence released under a public records request.