EPA says Pruitt meeting with Dow Chemical head was canceled

The Environmental Protection Agency and Dow Chemical said Friday that a planned meeting in March between EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt and the company's CEO never took place. The meeting was listed on Pruitt's schedule and reported by The Associated Press on Tuesday.

EPA spokeswoman Liz Bowman said in a statement that Pruitt and Dow's Andrew Liveris did have "a brief introduction in passing" during an energy conference in Houston. She said "no substantive issues" were discussed.

Rachelle Schikorra, a spokeswoman for Dow, said the formal meeting "never happened due to schedule conflicts."

The meeting still appeared on Pruitt's schedule, which was obtained by The Associated Press. The schedule showed that Pruitt and Liveris were to meet for about a half hour at a Houston hotel.

Twenty days after that scheduled meeting, Pruitt reversed his agency's push to ban a widely used Dow pesticide after health studies showed it can harm children's brains.

When the AP first reported on Pruitt's scheduled meeting, Bowman said the EPA administrator had been "briefly introduced" to Liveris. The EPA did not respond to inquiries about the scheduled meeting before the AP story was published and later did not state on the record that the meeting had been canceled.

EPA released a copy of Pruitt's March meeting schedule earlier this month following several Freedom of Information Act requests.